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Kara Skinner (332 KP) rated Witches Gone Wicked in Books

Jun 11, 2019  
Witches Gone Wicked
Witches Gone Wicked
Sabrina Doyle | 2018 | Fiction & Poetry, Paranormal, Young Adult (YA)
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating Watch
All Clarissa wants to do is become a powerful witch, learn about her mother, and find her high school sweetheart, Derrick.

But it’s not that simple when she’s all but banned from using her volatile magic, her mother was apparently an evil dictator, and her high school sweetheart was swept away in a tornado. Oh, and she caused the tornado.

But, now that she’s a teacher at Womby’s School for Wayward Witches, she might have a chance to actually become part of the Witchkin community and achieve her goals.

Despite everyone despising her because of her mother, she’s making new friends like Josie, a video-gaming witch who loves all life, and Khaba, a Djinn with a kilt fetish. She’s also getting attention from the very sexy Julien Thistledown.

If only that jerk Felix Thatch would stop patronizing her and let her learn about her mother.

Witches Gone Wicked is essentially Harry Potter fanfiction,which had me skeptical at first, but it was really entertaining at the same time.

Womby’s is the Title I version of Hogwarts. It’s for witchkin too poor to afford other schools as well as ones who were kicked out of other schools. Clarissa, being an art teacher, feels the strain of this with an annual budget of $20. The previous art teacher apparently had the students make mud pie art because of lack of supplies. I really liked the idea of a Title I Hogwarts and found the entire school and the staff really interesting.

Josie and Khaba are really funny and entertaining. Khaba is a bit of a stereotype, but I didn’t mind it that much. Josie was fantastic. Gotta love someone who loves all life and has the guts to treat spiders like puppies.

My favorite character is perhaps Felix Thatch. He’s very sexy and funny and I love almost every scene including him. He’s definitely not a people person by any stretch, but he has a lot of integrity as a teacher and a person that Clarissa just refuses to see.

Clarissa is actually one of my least favorite characters. Her dislike and suspicion of Thatch is near identical to Harry Potter’s dislike of Snape. The only problem is she’s a full-grown woman!

Clarissa has a tendency to blindly trust everyone nice to her, not thinking for a second that anyone has ulterior motives. And she despises Thatch for being brutally honest with her despite proving time and time again that he has integrity as a person and a teacher.

Felix Thatch does the following:

Trains Clarissa to use her magic (granted, the principal ordered him to)
Emphasizes the importance of people wanting to take advantage of her
Makes students write apology letters to her
Lets one of his students read in his classroom during lunchtime
Expresses concern over said student’s habit of hugging male teachers because someone might try to take advantage of her friendly nature.

Meanwhile, Clarissa thinks Thatch:

is secretly trying to kill her
might be trying to enslave her using sex magic
condones student and teacher relationships
It’s completely insane! Hey, who’s the most likely to take advantage of you? Maybe not the guy who keeps warning you about people taking advantage of you.

Clarissa is sometimes funny and relatable. I like how much she cares about her students and her patience with the troublemakers in her class. That’s actually really admirable.

But half the time she’s juvenile and irrational and I just want to shake some sense into her.

She’s the daughter of a powerful witch who apparently terrorized the Witchkin community with evil and forbidden magic. Clarissa never knew her birth mother personally, but she’s treated with suspicion and fear because her mother killed and ruined the lives of basically everyone.

Because of her lineage and her volatile magic, Clarissa is under constant threat of being fired from Womby’s, drained of her magic, and turned into a Morty (Muggle).

So you think she would be really careful, right?

Lol no.

Clarissa goes around saying she wants to be the most powerful witch ever, uses magic when she’s not supposed to, and makes plans to break into the library’s restricted section. It’s a freaking miracle that she didn’t get drained and turned into a Morty.

Here’s another thing: why doesn’t she want to be drained? I really don’t get it. Because of her magic and her mother:

everyone hates her
her sister died
her high school sweetheart blew away in a tornado
Womby’s almost burned down
anyone can turn her into a sex slave
As far as I can tell, there are very few benefits to her having magic and a staggering amount of drawbacks. Call me a defeatist, but if I was Clarissa I would be begging to be drained. Her conviction that magic is her true identity isn’t good enough for me.

All in all, this book is definitely three out of five stars. I enjoyed the worldbuilding and really like Thatch. Some of the magic concepts are surprisingly sexy, which I definitely enjoyed. I just don’t like Clarissa.
  
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Heather Cranmer (2721 KP) rated We Are the Goldens in Books

Jun 7, 2018  
WA
We Are the Goldens
Dana Reinhardt | 2014
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
(This review can be found on my blog <a href="http://themisadventuresofatwentysomething.blogspot.com/">The (Mis)Adventures of a Twenty-Something Year Old Girl</a>).


There was something about this book that intrigued me. Maybe it was the forbidden romance between a student and her teacher. I decided to give this book a try. Although it wasn't as great as I thought it would be, it was still an alright read.

I love the title, and I feel that it fits in really well with the book. These two sisters have always had each other's back and have done nearly everything together.

The cover is okay. I think it looks a bit too cavemanish though instead of two beautiful girls as what is described in the book. Maybe if both girls were looking up and the lighting was different, the cover photo wouldn't look like I was looking at two cavemen.

I enjoyed the world building. We learn about the world through Nell's letters to her sister Layla. (At least it sounded like she was writing a letter(s) to her sister. The author made it easy to understand Nell's and Layla's relationship from the beginning through her fantastic prose.

I thought the pacing held up rather well. There were times when I thought I'd be able to put the book down so I could go to bed or do something else, but I'd always end up reading a few more chapters. It thoroughly held my attention. Plus, I enjoyed the back story leading up to everything immensely.

The plot of the whole teacher-student relationship has been done before. However, Reinhardt makes her story interesting and unlike the other stories. I liked the close relationship that Nell and Layla used to have before Layla started dating her teacher. I was saddened to see it start to unravel over a forbidden romance. There's no plot twists that I read about, but that doesn't hurt the book any. The only thing that annoyed me was the ending. I would've liked to know a bit more such as what happened to Mr. Barr and Layla. That's all I'm saying because I don't want to give away anything that could be deemed as a spoiler.

Nell was instantly likable. There was a certain innocence and vulnerability with her. It was easy to empathize with what she was going through, and I felt like her struggle with keeping her sister's secret was my own as well. I also thought Layla was a fantastic character as well. We get to know her through Nell's letters, and we learn that she too is also very vulnerable and just wants to find her one true love. I loved the character of Felix except that I had a hard time believing that he was into girls as it said in the book. I found his speech to be very effeminate. He reminded me of Damian from the film Mean Girls. Every time Felix was in a scene, I always was picturing Damian. We don't really learn too much about Mr. Barr (the teacher in a relationship with Layla) other that his students all think he's the coolest teacher and the best looking. We also learn that there's rumors about him being with other students previously.

The dialogue flows very smoothly and is never awkward. The speech fits my perception of how teenagers speak. It suits a young adult book. There is some swearing and some sexual references although none that are graphic. There is no violence in this book.

Overall, We Are the Goldens by Dana Reinhardt is an enjoyable read save for the ending. The characters are well written as is the whole entire book. This book deals with subject matter that happens at every school.

I'd recommend this book to those aged 15+ who enjoy realistic fiction and characters that are easy to relate to.

<b>I'd give We Are the Goldens by Dana Reinhardt a 3.5 out of 5.</b>


(I was provided with a free ebook of this title from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review).