Genre: Publication.Date February 28th 2013 Pages: 234 Published By: Create Space Independent Publishing Website Rhiannon Frater | Kody Boye
The Midnight Spell on Goodreads My review copy: Review copy provided by the author via Xpresso Tours in exchange for an honest review.
Where to get:
Best friends since kindergarten, Adam and Christy have always been the perpetual outsiders in their small town in Texas. The other kids call Adam gay and Christy a witch.
On both counts the bullies are right.
Their junior year in high school seems destined to be the same old same old until Christy decides to cast a love spell for Adam at the midnight hour. The next day an alluring and mysterious boy enrolls at school and sets hearts aflutter, including Adam’s. Meanwhile, Christy’s mad crush on the handsome football player Ian seems to be going nowhere fast and her witch puberty is making her life miserable.
When a great evil arrives in town that threatens everything they hold dear, the best friends realize that finding a boyfriend is the least of their worries. Soon Adam and Christy will have to battle a force of darkness that has killed in their town before, and will again.
(Goodreads)
It all started with a spell. A spell performed at midnight. Little did we know that our simple little love spell to bring the one true love of my best friend Adam to our little hick town would cause so much trouble.
"She smells better than usual today," Adam informed Drifter."Which I think is highly suspect."
"Her clothes match, too. She's obviously trying to impress more than usual."
The Midnight Spell was SO MUCH FUN! I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked it up, but let me tell you, it totally rocked my face off! I've heard some really great things about Rhiannon Frater's writing style, but even though her books sounded right up my alley, I approached The Midnight Spell with skepticism. Why, you ask? Because it's a collaboration between two authors and while it's always an intriguing and exciting concept, from my experience it rarely results in quality. Fear not, dear reader, for this is not the case here! The Midnight Spell is nothing short of awesome. It's a quick and entertaining read with a vibrant cast of loveable characters, great humor and unique plot line that is sure to keep you captivated all the way through. It's a heart-warming and inspiring story about friends, written by two amazing authors who happened to be great friends themselves. And it's not only funny (often laugh-out-loud hilarious), quirky and deliciously straightforward (a bold, no-BS kind of book), but it's also deep, thought-provoking, at times even scary! Trust me, it doesn't get better than this!
The plot follows a group of teenagers from the small "hick town" of Trinity Springs, with two best friends, Adam and Christy, at the centre of all the events. Adam and Christy have been friends forever.Since the very first day of kindergarten and their first hilarious conversation ("Do you have a pot of gold?" I asked. "No. Are you in the Addams family?" he countered.) they've been practically inseparable. Their bond is strong, unbreakable and very, very precious. Both Christy and Adam are social outcasts, shunned and made fun of, labelled the "witch" and the "fag". Of course, both things are true, but the constant taunts and bullying still cut deep. Determined to make her best friend happy, Christy casts a spell to summon his true love. The only problem is the new hot-and-possibly-gay guy is not the only "thing" that arrives in Trinity Springs, and our quirky duo will soon realize that their miserable love lives are the least of their problems.
I absolutely loved this book. I breezed through it in just a couple hours and found myself re-reading my favorite passages, quotes and dialogues (and let me just tell you, there were many of them!). I love when a book gets me so hooked and captivated that the rest of the world stops existing. I laughed, I giggled like a maniac, I nodded in agreement and shook my head in amazement. I'm pretty sure I mumbled to myself, too. In other words, I had a whole lot of fun with this book!
There's not a thing about this book that I didn't like, but it's the phenomenal character development and the way the relationships were depicted that really made this book for me. This novel has an amazing cast of characters - from Adam and Christy to all the supporting ones. Adam and Christy have a lot to deal with, their lives were never easy and they really had to fight hard for their happiness, but the book is almost entirely drama-free. Sure, they both have their bad moments, they sometimes cry and feel sad, lost and depressed, but then they just pick themselves up, dust themselves off and keep pushing on. Their strength comes from their friendship. They don't whine, don't mope around feeling sorry for themselves, no, they're actually quite optimistic (well, cautiously optimistic), cheerful and persistent. The absence of typical teenage-angst was blissful and refreshing! I loved that about this book!
