The Witch's Blood
Rating: 3/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher!
Life as a teenage witch just got harder for Merry when her brother, Leo is captured and taken into an alternative reality by evil witch Ronan. Determined to get him back, Merry needs to use blood magic to outwit her arch-rival and get Leo back. Merry is more powerful than ever now, but she is also more dangerous and within the coven, loyalties are split on her use of the magic. In trying to save Leo, Merry will have to confront evil from her past and present and risk the lives of everyone she’s ever loved. Given the chaos she’s created, just what will she sacrifice to make things right?
Thank the lord for Leo's POV in the prologue getting me back up to speed with what went down last book because I was completely mind blanking! I was quite excited to see how this trilogy would wrap up, and while the little trip Merry and co takes does justify the historical flashbacks in the first book that where rendered irrelevant in the second...they also didn't quite make sense.
We travel back to some kind of parallel universe but it was never fully explained mechanics-wise and it seemed like another little thing thrown in to drag the story out. I honestly think that the first book became kind of unnecessary when they changed certain things and certain characters and to be honest I don't think this trilogy actually needed to be a trilogy. I was hoping this final book might pick things back up but it just went even further downhill.
Jack was back but...well...he's just another thing that has me thinking the first book was completely unnecessary. Finn had an interesting little problem, and I can't even say I'm surprised at what his father wanted him to do, at that point it just seemed like some little drama thrown in to keep things interesting throughout the slow middle section of the book. Ronan is just the worlds biggest creep, and he was practically twirling his moustache and cackling.
Merry I have to say continued to be frustrating right until the end. Much like the last book she seems to still be riding high on her superiority complex. She never listens or does as she's told and she's quite selfish and arrogant, in that regard, I've found it so hard to like her, when you look at everything that's happened, and know it could have been prevented if she'd just listened it makes you want to shake her. Then she continues to refuse to listen to what anyone says and goes against everything...it would have been interesting if she actually seemed to learn and grew and changed as a character but she doesn't. She's just so frustrating and I was hoping this was the book she grew up a little in but it doesn't even give us that, Merry will forever be one of my least liked characters.
Honestly, as we neared the end of the book I couldn't help put notice all the standard "series finale tropes" that had been thrown in, and it came across as a bit cheesy and cringey. I felt no real sense of tension or danger and as for what happens with Merry at the end? It just seemed like a hastily thrown together solution to finish the series.
Considering this series started out okay, aside from my issues with Merry, it just kept going downhill and unfortunately this book doesn't quite save it.
The Witch's Tears
Rating: 3/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher.
Can true love's kiss break your heart...? The spellbinding sequel to THE WITCH'S KISS by authors and sisters, Katharine and Elizabeth Corr. It's not easy being a teenage witch. Just ask Merry. She's drowning in textbooks and rules set by the coven; drowning in heartbreak after the loss of Jack. But Merry's not the only one whose fairy tale is over. Big brother Leo is falling apart and everything Merry does seems to push him further to the brink. And everything that happens to Leo makes her ache for revenge. So when strangers offering friendship show them a different path they'd be mad not to take it...Some rules were made to be broken, right? The darkly magical sequel to THE WITCH'S KISS burns wickedly bright.
While the first book in the series didn't completely blow me away, and it had it's problems for me...I was curious enough about what would happen next to want to pick up this sequel, plus the first book had the flashbacks to the past which provided a nice source of intrigue. This instalment however...I found myself enjoying much less and there was no intriguing historical element to save it.
In Witch's Tears we're 3 months on from the end of the first book and Merry and Leo are dealing with everything that happened and aren't having a great time. Merry's struggling with the covens rules and her grandmother, she feels lonely and very alone as she's arguing with Leo all the time. Leo is struggling to deal with his loss from the first book and feels somewhat inferior to Merry I think. They'er arguing and not at all being there for each other which was perhaps the biggest disappointment of the book for me.
The thing I really liked about the first book was the relationship Merry and Leo had, how they where there for each other and helped each other. I loved it and it was a rare thing to see in a book. You usually see the kind of sibling relationship that we see in this book. So I was hugely disappointed. Their arguments where repetitive they argued about and did the same things over and over and over to the point I was rolling my eyes more than once.
Merry was such a whiny, arrogant little cow in this book, and she seemed to have some sort of complex where she thought she was superior to everyone else because she was more powerful and didn't think she needed to do everything the covens way, and there was this whole conflict she was having with the coven that was just so juvenile and I got really bored of it really fast. The coven...the arguments with Leo...it was all the same repetitive things over and over again and I got so frustrated with it all. Merry and her inner monologue became very, very hard to read.
We get two new characters, Ronan and Finn. Both are wizards. Both are untrustworthy. Both I wanted to trust and both I didn't feel I could. The thing was, was that Ronan was so overly suspicious that it wasn't even a surprise when he turned out to be the bad guy. Like I knew it was coming. Same as the foreshadowing made it pretty obvious what was coming too. I reached the big reveal and I just...I was like "really?".
Our other new character Finn seemed to be there solely to be Merry's new love interest. I think we could have got by okay with this book, without him to be honest. I don't know if I couldn't get in to the romance because Merry bugged me or because it was genuinely unnecessary but I feel like it was just thrown in there because we had to have some romance. Like couldn't Leo's romance have been enough? Poor old Leo had to have the bad romance while Merry got to have the good. And then the end happened and Finn's true purpose was revealed. To provide one point on the love triangle that will be present in book three.
For most of the book not much happens at all except for Merry's whining and her arguing with Leo. I just...I'm not sure what to make of this series. I so badly wanted this book to be better than the first, maybe part of the problem was that I had some high expectations for it, that it would go above and beyond the first book. Instead I found the book a disappointment and more than a little bit boring.
