Review: Bewitching

Bewitching
Alex Flinn
YA Paranormal

Bewitching can be a beast. . . .

Once, I put a curse on a beastly and arrogant high school boy. That one turned out all right. Others didn’t.

I go to a new school now—one where no one knows that I should have graduated long ago. I’m not still here because I’m stupid; I just don’t age.

You see, I’m immortal. And I pretty much know everything after hundreds of years—except for when to take my powers and butt out.

I want to help, but things just go awry in ways I could never predict. Like when I tried to free some children from a gingerbread house and ended up being hanged. After I came back from the dead (immortal, remember?), I tried to play matchmaker for a French prince and ended up banished from France forever. And that little mermaid I found in theTitanic lifeboat? I don’t even want to think about it.

Now a girl named Emma needs me. I probably shouldn’t get involved, but her gorgeous stepsister is conniving to the core. I think I have just the thing to fix that girl—and it isn’t an enchanted pumpkin. Although you never know what will happen when I start . . . bewitching.

Beastly..... ring a bell? Remember? Great book, later adapted into great movie (*cough* Alex Pettyfer *cough*)? Yeah that! So the witch, Kendra, now has her story told. Partly narrated by her,  Bewitching tells the surprisingly not typical at all (!) Cinderella story of Emma punctuated with some really enjoyable anecdotes from Kendra's life including Hansel and Gretel, the Princess and the Pea and The Little Mermaid. 

The back gives the impression that the book will be told from Kendra's PoV. It was not- she basically put in little notes, which, after I got over the initial disappointment, I really liked. Emma was an ok MC, more or less realistic. The beginning was a little frustrating for me because of her naivete, but she grows throughout the novel and I liked her quite a lot at the end. About the Cinderella bit, I implore you, DO NOT PASS THIS UP BECAUSE OF THAT. It was done soooo differently than anything out there, even if it may not seem so at first. 

The ever-changing POVS kept the book interesting and refreshing, though I do wish we got to hear more from Lisette. The conniving stepsister had a hard life and we get to hear a little about why she does the things she does, but I'd have loved to have read more of that. 

Bewitching wasn't as amazing as I remember Beastly to be, but a really great read all the same. It's a companion to Beastly and Lindsey's Diary (called The Kendra Chronicles), though is a completely different story and can be read as a standalone. Which is why, this is my first book to be read for the SUMMER OF STANDALONES CHALLENGE. To read about or sign up for the challenge, go here. Rating

 

Love, Esty