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A review by asphodelic
The Girl and the Witch's Garden by Erin Bowman
1.0
This book was teetering dangerously on tokenism and white savior.
Throwing a bunch of super powered kids of varying backgrounds is nothing new, and it's a base concept that I happen to enjoy.
The first issue is that out of all five main children, only two are specified to not be white (Camilla and Kenji), and the second issue is that two of the white children (Piper and Teddy) have much more agency in the book. Only in the last fourth did the others have any involvement, where Piper got called out on her shit. There was barely enough to make Camilla, Kenji and Julius more than just stock characters. (Camilla got the most mileage out of the others.)
Piper's "eleventh hour power upgrade" was really bad. It's a shame that the author couldn't have either: A. made Piper rely on her brains or B. have the other children work together with their powers in a strategic way. Nope. We went for the bad old fashioned deus ex machina power upgrade.
I can't say I was particularly fond of the last minute reveal involving Piper's grandmother either.
Throwing a bunch of super powered kids of varying backgrounds is nothing new, and it's a base concept that I happen to enjoy.
The first issue is that out of all five main children, only two are specified to not be white (Camilla and Kenji), and the second issue is that two of the white children (Piper and Teddy) have much more agency in the book. Only in the last fourth did the others have any involvement, where Piper got called out on her shit. There was barely enough to make Camilla, Kenji and Julius more than just stock characters. (Camilla got the most mileage out of the others.)
Piper's "eleventh hour power upgrade" was really bad. It's a shame that the author couldn't have either: A. made Piper rely on her brains or B. have the other children work together with their powers in a strategic way. Nope. We went for the bad old fashioned deus ex machina power upgrade.
I can't say I was particularly fond of the last minute reveal involving Piper's grandmother either.