Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Once A Witch by Carolyn MacCullough


Enjoyment *** Plot ** Interactions *** Characters **** World *** Originality *** Grammar **** Style ****

Review Format

Once a Witch is a young adult contemporary fantasy about a girl, Tamsin, who comes from a family of 'witches'. Every member of their family, except Tamsin, has a Ttalent' or a magic ability. At her birth, Tamsin is proclaimed to be very special, but by the time she is 8, by which time every other member of her family gets their talent, Tamsin still doesn't have one.

Tired of being pitied by her Talented family, Tamsin escapes to New York to attend school there and be around 'normal' people.

On one of her frequent trips home, Tamsin is working at the family store when a man comes in looking for someone who can find an old clock that was lost by his family many years before. Tamsin takes his job, even though she has no Talent and starts a terrible chain of events.

This is the start of a whirlwind adventure for Tamsin where she unexpectedly finds her 'Talent' and comes face to face with a man who would see her entire family destroyed.

This book had most of the right pieces in place to be very enjoyable for me. The prose was clear and the characters were sympathetic and enjoyable but ultimately, the plot disappointed me. There are lots of dark hints and secrets which Tamsin has to deal with as she tries to resolve her troubles, but in the end, when the secrets are revealed, I felt many were anticlimatic and not resolved in a clever way by the author or Tamsin.

It was fun to spend time with Tamsin, but nothing else made me jump for joy.

I probably will read another book in this series to see if it delivers a bit more on its promise.

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