Review: Trial By Fire

TRIAL BY FIRE
The Worldwalker Trilogy #1
Josephine Angelini
Paranormal Young Adult
384 pages
Feiwel & Friends
Available September 2nd
Source: ARC from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
This world is trying to kill Lily Proctor. Her life-threatening allergies keep her from enjoying experiences that others in her hometown of Salem take for granted, which is why she is determined to enjoy her first high school party with her best friend and longtime crush, Tristan. But after a humiliating incident in front of half her graduating class, Lily wishes she could just disappear.

Suddenly, Lily is in a different Salem—one overrun with horrifying creatures and ruled by powerful women called Crucibles. Strongest and cruelest of them all is Lillian . . . Lily's other self in this alternate universe.

What makes Lily weak at home is what makes her extraordinary in New Salem. In this confusing world, Lily is torn between responsibilities she can't hope to shoulder alone and a love she never expected.

MY THOUGHTS
Trial by Fire has all the makings of a sprawling fantasy novel, sharing with us a world full of unfathomable creatures and witchcraft, but at its heart is a heroine who keeps us anchored at all times, fully invested in her emotional well being from beginning to end. Ms. Angelini ensures we don’t get weighed down by all the supernatural elements by introducing us to young Lily in our world, letting us bear witness to a heartbreaking moment where her romantic hopes go down in flames, and neither Lily nor we escape without feeling the burn. Only once we’re thoroughly connected to Lily thanks to a shared pain and disappointment does Ms. Angelini shift us to a completely different Salem, one full of monsters and magic where the lives of many are regulated by the tyrannical hands of few.

Lily is a true joy of a heroine, her hope that longtime friendship with best friend Tristan has finally reached the pivotal moment in which it becomes more in the opening chapters something that instantly resonates, causing us to wish for the best for her even when we know thanks to the synopsis that neither our wish nor hers will come true. After having a brutal dose of reality shoved down her throat, Lily could have easily wallowed in her misery and drawn no blame from us, but instead she picks herself up upon finding herself in an alternate Salem and does her best to make sense of it. This determined attitude continues throughout Trial by Fire, Lily fielding whatever is thrown at her with a joke at the ready and a willingness to do whatever it takes to learn, adapt, or fight when the need arises.
 
Many readers–like myself–who have read innumerable young adult novels over the past few years have developed a bit of a nervous tic whenever a young woman finds herself surrounded by several guys her age, dreading the moment where the mere presence of two men in her life ultimately results in the development of romantic feelings for both of them. Luckily for us however, Ms. Angelini doesn’t lead us down that well-worn path, Rowan and Tristan’s positions by Lily’s side staying blessedly free of frustrating romantic entanglements. What we get instead is an intriguingly complex relationship between Lily and Rowan, his former relationship with the other version of Lily, Lillian, an aspect of the story that has us riveted to the pages. The feelings between them are tangled threads of misplaced anger and distrust, and as the story progresses, the addition of hesitant affection and genuine friendship only serves to tangle those threads further until the two of them become a beautiful knot of romantic possibility.

The only small drawback to this first installment is the persistence of one vitally important question: why Lily? We know from the beginning that Lillian is responsible for bringing Lily to her world, and while we eventually get the first small inklings as to why Lillian began her campaign of blood and death, we’re left completely in the dark as to what Lillian needs Lily for in the first place. Granted, this is the first book in the series and the answer to that particular question is likely one that has layers upon layers that will be revealed in time. Overall though, Trial By Fire is action-packed, the death toll rising with every chapter, but where there is pain and suffering there is also warmth and hope in the form of young Lily, and I simply can’t wait to see the type of woman she becomes.

Rating: 4.5/5
 

Find Josephine

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This book was sent to me by the author free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.

Interview: Cassandra Rose Clarke + The Wizard's Promise

Today I'm thrilled to have author Cassandra Rose Clarke stopping by the blog as part of the promotional tour for her upcoming young adult novel, The Wizard's Promise, which releases May 6th from Strange Chemistry. Cassandra was nice enough to answer a few questions for me, so I hope you all enjoy the interview. Welcome to Supernatural Snark Cassandra!

Hanna wants nothing more than to learn how to be a witch. What’s one particular spell or aspect of witchcraft she’s most excited to get a handle on?

Hanna just wants to be able to do magic, rather than spend her days out on a fishing boat. Although she doesn’t think of it this way, it’s almost like she wants witchcraft to be her job, the way people hope to turn their art or writing into jobs. So probably the aspect of witchcraft she’s most excited to learn is one of the more difficult, complicated spells that would prove to people she’s capable of spending her life as a witch rather than a fisherwoman.

