Book Review (ARC): Bewitching by Alex Flinn

Hey Readers,

Book review time! A slightly bad review... (I'm sorry!)

The Kendra Chronicles #1: Bewitching by Alex Flinn

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.

Yes, here we have another fairy-tale retelling from Alex Flinn, author of Beastly (Beauty and the Beast) and A Kiss In Time (Sleeping Beauty). I hadn't heard of this book until it popped up on the tour site, but I was pleasantly surprised and signed up for it right away. You know, since fairy-tale retellings are my addiction, and because this book is about the witch who curses Kyle in Beastly (which is why the tagline is the awesome: BEASTLY was just one of her curses). The summary makes it sound like this is sort of a collection of random things that Kendra has done in her witch-y life, so I was pretty excited to check it out. (Also, that cover is really pretty. There. I said it.)

But to be honest... I wasn't too big a fan of this book.

I've only read her books Beastly (well, actually this was a free audiobook) and A Kiss In Time. They were all right. They were cute and predictable. I liked A Kiss In Time more (probably because I didn't like the narrator for Beastly, and that didn't help), but the ending was really weird and silly. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I wasn't exactly expecting anything spectacular from Bewitching. (Gosh, I sound horrible.)

This book starts out with a fun little prologue thing, and then Kendra's first ever...um, situation? hundreds of years ago. She accidently got herself into a Hansel and Gretel-type problem. That didn't end well. This was an all right story, but I felt like if it were split into chapters, I would've liked it more. Is that weird and stupid? Probably. But the whole thing is, like, 30 pages, and I was waiting for a break to put in a bookmark and put the book down.

Next, we get thrown into this Cinderella-type story. Except, as the summary kind of says, this is the story about the stepsister. Who is not evil. (Yeah, bit of a twist.) This is told through Emma's point of view (and broken up into chapters!) and this is what brought down the book for me...

I just didn't like this story. I couldn't stand Emma. She just irritated the crap out of me. (Maybe because of her complete lack of confidence. She was all worried that her new stepsister would find out that she *gasp* read the same book twice in only one week! ...I'm sorry, I know she was only thirteen at that point and all, but...give me a break. >.<) Kendra was sort of this random friend in the background who occasionally showed up. I couldn't help but think that if this book was supposed to be about Kendra, then why am I reading about this girl? I would much rather read about Kendra.

But besides the first story, this book is basically fairy-tale retellings told through someone else's point of view, like her other books. With our side-character Kendra splashed in to mess everything up help out the poor character and fix everything. Because this wasn't what I was expecting, I didn't exactly like it. Most of the book is Emma's whole story (which ended... unrealistically), but there are two breaks in between it for the Little Mermaid/Titanic story (I liked this one a lot, so the book won back some points for me) and a Princess And The Pea/France story.

Besides the great Little Mermaid story, one other thing I liked about this book was the occasional mentions of Kyle from Beastly. It was pretty fun to read about him, and what Kendra thought of him.

But overall, Bewitching just wasn't enough for me, and it wasn't what I was expecting. But sometimes there are characters in a book that you feel like slapping can't help but roll your eyes at, and stories you just don't like...that was Emma's Cinderella story for me. If you're a fan of fairy-tale retellings and Alex Flinn, I think you should still check it out. But it just wasn't for me. :/

Rating: 3/5

Bewitching will be released on February 14. (Note: You don't have to read any of Alex's other books to understand this one! But it would be more fun to read Beastly first...)

This review is pretty bad. Don't judge me, guys.