Review: good could have been better
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 08 26, 2012
SEMI SPOILERS  *  *  *  *  *The good:  Rather original take on witches and powers tied up with tattoos/ink.  The heroine and hero both love music and are misfits so they have some basis for their relationship other than eye candy.  Teen relationships rarely last in reality so you just check your brain at the door and enjoy the excitement and wonder of their youthful romance and forget the rest.The bad:  The story was quite good up until the end.  Essentially, they set up a trap and told the heroine "trust us" so she did not know what was really going to happen.  Then, while the action gets started, she gets drugged.  Then she wakes up, rescued.  She does not learn what has really happened in detail and neither do we.  What?!  Talk about deus ex machina.  Did the author get rushed to meet a deadline at the end?  It was like a play where all the action was supposed to have happened off stage and got glossed over in a quick explanation to the audience.Also bad was the triangle --- while probably normal for a teenager to be undecided between two hunky guys, I was disappointed when the heroine still wavered between the two when Guy #1 was revealed to be an undisputed player and manwh*** who used women like tissues and acted like a total a**h*** on many occasions (and this was before the big reveal at the end regarding his twisted father-son bonding activities) and Guy #2 was arguably hotter to her, interested in her, and she had so much in common with him.  Seriously, why is she still making out with Guy #1?  Have some self-respect and get your hormones under control.  Really, after Guy #1 acted like such a a*h* so many times that should have been a complete turn off.  Maybe that comes with age, I don't know.The weird:  What was weird for me is that based on the cover and similar books recommended with this, this seemed to be a YA story.  Therefore, it was a little unexpected when it turned into a girls gone wild installment for the second half of the book since they seemed to be sex crazed in considerable detail as soon as the heroine's bff showed up.  With that statement, you might think that I disapprove --- on the contrary, I am fine with it.  While I am an adult-adult and not young-adult, when I was a young adult, books were my freedom and I pretty much read whatever I wanted and I believe in that for others.  Having said that, I believe the whole YA thing tends to work like the movie rating system for parents who do censor what their kids read and I would say this is definitely R and not PG13.  If we are talking about reality, well, I would guess this is pretty close to the life of half the US teen population these days so, good example or not, if you want some reality with your fantasy, this is probably it.