Thursday, February 16, 2012

My Enchanted Life by Laura Eno

Here's my newest review, a Young Adult read by Laura Eno. I gave it 3-Stars.

Emma is 18. She graduates high school, has plans to spend time with friends and family until college starts until she gets a couple of mysterious envelopes. She has inherited a house in England. She gets a plane ticket, money, and directions on how to get there. What's wrong with a little vacation before school starts again?

Everything. Especially when you find out you have special powers, a hereditary job to do, and people depending on you. And a boy named Matthew who is handsome, nice, and a half-demon.

Her teacher, Randolf, is a stuffy, stodgy, and bossy Sentinel who has been picked to teach her what her job is and how to do it. He is all about rules and laws and things and he hates demons, even half-demons.

I enjoyed this book for what Laura put in it. It's whole dimension of fairies, ogres, dragons, gnomes, and other mythological creatures. It is written for young adults and I spent some time reading part of it to my 10 year old grand daughter, who loved it. I didn't get to the part with the kissing, that may have been "icky" but she loved the adventure of finding out about a house and new people who were different than human.

The thing that I didn't like was the lack of character development, the rush to finish. It was like everything was just "accepted" as fact. Matthew is one-dimensional and the time at the end when he is separate from her and then comes back is rushed to the point that it left me wondering what happened and how he fared where he was. There were a lot of questions left unanswered as she pushed to finish the book.

The six-month jump to her family's visit was another void that left questions. What happened during that time? Did she improve her power? What happened with Randolf? Was there further interest between Matthew and Emma? And how did her family handle him being with her? So many questions left undone.

It was so short and she could have written more in that first book to clear up some of the questions and still lay down the clues and build the interest for the next book that I know is coming from something she was told late in the book. I do want to read the next one because I did enjoy most of the book.

1 comment:

  1. Greetings from Texas,
    Interesting situation. This one might be worth checking out.

    ReplyDelete