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emunalomacu 's review for:
Witches of East End
by Melissa de la Cruz
I have a lot of thoughts.
First of all, I am a fan of the show! It was cheesy at times, but it was a good, heartfelt cheese. Wendy was my favourite — so you can imagine my sadness when, around 40 pages in, I figured that she wasn't in the book at all!
No worries! I know that adaptations are supposed to be seen as separate from their respective, original works: they are their own thing, and as much as I love Wendy, I'll manage.
And the book started great! I loved the setting (currently I can't get enough of small coastal towns inhabited by witches), loved the side characters (especially Hudson), the descriptions, the dynamics, everything. I was turned off by the very Murakami-esque descriptions of female physique in the first chapter; but when I realised that they were written with Freya's hypersexual point of view in mind, I was impressed by the author's keen eye for detail. To my surprise, Ingrid was my favourite character: I really enjoyed her chapters the most! Maybe because I too would like to work in a smalltown library, who knows...
I read a few bad reviews on here and did not agree with the critiques: yes, they were a few inconsistencies and grammatical errors, but I did not mind that Nordic goddesses used brooms to fly or wands for spellcasting. It was actually very clever of them to change and evolve with the times and technologies! To me, everything in the novel made complete sense.
And then at around 70%, the whole plot started to unravel! A lot of the stuff that happened felt forced, and it really damaged my opinion of the novel as a whole.
First, the Blue Bloods/author's other series references: I love an Easter Egg as much as the next person, but this wasn't an Easter Egg, it was a whole Easter meal! The girls did not need to travel to New York through a Narnia closet just for that plotline to go absolutely nowhere. I might've found it more charming if I have read the BB series, but I haven't and I didn't. This is the second time this year that a perfectly enjoyable book has been soured by authors forcing their other more famous series into the plot. There are ways to do that in a more demure, elegant way — but this is not it.
Second, as I was reading through the Mimi chapters and the pages flew by, I realised that there was no way that the ending will be satisfactory — there just wasn't enough pages left! And I was right, because, what was that? That was the epic showdown? I watched the show so I expected a switcheroo to happen in the book as well, but it was handled so... carelessly? It had way too much exposition for it to be thought-out. DON'T get me started on the dad. You're telling me that the great Odin's place has no reception?!?
And what happened to Tyler in the end, did he come back to life, or was just his soul saved from wandering the hells for all of the eternity???
(Also, Joanna was a bit creepy regarding their relationship — that little boy is not your long lost son, J!!! But also, it is OK for characters to be flawed, so I do not consider this as a writing mistake.)
And finally... that epilogue, man... talk about a completely pointless cliffhanger. Just as the evil has lost and our heroes can finally rest, we have to start distrusting Killian AGAIN? And again, using that much exposition??? GET A JOB, FRYR. STAY AWAY FROM HIM.
I will not be reading the sequels as I am not ready to fall in love with this world again just to be disappointed once more, but I'm guessing that Bran disguised himself as Killian to trick Fryr or something like that. Yawn.
Anyway. For the first 3/4 of the book I considered giving it a 3.5, but sadly, this is a 2. It should've been a way better book.
First of all, I am a fan of the show! It was cheesy at times, but it was a good, heartfelt cheese. Wendy was my favourite — so you can imagine my sadness when, around 40 pages in, I figured that she wasn't in the book at all!
No worries! I know that adaptations are supposed to be seen as separate from their respective, original works: they are their own thing, and as much as I love Wendy, I'll manage.
And the book started great! I loved the setting (currently I can't get enough of small coastal towns inhabited by witches), loved the side characters (especially Hudson), the descriptions, the dynamics, everything. I was turned off by the very Murakami-esque descriptions of female physique in the first chapter; but when I realised that they were written with Freya's hypersexual point of view in mind, I was impressed by the author's keen eye for detail. To my surprise, Ingrid was my favourite character: I really enjoyed her chapters the most! Maybe because I too would like to work in a smalltown library, who knows...
I read a few bad reviews on here and did not agree with the critiques: yes, they were a few inconsistencies and grammatical errors, but I did not mind that Nordic goddesses used brooms to fly or wands for spellcasting. It was actually very clever of them to change and evolve with the times and technologies! To me, everything in the novel made complete sense.
And then at around 70%, the whole plot started to unravel! A lot of the stuff that happened felt forced, and it really damaged my opinion of the novel as a whole.
First, the Blue Bloods/author's other series references: I love an Easter Egg as much as the next person, but this wasn't an Easter Egg, it was a whole Easter meal! The girls did not need to travel to New York through a Narnia closet just for that plotline to go absolutely nowhere. I might've found it more charming if I have read the BB series, but I haven't and I didn't. This is the second time this year that a perfectly enjoyable book has been soured by authors forcing their other more famous series into the plot. There are ways to do that in a more demure, elegant way — but this is not it.
Second, as I was reading through the Mimi chapters and the pages flew by, I realised that there was no way that the ending will be satisfactory — there just wasn't enough pages left! And I was right, because, what was that? That was the epic showdown? I watched the show so I expected a switcheroo to happen in the book as well, but it was handled so... carelessly? It had way too much exposition for it to be thought-out. DON'T get me started on the dad. You're telling me that the great Odin's place has no reception?!?
And what happened to Tyler in the end, did he come back to life, or was just his soul saved from wandering the hells for all of the eternity???
(Also, Joanna was a bit creepy regarding their relationship — that little boy is not your long lost son, J!!! But also, it is OK for characters to be flawed, so I do not consider this as a writing mistake.)
And finally... that epilogue, man... talk about a completely pointless cliffhanger. Just as the evil has lost and our heroes can finally rest, we have to start distrusting Killian AGAIN? And again, using that much exposition??? GET A JOB, FRYR. STAY AWAY FROM HIM.
I will not be reading the sequels as I am not ready to fall in love with this world again just to be disappointed once more, but I'm guessing that Bran disguised himself as Killian to trick Fryr or something like that. Yawn.
Anyway. For the first 3/4 of the book I considered giving it a 3.5, but sadly, this is a 2. It should've been a way better book.