Monday, October 7, 2019

REVIEW: Audrey's Guide to Witchcraft by Jody Gehrman

Audrey's Guide to Witchcraft


Falling in love, baking a magical cake, fighting an evil necromancer—it’s all in a day’s work for Audrey Oliver, seventeen-year-old witch-in-training. When her mother goes missing and her mysterious "cousin" shows up out of the blue, Audrey knows something’s gone horribly, dangerously wrong. Now it’s up to her to get her own magical powers up to speed before everyone she loves is destroyed by the sorcerer intricately connected to her mother’s secret past.



MY THOUGHTS
This is one of my 2012 ebook freebies, and while I found parts of this book intriguing, it ended up being a miss for me.

Audrey's mom is missing, and now a mysterious "cousin" has come to look after Audrey and her sister Meg (even though this cousin is only a couple years older than her). Weird things have been happening around Audrey lately, explosions and a creepy face appearing in her dreams (and her pie). It turns out that Audrey has some magical abilities, similar abilities to her mother, and both of them are in danger.

With ebook freebies, I tend to read the first couple of chapters to see if it's any good before deciding whether to continue reading. This one passed the first couple of chapters test, but the rest of the book really dragged. The book begins with Audrey worried about her mother, and that's what originally drew me in. But, the fear for her mother drops pretty quickly in the text. Yes, Audrey occasionally worries about her and occasionally asks her "cousin", Sadie, about it, but it rarely goes further. Since, as the reader, we never get the chance to know about the mother, it was also easy to forget that she was at risk.

The friendship with Bridgett also bothered me. The friendship itself was great, but this book follows the trope of "keep secrets from friends and family to protect them". I HATE this trope so much! 1. Because it almost always puts your friends and family in more danger. 2. It shows that you don't have much respect for your friends and family. 3. It breaks relationships. Bridgett, Meg, and Julian (the love interest) are kept in the dark about what is going on and it infuriated me! Julian actually knows the more of what is going on even though he is impacted the least! Meg's mother is also involved in this, she deserves to know what is going on! Not knowing things actually puts her in danger in the book, but THEY STILL NEVER TELL HER! Nope! They just keep wiping everyone's memories, so Meg is likely going to turn into a vegetable at some point because they will wipe her mind every time something witchy happens. Bridgett was also put in danger for not knowing and, you guessed it, they wiped her mind. I don't give two bleeps about the rules and how the mundane can't know about magic. IF SOMEONE IS IMPORTANT TO YOU, YOU LET THEM KNOW! Your loved ones should be more important than the rules. I love it when books let the best friend help even if they don't have magic. But, no, that didn't happen.

I also love it when sisters come together, but this book wouldn't let the sister help either. It was just mind-wiping and the MC lying to everyone, so I couldn't get that girl power. We did get to see the sibling relationship, and how they are jealous of one another, but the jealousy didn't feel like it was repaired. Audrey is jealous of Meg because she's cool, with hipster friends and boys like her, and when Audrey finds out she's a witch, she feels that she one-upped Meg. She feels superior to Meg, and the rest of the book is spent throwing Meg under the rug. She's never included in the serious talks because she can't know the witchy stuff and it frustrates her, but this is not fixed. This book also had a stereotypical mean girl who bullies Bridgett because she's not stick-thin. I don't like mean girls in books, but I also didn't like how Audrey would stand-up for Bridgett. When the mean girl called Bridgett fat, Audrey would make fun of how the mean girl is anorexic and bulimic. The mean girl is definitely in the wrong, but it is NEVER okay to make fun of real eating disorders.

I mentioned how the beginning starts intriguingly. It starts off foreboding with Audrey having a bad feeling about her mom and seeing a creepy guy in her dreams. This intrigued me in the beginning, but the book began to drag after that. The book is only 293 pages, but I felt like it was taking forever to get exciting. Part of my issue could have been that I figured out a lot of key plot points early on. For instance, the rotten auras that Audrey sees. I knew what it meant pretty quickly, but Audrey and Sadie assumed it meant something entirely different (and something that required a lot of complex details) when it was just obvious  [highlight to view spoiler]that they were dead. I mean, the people had "near-death experiences" and came out of them without a scratch. I didn't even know that the bad guy was a necromancer at that point and I could figure out they were zombies. Sadie knew he was a necromancer, so why was she so slow on the uptake? I also figured out the whole dad thing too, even though I hoped it wasn't true because it's such a cliche [end of spoiler]

There is romance in this book but I didn't care for it. I didn't understand the foundation of the relationship. Basically, Julian thinks Audrey is special, and that's the basis of him wanting to be with her, even though they barely know each other (and he's out of college). Weird stuff happens when they're together, like sparks and stuff floating. I get the feeling that they are going to end up being soulmates or the witchy equivalent. [highlight to view spoiler]Something like that is mentioned in this book, but Sadie wipes it from Audrey's mind BECAUSE NO ONE CAN KNOW ANYTHING IN THIS BOOK [end of spoiler]

IN CONCLUSION
When I started this review, I was hoping I would find some positive feelings. There were some ideas that I liked, but I just was so bothered by the lying in this book. I can see why people would like this book and, to be honest, if I read this book in 2012 after I downloaded the ebook, I would have probably liked it. Now, though, I'm older and I'm more bothered by friendships not being shown strongly. I'm not continuing this series.

I hereby give this book
2 Stars
Meaning: It was okay

No comments :

Post a Comment