See this review in its natural environment, Dani Reviews Things.

I can’t believe I’m saying this again, but once again, an idea with potential has been ruined by rushed publication and poor editing. Maybe I have high standards, since I’m starting to sound like a broken record with these blog tour books.

This story had a fresh twist on witches and the potential to be a kickass paranormal action series (think Buffy, but creepy fairies rather than vampires). Unfortunately, the writing was stilted and riddled with errors, poor phrasing (“You’re much different and more amazing.”) and weird summary paragraphs after any action. There were mid-sentence tense changes! I VERY MUCH DISLIKE MID-SENTENCE TENSE CHANGES. Ok, I’ll try to put my grammar nazi personality back in her box…

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I just couldn’t get into the story; it was like I was being repelled by a magnet. It didn’t help that the first chapter was this super confusing info dump that turned out to be some kind of dream/memory from when the main character, Eliza (pronounced E-lee-suh, as she repeatedly reminds everyone), was 14.

Books that contain magic and other fantastical elements should be, in a way, more believable than books without. A good fantasy/paranormal book will make you believe the impossible. Sadly, this book was anything but believable. Why?

• Eliza was an idiot. No seriously. It took her half the book to figure out something that I’d guessed and then confirmed within maybe 20%. She jumped to conclusions that were just plain ridiculous (like Jared being a corrupted mystic). Weekly was trying to throw twists into the story, but I could see all of them coming.


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• Mini rant! Eliza had red hair and green eyes. Like that’s soooo common in every day life and soooo rare in YA/NA literature. Yeesh. AAAAND she’s clumsy and has acne and a flat chest… UNTIL SHE STARTS “TRANSITIONING”. Of course she gets to be this rare creature (ginger) and then all her “flaws” go away as she becomes a full-on witch. AND she looks nothing like the girl on the cover.


• Eliza is 20 years old and thinks the only acceptable PDA is “holding hands and the casual peckon the lips”. She thinks making out in one’s car at college is akin to having sex in public. Get over yourself, girl.


• Eliza and her mother had a weird relationship. Her mom was really protective and didn’t want to tell her anything for fear of endangering her, and then she got all cray cray on her. It just seemed a bit too farfetched.


• Eliza found out she was a witch when she was 14, and then learned nothing more between ages 14 and 20. Nope, not buying it. Oh, and she never stayed out after 8pm. If I were her, I would have done snooping of my own, pestered my mother, broken curfew and more. Unrealistic teenager, right here.


• I was told to ‘show, don’t tell’ when I was in elementary school, and yet it seems that a lot of new authors missed that lesson. This is why you need a good editor!


• Eliza let some guy she’d just met that day come up behind her in a shop and put his hands on her waist. Later, Eric grabs her arm tightly, leaving instant bruises (bruises don’t show up instantly). After all this, Dawn still helps to set them up on a date, and Eliza agrees! Oh wait, maybe this fits under the “Eliza is an idiot” category.


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• After pursuing Eliza rather aggressively, including beating up a guy that bumped into her in the hallway, Eric then seems to drop out of the story after he’s fulfilled his duty to the plot by giving her a reason to be at a rave on a beach where there are mermaids waiting to kill her and a mystery dude waiting to save her.


• Maybe this is something US-centric, but college seemed more like high school than my experience of university and what I’ve heard and seen from other people and in movies/TV. In this “college”, students are bitchy and cliquey, and people you aren’t friends with notice you’ve been missing? When I was at university, there were far too many students and too much coming and going with different schedules for people to bully each other or notice when they’re missing whole days of classes. Unless, of course, you shared the same schedule and got to know them. But in Mystical, I just couldn’t believe that Stacy, who Eliza barely knew (though she seemed to know her name on the first day of classes), took the time to victimise Eliza, noticed she’d missed class and then found her address and showed up at her house.


• There were inconsistencies that shoved me out of the story. For example, in one paragraph, Eliza thinks:

His girlfriend is looking for him, but she isn’t too worried. I don’t know how, but I can just tell that she isn’t worried, not really.

This is then followed, a few paragraphs later, by:

I don’t know how she’ll react because I know, deep down, she’s worried about her boyfriend. She doesn’t want to show it, but I know.

At about 54%, I had to just stop reading. I couldn’t handle any more. It still wasn’t clear by that point what exactly the main plot was. There were so many random things happening that seemed important for 20% and then went bye-bye, like the whole Eric thing! When Stacy suddenly showed up at Eliza and Dawn’s house and wanted to take them out clubbing – and they agreed because, hey, it’s not like they’d already learned on three occasions that going out after dark was potentially fatal, and they’re totally friends with Stacy – I just closed my Kindle and said, “Hell no.” I genuinely said that out loud.

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Ok, sorry, this turned into a rant review, but I just couldn’t take another page. The only phrase that I loved and will now copy is this…

As I lie on my bed starfish style…

Let me go do the same.



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