Bewitching: Book Review

Bewitching

Alex Flinn

HarperTeen

February 9th 2010

Young Adult | Fantasy
Fairy Tale Retelling

Official Blurb - 
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 the Titanic 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.

I don't think I have ever hated a book so much as this one. It takes those happy fairy tales from childhood and distorts them into horrible editions. The kind in which there is no hope and certainly no happy ending. Every bad thing besets the characters and not only do they not have the gumption to stand up for themselves. Even if they took a stand it wouldn't end well. This is the sort of story that will suck all happiness and hope out of you. Before long you will find yourself wishing you could put the poor girl out of her misery. Surely death would be better than this. In fact one of the characters does exactly that. Depressing. The characters are irritating and not worth the effort of caring for. There is a retelling of Hansel and Gretel contained in these pages that is just weak and annoying. In fact just about every retelling contained herein is weak and annoying.

I recommend steering clear of this unless you have a strong constitution for hopeless causes and bad endings.

Content:

Sexual: Mild to moderate
Violence: Moderate

UNFINISHED