All the relationships were really, really amazing, too. I absolutely adored all the parental units, even Adam's overprotective mother! Christy's parents are just.. I don't even know where to begin! They were both hilarious, charming, cool and just as quirky and unique as Christy was. The dialogues (especially those involving Christy's Santa-look-alike dad) were clever, laugh-out-loud funny, charged with positive energy and sprinkled with awesome. Drifter and Olivia were both similarly interesting and fun to read about as well. I can't even think of anyone I didn't like, well maybe except for Ian, Mark and the bullies.
While the overall tone of the book is rather light and snarky, the atmosphere does get heavier at times. Frater and Boye touch on some more serious themes, such as bullying, violence and homophobia (<-hate that word, by the way! You're not "scared" of gay people, you're just an idiot!). About halfway through, the story takes on an even darker turn, weird things are starting to happen and it gets pretty scary! Next to the fantastically depicted relationships, this was probably my second favorite thing about this book, the way it would take me on a wild roller coaster of emotions, from making me snort my coffee from laughter, tear up from the heart-breaking events, to send a cold shiver down my spine from its creepier and more atmospheric moments. Reading The Midnight Spell was just such a great, intense experience!
I highly recommend this book to everyone!
AUTHOR BIOS
Rhiannon Frater:
Rhiannon Frater is the award-winning author of the As the World Dies trilogy (The First Days, Fighting to Survive, Siege,) and the author of three other books: the vampire novels Pretty When She Dies and The Tale of the Vampire Bride and the young-adult zombie novel The Living Dead Boy and the Zombie Hunters. Inspired to independently produce her work from the urging of her fans, she published The First Days in late 2008 and quickly gathered a cult following. She won the Dead Letter Award back-to-back for both The First Days and Fighting to Survive, the former of which the Harrisburg Book Examiner called ‘one of the best zombie books of the decade.’ Rhiannon is currently represented by Hannah Gordon of the Foundry + Literary Media agency. You may contact her by sending an email to rhiannonfrater@gmail.com.
Author Links:Website: http://www.rhiannonfrater.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/rhiannon.fraterTwitter: https://twitter.com/rhiannonfrater
Kody Boye:
Kody Boye was born and raised in Southeastern Idaho. Since his initial publication in the Yellow Mama Webzine in 2007, he has gone on to sell nearly three-dozen stories to various markets. He is the author of the short story collection Amorous Things, the novella The Diary of Dakota Hammell, the zombie novel Sunrise and the dark fantasy novel Blood. His fiction has been described as ‘Surreal, beautiful and harrowing’ (Fantastic Horror,) while he himself has been heralded as a writer beyond his years(Bitten by Books.) He currently lives and writes in the Austin, Texas area.
Author Links:
Website: http://kodyboye.com
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2775292.Kody_Boye
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kody.boye
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KodyBoye
As part of the tour I get to offer you guys one e-book copy of The Midnight Spell! :) YAY!
To enter please leave a comment below with your email address! +1 entry for telling me why you want to read the book!
GRAND TOUR PRIZE:
The prize is a paperback copy, a MidnightSpell candle and bookmarks.
For full schedule of the tour click on the banner below!
3 comments:
I heard so many things about this book. The cover looks great and the plot is something else, more original than other books. I read about it on other blogs and I saw many positive reviews not only from the tour. I really want to read it! Hope I'll be lucky! :) Thank you for the chance! ^^
Email: hogof_hg@yahoo.com
the cover is amazing and the story seems that'll be awesome! I really want to read this book and i almost sure that this one is not going to be in sell in Vzla. thanks for this amazing opportunity!
Email: marlenecarrasquero@hotmail.com
Sounds fantastic! Thanks for sharing :)
efender1(at)gmail(dot)com
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