The Midnight Spell by Kody Boye, Rhiannon Frater Published by Self-published on February 24, 2013
Genres: Paranormal, Young Adult
Format: eBook
Goodreads
Adam and Christy have been best friends since kindergarten. Always the perpetual outsiders in their small town in Texas, they’ve always had to deal with nasty comments from their classmates. Adam’s slight build, sweet-nature, and wry sense of humor have marked him as the gay kid in school, while Christy’s long hair, hippy parents, and mesmerizing amber eyes have her tagged as 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. After nothing seems to happen, Adam is convinced he will spend the rest of his high school years without someone special. That is until the next day when an alluring and mysterious new boy enrolls at school and sets hearts a flutter, including Adam’s.
Meanwhile, Christy’s mad crush on the handsome jock, Ian, seems to be going nowhere fast and she’s determined to change her luck and her destiny. Struggling to capture the heart of Ian while trying to come into her full witch powers are tough enough, but when a great evil arrives in town that threatens everything they hold dear, she realizes that finding a boyfriend is the least of her and Adam’s worries.
Soon Adam, Christy, their potential love interests, and their good friends Drifter and Olivia, will have to battle a force of darkness that has killed before in their town and will again.
Julie’s Review Overall, I give The Midnight Spell a good solid 3 stars. I liked The Midnight Spell even though I have some complaints. The parts that I did enjoy were quite awesome, and the parts I wasn’t as happy about did not detract from the story too much.
The Midnight Spell starts off with a spell done by our would-be witch, Christy. She’s still coming into her powers, and isn’t really sure what all she is able to do. The spell is to try to find her BFF Adam a boyfriend. The idea is to bring in someone new to town. Well, it works, we think. Suddenly there are two new people in town, and one of them, Mark, does seem to be interested in Adam. Another is Olivia, who is a bit mysterious and wants to hang out with them since they are “outcasts”. I knew there was going to be something special about her, because her behavior was a bit off. For about the first half of the book you almost forget this is supposed to be a paranormal story. Other than the midnight spell, everything else is normal high school drama stuff. Then at times that felt almost random we are reminded this is supposed to be a paranormal book with the presence of a sneaky broom that likes to spy on our witchy teen and the house Christy lives in having a bit of a TARDIS feel to it.
About halfway through, the book finally gets to the paranormal point, and gets really interesting. It starts out with Halloween – well, of course, right? Here we’re almost told outright that *spoiler* Mark is a vampire of some sort. (Seriously, if you didn’t see that coming you’re not paying attention. I mean, the whole thing with him maybe being dressed as “Angel” was a clue. Another clue is the argument Mark makes that maybe vampires that were turned during their teenage years want to spend time in high school because that is what they know from their human life – yes they were discussing Twilight.) I was a bit annoyed at how obvious that was, but was happy that we learned Mark was more than just a vampire, and there was a lot more sinister stuff going on. On Halloween night the teens to go see if the resident ghostie will show up, and Christy’s crush asks her to do a spell, since she is rumored to be a witch. Surprise, it works!
I’m not going to go into other details of this plot, but I really liked some aspects and thought other aspects were just too convenient. An example: Olivia’s calls on her hunter brother to come help figure out who the big bad is, and how to stop him. Yes, I used the term “big bad” since there were so many other Buffy references thrown around. As Christy continues to come into her powers, she does more spells to find out if Mark is legit or if he is trying to hurt Adam. Some really creepy awesome stuff starts happening, and I really enjoyed those sections. Christy really gets a chance to show everyone what she’s made of, and prove to herself that she can do this. I also liked that the book explained why Christy’s powerful witch parents weren’t involved in helping with such a major problem. There’s another Deus ex Machina moment that I won’t spoil, but I did allude to it earlier in this review.
I liked the alternating POV between Christy and Adam, and thought it was really cool that the authors took turns writing this book using this alternating POV. I thought the relationship between Adam and Mark was a bit fast, and awkward at times, especially with Mark trying to get between Adam and Christy. It started to make sense later why the feelings didn’t seem believable to me. The plot and the major conflict revolves around the issues in the relationship between Mark and Adam. I did like the slower building relationship between Christy and her crush, Ian. At first, Ian seemed to only be into Christy because everyone calls her a witch, but he turns out to be bigger than just a hot jock. I did like his character by the end.
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I read this book for our Creatures book club meeting and we were going to Skype with both the authors. Rhiannon Frater couldn’t make it but we had a good time chatting with Kody Boye. He told us a bit about how they tag-teamed writing this story. Kody Boye wrote all of Adam’s chapters and Rhiannon Frater wrote all of Christy’s chapters. They wrote this story while sitting across the table from each other. I think that is so cool. There’s nothing better than instantly being able to bounce ideas off each other and get immediate feedback.