To help those of us who have yet to meet Hanna get to know her a little bit better, how might her apprentice master describe her or her dedication to her craft?

If he was speaking where Hanna couldn’t overhear, he’d say she was hardworking and skilled—not just at magic, but at fishing too, since fishing is what she’s currently apprenticed for. Of course, he’d also complain that she doesn’t take her fishing duties seriously, and that she needs to be more practical.

Now, if Hanna could overhear, he’d probably leave off the parts about her being hardworking and skillful. He doesn’t want to be too generous with the compliments.

If Hanna could live in another fictional world (book, movie or TV show) dominated by witches, which one would top her list?

I think Hanna would appreciate living in the world of Once Upon a Time, in particular the parts set in the Enchanted Forest. There would be adventure galore for her, and she’d have plenty of opportunities to test out her powers.

There’s mention of a beautiful non-human boy in the synopsis, and lover of romance that I am, his presence has me absurdly excited to dive into this story. What are three characteristics you think make a love interest swoon-worthy?

Pretty big doses of mystery and broodiness, both tempered by a generous splash of kindness. I love tortured, angsty love interests, but not when their angstiness goes too far and they become jerks!

Let’s say you wake up tomorrow in an unfamiliar world. Which character from any of your books would you call on for help in facing whatever this world might throw at you?

Definitely Ananna, from The Assassin’s Curse. She’s got the street smarts that I sorely lack, plus she knows how to fight and use a sword. I’m pretty sure the two of us could take on anything.

What’s one question you wish you would be asked in an interview and how would you answer?

Okay, technically I have been asked about this, but not since I moved to a new house! The question is about where you write and what your writing set-up looks like. Since my laptop broke, I’ve been chained to a desktop, so no more writing in a Starbucks or in the park for me. However, I have set up an entire writing room in my new house, and I just love it. I re-acquired my childhood desk and set my computer up on that, and I even put in a daybed—which I used to beg my parents for when I was kid. Finally got one! I’ve installed shelves to keep all my papers and things organized. Oh, and the walls are mint green! I just need to add some artwork and the room will be sweet writing perfection.

If you could promote The Wizard’s Promise using only a single quote from the book to entice readers, which one would you choose to share?

“I don’t make a habit of trusting boys who can swim in ice water,” I said.

Isolfr gave me one perfect, dazzling smiling. “I’m not a normal boy.”

• • • • • • • • • • • 

THE WIZARD'S PROMISE

All Hanna Euli wants is to become a proper witch – but unfortunately, she’s stuck as an apprentice to a grumpy fisherman. When their boat gets caught up in a mysterious storm and blown wildly off course, Hanna finds herself further away from home than she’s ever been before.

As she tries to get back, she learns there may be more to her apprentice master than she realized, especially when a mysterious, beautiful, and very non-human boy begins following her through the ocean, claiming that he needs Hanna’s help.

Amazon • Goodreads

• • • • • • • • • • • 

CASSANDRA ROSE CLARKE

 Photo: Brittany at Flashbox Shop

Cassandra Rose Clarke grew up in south Texas and currently lives in a suburb of Houston, where she writes and teaches composition at a local college. She graduated in 2006 from The University of St. Thomas with a B.A. in English, and two years later she completed her master’s degree in creative writing at The University of Texas at Austin. In 2010 she attended the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop in Seattle, where she was a recipient of the Susan C. Petrey Clarion Scholarship Fund.

Cassandra’s first adult novel, The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, was a finalist for the 2013 Philip K. Dick Award, and her YA novel, The Assassin’s Curse, was nominated for YALSA’s 2014 Best Fiction for Young Adults. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons and Daily Science Fiction.

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Review: House of Ivy & Sorrow

HOUSE OF IVY & SORROW
Natalie Whipple
Paranormal Young Adult
352 pages
HarperTeen
Available April 15th
Source: eARC from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Josephine Hemlock has spent the last 10 years hiding from the Curse that killed her mother. But when a mysterious man arrives at her ivy-covered, magic-fortified home, it’s clear her mother’s killer has finally come to destroy the rest of the Hemlock bloodline. Before Jo can even think about fighting back, she must figure out who she’s fighting in the first place. The more truth Jo uncovers, the deeper she falls into witchcraft darker than she ever imagined. Trapped and running out of time, she begins to wonder if the very Curse that killed her mother is the only way to save everyone she loves.

MY THOUGHTS
With a title like House of Ivy & Sorrow and a synopsis that speaks of curses and witchcraft, we fully expect a dark tale when we crack the spine, but though there are undoubtedly dark undertones and painful moments, the overall tone is perhaps a bit lighter than anticipated. The fact that the story itself defies expectation and goes in a slightly different direction isn’t necessarily worthy of complaint, it just takes us a little additional time to adjust and get on board with a protagonist who reads a touch younger than the themes intimated in the synopsis suggest.

