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nora_linden 's review for:
Harley Merlin and the Secret Coven
by Bella Forrest
I read this book as it had been compared to Harry Potter in reviews. I grew up with Harry Potter and those books have shaped my childhood. While the Harley Merlin series was an enjoyable, quick read, it has nothing on Harry Potter. I found that the author focused on the outer appearance and as with almost all teen novels nowadays they could all be found on runways in real life and the main character has two gorgeous guys vying for her attention. Instead of carving out characters that are not caricatures of real life stereotypes, she stays superficial and does not add the intricacies that J.K. Rowling had for all of her characters. I appreciate strong female characters, but here the protagonist gives up her independence after having been harassed by a guy. In comparison to this, J.K. Rowling once stated I believe, that Hermione Granger never compromised her intelligence for anyone, never gave up her studiousness for beauty and even though she was portrayed by the beautiful Emma Watson, she was never supposed to be known for her beauty, but her intelligence. If this author had created characters of more depth, this could potentially have come close to Harry Potter, but alas it does not...
Edit: I read a bunch of Bella Forrest's Sagas and felt I really had to add this point to this review. In all of her books and there are many, every pairing is always between the different sexes. This is especially astonishing since one of her storylines (not Harley Merlin) literally spans universes, and in all those universes, somehow everyone is straight?! After having read 3-4 books of hers they become incredibly predictable, badly edited (spelling mistakes) and quite frankly boring, because the same things happen again and again and you guessed it, AGAIN! I cannot over stress this, as she has authored over 100 books, if you have read one of them, you have read them all essentially.
As I mentioned before, she also does never create characters of any depth. None of them are ever anything less than beautiful and if they are, then they are likely the bad guys, unimportant or will miraculously become beautiful once they find their significant other.
Edit: I read a bunch of Bella Forrest's Sagas and felt I really had to add this point to this review. In all of her books and there are many, every pairing is always between the different sexes. This is especially astonishing since one of her storylines (not Harley Merlin) literally spans universes, and in all those universes, somehow everyone is straight?! After having read 3-4 books of hers they become incredibly predictable, badly edited (spelling mistakes) and quite frankly boring, because the same things happen again and again and you guessed it, AGAIN! I cannot over stress this, as she has authored over 100 books, if you have read one of them, you have read them all essentially.
As I mentioned before, she also does never create characters of any depth. None of them are ever anything less than beautiful and if they are, then they are likely the bad guys, unimportant or will miraculously become beautiful once they find their significant other.