My problem is that, I am still curious about how it's all going to end in the next book. I assume it all ends in the next book anyway. The ending was enough to pique my interest. I'd like to have some questions answered, including questions that I still have from the first book that I was expecting to be answered in this book, but weren't. Part of me basically wants to see how it's all going to end, but part of me feels like I'm going to be disappointed and that the love triangle that's quite obvious is going to bug me. I like a good love triangle if it's done well, but I feel like I have a good idea of how it's going to go. In short...I don't know whether or not I'll read book three, but book two was a disappointment.
SaveSaveSaveSave
The Witch's Kiss
Rating: 3/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher!
Sixteeen-year-old Meredith is fed-up with her feuding family and feeling invisible at school – not to mention the witch magic that shoots out of her fingernails when she’s stressed. Then sweet, sensitive Jack comes into her life and she falls for him hard. The only problem is that he is periodically possessed by a destructive centuries-old curse. Meredith has lost her heart, but will she also lose her life? Or in true fairytale tradition, can true love’s kiss save the day?
I probably should have saved this for Halloween seeing as I'm reviewing this so late, but I decided stuff it, I was too intrigued to wait! Witch's Kiss wasn't exactly what I was expecting when I read the synopsis, but I enjoyed the book none the less!
The Witch's Kiss has an ominous and atmospheric opening that pulls you in to the story immediately, and the book continues to be atmospheric throughout. There's plenty of intrigue right from the start as the plot flares immediately to life! Not being at all biased but I loved the Surrey setting, it was a really vivid setting for me, because there's plenty of little villages like the one in the book all around.
I really enjoyed how the book used dreams and visions to show Merry what had happened in the past, and how Meredith and Jack became a thing. The book switched between the present and the dark ages smoothly, not just with the dreams and the visions and so on, but you get a story within a story for a couple of chapters, as Merry and Leo are told the story of the King of Hearts. It made for a very vivid couple of chapters, and as you learn about Jack and his past, you connect with the characters from that part of the story, it was very well done and kind of creepy in places! It gave the book another level of detail that allowed you to connect with the story more, and the characters from the past where developed as much as the main characters, which I found particularly interesting because I wasn't expecting it.
I got some intense Sleeping Beauty vibes from the book, but like, gender swapped, obviously! Gwydion got his Maleficent on at the naming ceremony, and then there's the whole rescuing the princess from behind the thorn wall, and then Jack being trapped behind it, I loved seeing the parallels to SB but with a different twist on them! It was a little bit of a retelling in a way, you could say. For some reason the lake made me think of that horrible tree from Sleepy Hollow, the Tim Burton film, not the book! (I haven't read the book yet shhh)
I liked Merry for the most part, she bugged me a couple of times but she was a genuine character, with an authentic reaction to the whole thing. She's a bit of a special snowflake, and the book has plenty of cliches but most of them have twists that make them interesting rather than the same old, same old. Merry knows all about her magic and I thought her struggle with it was interesting. She wanted to try her best, and she overcame her fears.
Leo was definitely my favourite character, I'm not going to lie to you guys! I felt like Leo was the character with the most depth, and he should have been in it more, I was waiting for him to be more involved as it seemed the book was going that way at one point but nope. I wasn't sure if I'd like him at the beginning of the book, but he fast became my favourite because he was the kind of big brother everyone wants. He was determined to help Merry and he was really there for her as best as he could be, I liked the closeness between the two, and I just loved Leo okay.
Jack was an interesting character, I wasn't too sure about him in the beginning either, I really felt for him once I got to know his backstory and got to know him, and I was rooting for him to be saved the entire way through, it was all a bit unfair for him really! Speaking of Jack brings me to the romance. When I read the synopsis I was expecting one thing. But that's not what happened in the book. From the start, the entire thing seems like it's doomed, and there's no way to prevent it, so maybe it's just as well that the romance wasn't there as much as I would have thought but in the end I didn't really buy the romance between Merry and Jack.
In the flashes of the past, you see a fair bit of Meredith and Jack..that I could see. I could see how they had fallen for each other, but Merry and Jack...I couldn't see it. We have Merry and Jack who have fallen for each other over the course of everything, the L word is bandied around, it all gets very Once Upon a Time with the True Loves kiss talk...but I didn't see how Merry and Jack could have gotten to that stage. We didn't see them together all that much, didn't see them interacting all that much. I actually felt like there where some missing scenes that would have made it work better romance wise. I at least, didn't see them fall for each other. They met. They met again. Hung out a few times with Leo. Got some alone time and then BOOM. Kiss. Love. Etc.
On the one hand, it's doomed from the start, so not having the romance shoved in your face every five seconds meant you didn't see it develop much and couldn't get attached to the couple. On the other hand...you couldn't get attached. I got plenty attached to Jack, I really felt like he was in an unfair situation and wanted him to be saved, but I didn't really care about the romance. There where other things in plot that took centre stage, which was good, but at the same time I was expecting more romance than there was and seeing as the whole TLK thing was thrown around, I felt like I should have seen more of the romance in the plot, especially as it was a little slow at some points. I seem to be the only person who had this problem though. I mean...maybe Merry's ancestors feelings where bleeding through or something I don't know.
The Witch's Kiss had it's good points and it had it's bad points, while I was disappointed by the romance and didn't see it, I really liked the historical bits of the book! The flashbacks where so well written and really added a load of intrigue to the plot, as well as being vivid. I loved Leo, he was a fantastic character, and the book was really funny. It was a fun, easy read, and I'm intrigued to see what's going to happen next. You could quite easily read this as a standalone and I would have assumed it was if I hadn't seen a sequel on GoodReads, so I'm curious about what the authors are going to do next! I'm hoping for more history because SO GOOD.