Josephine is a fun heroine to follow through this story, keeping the aforementioned darkness surprisingly at bay as she crushes on a young man from a neighboring farm and continually tries to deter her hilarious Nana from spelling him with any number of unfortunate physical ailments for touching or talking to her. Her relationship with her grandmother is a highlight, the two of them sharing a bond that seeps through the pages and warms our hearts, eternally grateful to see a positive familial relationship detailed so beautifully in a genre typically void of parental involvement.

Where we start to stumble just a bit in this story is when Jo’s youth really begins to show, her sometimes irrational anger at people keeping secrets from her coming across to us as largely hypocritical given the number of things she’s keeping from one of her friends and her boyfriend. She’s also quick to jump to conclusions before she has all the information at hand, and instead of standing her ground and demanding the pieces she’s missing from those who can provide them, she runs away to lick her perceived wounds with nary an explanation to those left behind clueless and hurt at her abrupt departure. She does always see the error of her ways and seek to make amends, but the repair of whatever rift she’s caused (and she causes several) seems to happen quickly and easily, leaving us standing in shallow waters when we want nothing more than to dive headfirst into the deep end of her various friendships and relationships.

Though Jo has moments where she frustrates us with her behavior, the witchcraft element of this story is strong and fascinating, the concept of light and dark magic erased completely and replaced with only dark magic and the question of a witch’s control over it. Those who are able to stay in control can wield it for purposes that help rather than harm, but those who allow the magic to control them find themselves consumed. Overall, The House of Ivy & Sorrow has both highlights and lowlights, the equal ratio of the two making for an entertaining if not hugely memorable read.

Rating: 3.5/5

Find Natalie:

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This book was sent to me by the publisher free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.

Review: Half Bad

HALF BAD
Half Life #1
Sally Green
Paranormal Young Adult
416 pages
Viking Juvenile
Available Now
Source: Finished copy from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Amazon)
In modern-day England, witches live alongside humans: White witches, who are good; Black witches, who are evil; and sixteen-year-old Nathan, who is both. Nathan’s father is the world’s most powerful and cruel Black witch, and his mother is dead. He is hunted from all sides. Trapped in a cage, beaten and handcuffed, Nathan must escape before his seventeenth birthday, at which point he will receive three gifts from his father and come into his own as a witch—or else he will die. But how can Nathan find his father when his every action is tracked, when there is no one safe to trust—not even family, not even the girl he loves?

MY THOUGHTS
Half Bad is one of those stories we enter into with a certain set of expectations based on the limited amount of information provided by the synopsis, but, as is sometimes the case, once we crack the spine we find a very different type of novel than we'd anticipated. It’s not the story’s fault we'd prepared ourselves for an entirely different direction than it ended up taking, but it does take us a bit of time to reconcile where we thought we would be headed with where Nathan’s journey actually takes us. A story about witches has visions of magic–light and dark–dancing in our heads, and the mention of a girl in the same sentence as the word “love” has the romantic in us rubbing our hands together in glee, but what we find is a tale largely absent both magic and romance, leaving us just a touch off kilter even as we start to fall hard for young Nathan.

The format of Half Bad plays a large role in our initial disconcertion, starting us off in second person for the first couple chapters as we join Nathan in his cage before switching to first person and taking us back in time to when Nathan was just a boy. We follow Nathan from boyhood to age sixteen where we’re reunited with our timeline from the first few chapters, but just as we’re brought back to Nathan’s time in the cage, we’re once again shifted to second person for a chapter or two before returning to first person and staying there for the remainder of the book. The second person perspective doesn’t seem altogether necessary unless it will serve some greater purpose in the coming installments, so the switch back and forth becomes more jarring than it might have been otherwise if we understood the reason for it.

Though the perspective switch is off-putting, Nathan himself is an extraordinarily interesting young man, someone we’re rooting for from the moment we find ourselves locked in that cage with him. He’s treated abominably from a young age for being half Black Witch and half White, but though he suffers gut-wrenching abuse both emotional and physical, he never truly allows himself to be beaten. His fire burns brightly throughout, flaring up when he’s at his most defensive but staying coolly banked the remainder of the time, showing us he knows how to play the game the White Witches force upon him better than they ever dreamed he would. The true highlight of this story is Nathan’s beautiful relationship with his brother Arran, the bond between them both heartwarming and heartbreaking as they find themselves torn apart by the cruelty of those who, to our knowledge, are more monstrous than those from whom they claim to be protecting the world.

