Dark Days Blog Tour / Book Review: Bewitching by Alex Flinn

By: Alex Flinn

Published by: Harper Teen

Released on: February 14th, 2012

Source: book from publisher to review

4 stars: I Really Enjoyed It

Purchase from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound

Bewitching can be a beast. . . .

Once, I put a curse on a beastly and arrogant high school boy. That one turned out all right. Others didn’t.

I go to a new school now—one where no one knows that I should have graduated long ago. I’m not still here because I’m stupid; I just don’t age.

You see, I’m immortal. And I pretty much know everything after hundreds of years—except for when to take my powers and butt out.

I want to help, but things just go awry in ways I could never predict. Like when I tried to free some children from a gingerbread house and ended up being hanged. After I came back from the dead (immortal, remember?), I tried to play matchmaker for a French prince and ended up banished from France forever. And that little mermaid I found in the Titanic lifeboat? I don’t even want to think about it.

Now a girl named Emma needs me. I probably shouldn’t get involved, but her gorgeous stepsister is conniving to the core. I think I have just the thing to fix that girl—and it isn’t an enchanted pumpkin. Although you never know what will happen when I start . . . bewitching. -quoted from Goodreads

I really enjoyed Bewitching. It's told in such a different way than more YA books I've read lately and I loved the way that Alex Flinn was able to weave together both the story of Kendra, the witch from Beastly, as well as her new character Emma. Emma's story is one that had me yelling at the book, which is always a good thing. There's some really crappy things that this sweet character endures that made me cringe. Emma's such a good hearted person and I truly felt bad for her all she deals with. Though through it she was able to develop a lasting friendship with Kendra. You know that saying "what goes around comes around", well that really rings true in this book, and I'll be honest there's a character in this book who really got what she deserved. I know that's totally wrong of me to say that. This character is the essence of "evil step sister". Through out all the goes on I admire Emma for not stooping to her step sister's level.

Kendra for me is a character I've been fascinated since reading Beastly. I enjoyed getting to know her more, and understanding her reasoning behind the things she's done through out her life. I admire the fact that she is who she is. Nobody or nothing for that matter makes her waiver from that. She's a strong character who's lived a long life and has dwelt with her own heart ache, loneliness and living with consequences from her actions. I liked the way Alex made both Kendra and Emma, the other main character in this story stand out.

Alex did a wonderful job at creating an enchanting story that included her own unique spin on the story of Cinderella, along with fairy-tale retellings of the Princess & the Pea, Hansel & Gretel, The Little Mermaid, and mentions of Beastly aka Beauty and the Beast. These stories combined with the historical references she uses fit perfectly into Kendra's story with both the things that Kendra has experienced and the things she's done as the Witch in these stories. Events like the plague and the Titanic provide unique flashbacks into Kendra's life. It was really fascinating to me in the way that Alex was able to incorporate all this into Kendra's story, and it made for quite an engaging read. I loved how she was able to make all these things work in Bewitching.

If you're a fan of Alex Flinn's brilliantly retold fairy tale books, I highly recommend picking this one up!

Don't miss the rest of the Dark Days blog tour as well as the Dark Days tour stops, which you can find here on the Dark Days Facebook Page. Stop back by on March 7th to read my interview with Alex Flinn here on the blog.