There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.Įveryone believes that Salil Singh killed his girlfriend, Andrea Bell, five years ago-except Pippa Fitz-Amobi. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character.
But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends.
Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends. Muddled but ambitious, with much to please fans of character-driven fantasy here’s hoping the next two volumes proceed more smoothly. They also dispel rather than intensify the atmosphere of creeping horror by turning much of the potion- and magic-making into clumsy attempts at comic relief. Furthermore, along with killing off some of the Chosen (after they become point-of-view characters too, a knavish trick to pull on readers), the authors lazily trot in a succession of adult witches to explain matters to the survivors. Their various paths to final, uneasy alliance are embedded in a thoroughly developed, exceptionally complex web of family issues, emotional and sexual entanglements, rivalries, hatreds, inner battles, risky personal choices and conflicting impulses that enrich the story but also make the suspenseful climactic battle with a dangerous adversary seem long in coming. Seven high schoolers have been Chosen to fight this evil-which they discover after most are compelled by a never-explained force to meet in an abandoned amusement park-and later develop powers such as the ability to become invisible or to control minds. Heralded by bodiless demons, major evil is poised to break through to this world in the small Swedish town of Engelsfors. Coming into witchy powers and learning to use them responsibly is complicated by intense teen Sturm und Drang in this doorstopper import.
0 kommentar(er)