Though Nathan is attracted to a White Witch named Annalise before he finds himself imprisoned, there’s no real romance to be had in this story, something that’s not a true complaint as the addition of such would have detracted from the intense loneliness radiating from Nathan. He’s on his own in every way in this story, fighting battles both internal and external, and his nearly total emotional isolation (with the exception of Arran) creates an intriguing intimacy between he and us as readers. We don’t get to learn much about this world or the witchcraft that dominates it–Nathan’s ability to heal almost the only magical aspect throughout–leaving us hoping for both more history and more magical gifts in the next installment. Overall, Half Bad is a slower read than we might expect going in, Nathan’s story more of a straight line than a jagged one with lots of peaks and valleys, but the potential for future greatness is undoubtedly there and is more than enough to have us eager to pick up book two.

Rating: 3.5/5

Find Sally:

Website • Twitter • Goodreads • Amazon 

This book was sent to me by the publisher free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.

Review: Spellcaster

SPELLCASTER
Spellcaster #1
Claudia Gray
Paranormal Young Adult
370 pages
Available Now
Received from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Amazon)
When Nadia's family moves to Captive's Sound, she instantly realizes there's more to the place than meets the eye. Descended from witches, Nadia can sense that a spell has been cast over the tiny Rhode Island town—a sickness infecting everyone and everything in it. The magic at work is darker and more powerful than anything she's come across and has sunk its claws most deeply into Mateo . . . her rescuer, her friend, and the guy she yearns to get closer to even as he pushes her away.

Mateo has lived in Captive's Sound his entire life, shadowed by small-town gossip and his family's tormented past. Every generation, the local legends say, one member of the family goes mad, claiming to know the future before descending into insanity. When the strange dreams Mateo has been having of rescuing a beautiful girl from a car accident actually come true, he knows he's doomed.

Despite the forces pulling them apart, Nadia and Mateo must work together to break the chains of his terrible family curse, and to prevent a coming disaster that even now threatens the entire town, including Nadia's family, her newfound friends, and her own life.

MY THOUGHTS
Spellcaster is a gem of a first installment, introducing us to a handful of wonderfully memorable characters largely free of melodrama and angst whose focus alternates between friends, family, and saving their small town rather than remaining solely on their hormones. This world of magic is easily understood without copious amounts of information or explanation, and the unusual nature of the ingredients for Nadia's spellwork add an extra element of believability to her brand of witchcraft. Instead of actual physical ingredients, Nadia’s spells are cast based largely on memories and experiences–things like “a love unbreakable” needing to be recalled in order for her magic to work–thus granting us access to some of Nadia’s most powerful memories while at the same time highlighting our similarities even as the casting of the spell itself reminds us of our differences.

Nadia is a wonderfully normal heroine (aside from the fact that she’s a witch), a young woman who is madly in love with her younger brother Cole and has assumed the role of caretaker for both him and her father in her mother’s absence. While she finds herself attracted to Mateo from the moment he pulls her from her car’s wreckage, she is not one to pine or suddenly shift the entirety of her life until it revolves completely around him, instead she acknowledges her crush and continues to function as she did prior to meeting him. She carries a heavy weight on her shoulders with her witchcraft, something she can’t share with her father and brother as one of the rules of magic is that men are to remain ignorant of it, but she never complains or whines, always stoically accepting her fairly limited knowledge of magic (courtesy of her mother’s abandonment as both parent and mentor) and seeking to do the best with it she can.

Mateo is as delightfully normal as Nadia, sparing us the assignment of a common young adult hero label such as “bad boy” and instead simply remaining attractively ordinary. He’s neither absurdly popular nor completely shunned, his good looks keeping him largely in the middle of the social ladder even as rumors of his family’s curse try to knock him down a few rungs, and like Nadia, he never despairs of his lot in life. He’s as attracted to Nadia as she is him, but he never comes on too strong or resorts to over the top protective behavior like stalking, instead their romance is quiet, fragile and sweet, progressing slowly but surely throughout. There is a declaration of love that isn’t entirely necessary, but it comes into play late after they’ve spent a great deal of time together and have formed a rather unique bond courtesy of Nadia’s magic, so while we may still feel it’s too soon for such a pronouncement, it’s easy to overlook in favor of all the positives in their relationship.

Overall, Spellcaster is a quick and captivating read full of magic, humor, and romance, complete with a deliciously dark villain whose very presence on the page causes our lips to curl in angry sneer. The story itself feels satisfyingly complete, the smaller storyline playing out in full even as its completion reveals its role as a catalyst for the larger story arc of the series, and I cannot wait to return to Captive’s Sound to see how Nadia grows as both witch and woman as her story continues.

Rating: 4/5