EricaO

Eeennnhhhh.
Sooooo...I wish this would have been around when I was 14; I'd have eaten this thing up and wanted more, More, MORE!
Buuuuuut...I'm not 14. I'm a bitter and cynical old lady, now, and I've become far more judgmental than I ever was in my teens, which seems impossible, true though it is.

Here's where I got tripped up:
The characters: I could not get a hold on any character at all, except for maybe Aunt Evie. They were just so...slippery and not in a complex way but in a "would this character really do that? Wait, no, the character is changing again...holy hell, what is going on with these people?" sort of way.
The dialog: This was the biggest hindrance to my reading enjoyment. I even tried reading out loud in several areas to get the conversations to flow the way I thought a conversation involving one or more teenagers would go but it just never worked; the conversations were just too...stilted? Not real-feeling enough? Lacking in personality? Maybe a bit of all those things.

These two things were enough of a stumbling block to make me want to give the story a 2-star rating.
Here's why I didn't:
I am a sucker for Girl On A Quest: And there's a good quest going on, one that 14-year-old me would have fantasized about for months.
Incoming witchy powers: Yeah, I'm a sucker for that, too, (I hated puberty) and I liked how freaked-out Breeda would get over the powers that were suddenly hers, though, I think I would liked to have seen her more worried after each bout of magical backlash was over. Because it's sort of like the first period, really, in that it comes and goes and you don't know what to expect because the information you thought you had turned out to be not-so-factual; I know I was thrown for a loop every time that little friend of mine showed up and I dreaded the next unplannable event until I got used to it all. And found Midol and Always. She needs Midol and Always only she needs them in the form of a talisman and control but she doesn't know where to get those and I can sympathize with her plight.
Potential, potential, potential: So I know the second part is already available, but I haven't bought it yet (this book was the first ebook I have ever purchased, that one will be the second) so I still have the luxury of hope. Here's what I hope: I hope Breeda learns not only to control her powers (which, yeah, she will. I mean, what's the purpose of the story otherwise, right?), then grows and becomes powerful but instead of being what those who came before have been, I would like her to become something new, something never seen before, a source of good and helpfulness and maybe even protection for the coven I hope she one day finds.

Potential pitfall with the next book: The Dreaded Love Triangle. I hate that thing with a passion. I mean, once in awhile it's fine but in 8 out of 10 YA books? (I just made that statistic up. Feel free to quote it, though) It's too much, too overplayed. It's that song on the radio that is really cool until you hear it 75 times a day, every day, for six months.

But you know what? I'm invested enough in this story - maybe not the characters, but definitely the story - to buy the next installment. I want to know what happens next!