Review: Girl Power to the Rescue
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 4, 2013
There are two things I love to find in fiction. Strong female characters and believable romance. Neel Kay's THE WITCH OF LUNA HILL delivers plenty of both.Merian has a problem. It's bad enough that she's lost her father and the boy she loves in the war that is tearing her country apart, but now her once beloved brother has joined the other side. The last thing she wants to do is spend her school break at home where he's the new Sheriff of Witch's Nose and her neurotic mother is waiting to turn her into a proper young lady. So Merian convinces the college's heartthrob to take her home with him--just as friends. Perfect solution, right?What Merian doesn't know is that the heartthrob's uncle is a science genius and he's created a weapon that just might turn the tide of the war. The other side will do anything to stop it from falling into the hands of the resistance movement. Almost the moment she arrives, Merian's low key vacation is shattered and she finds herself on a mission that will shape her destiny and that of her entire world.Kay does a great job of creating a complex but entertaining fantasy with plenty of unexpected twists. Her characters are generally engaging and well rounded, though I found the bad guy of this first book a little too easy to get rid of in the end. What made that work was that his demise leads to the revelation of a villain a lot more wicked than he was.I took a star away for two reasons. First, I thought the writing could have been tighter in places and the editing a bit more thorough. Second, I didn't find out that this book was the start of a series until I reached the last page. There I was dying to see what happened next and what did I find? TO BE CONTINUED. Truly, I could have strangled Ms. Kay. It's great that she built such suspense, but it isn't fair to the reader not to let them know ahead of time that this is just the start of something bigger.Overall, though, I enjoyed THE WITCH OF LUNA HILL and am looking forward to finding out what happens next.