☆☆★★ 4.5 magical stars! ★★☆☆

(I just reread my whole review and realized that I forgot to tell you what this book is about, oops! I don't really wanna spoil you though, so everything I'm gonna say is that it's about witches and demons.)

I rarely read stuff that isn't "mainstream", "everybody-has-read-it" YA. I have this fear that if a book doesn't have at least 10K ratings or an average rating of 4 stars, I wont like it. That obviously I should go for the more read books, the books with tons of reviews so that I can analyze everything about the book beforehand, you know, to be sure that I'll like it. This is just a habit I've always had, and the thing that sucks about it is this: it makes me not even second-glance at books like Nøkkelen (The Key) .

I have seen this book multiple times at some bookstores not that far away from home, and in the beginning, it did actually catch my eye. It was like a huge light was shining just on that one book . It wasn't just that it was the only book on the shelf that I hadn't read, but the title and cover were also a little mysterious. So I went home and googled it, and after about five minutes I had already decided that this book wasn't for me. Five minutes of googling. That is how picky I am. That is how undeniably stupid I am.

Speed forward to a couple of weeks ago. You can probably understand how surprised I was when Gyldendal sent it to me in the mail. I mean, was it a coincidence? Or are there some higher powers somewhere that were just cursing at me to PICK UP THAT AWESOME BOOK ALREADY! STOP BEING A SNOB!

Let me tell you, this book was fantastic.

I mean, YES, it's slow. And if the characters don't interest you, then you're as good as doomed. Even though this is a fantasy trilogy, it's actually really character driven. Luckily for me, I loved hearing about all of the characters; Linnèa, Vannessa, Anna-Karin and Minoo. We get to know them, we bear with them through their ups and downs, through struggles and stress and pressure that almost makes them snap.

Linnèa is the emo girl, I guess. Her father is an alcoholic, and her best friend is dead. She rarely opens herself up and is terrified of hurting both herself and others. Vannessa is the party girl, Anna-Karin the bullied, and Minoo the really shy and school-smart.

At first they all seem like the typical stereotypes, but as the story moves on you get to be inside their heads and understand that they aren't just what I described above. They develop alot throughout the book, they grow up. I know that some of the people that have read this book thought that the book was too slow, but in my opinion, I think it was as slow as it had to be for the characters to believably mature into the people they are at the end.

As for the fantasy element, it was slightly in the background sometimes. This didn't really bother me, because even if it wasn't all up in my face at all times I could still feel that it was there. And the ending totally made up for it anyways, because when the ball first went rolling it didn't stop for any breaks.

The second half gave me so many heart attacks I couldn't even count them. The pacing sped up a bit, and things were happening all the time. There was no time for me to breathe, and the answers to everything took me completely by surprise. I could not for the life of me figure out how it would end. As soon as I thought I got it, a new thing popped up and made the story take a whole other turn!

I will definitely be trying to find more witch books in the future! (And TRY to not judge books too fast)