Title: Witchful Thinking (Jolie Wilkins ~ Book 3)
Author: H.P. Mallory
Publication Date: February 28 2012
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
ISBN: 0345531450
Length: 336 Pages
Link to Synopsis: Goodreads
Source: Purchased (Kindle Edition)
Buy It: Amazon US / Amazon UK
My Rating: 4 Stars
First things first, as with the other Jolie Wilkins books... I loved Witchful Thinking! Now with my love put out there for all to know, lets get the nasty business of a little grunt and rant out of the way.
It wasn't until I was about 65% into this book that I realized that that the first books in this series were self published, and this was the first which was traditionally published.
There is so much back story telling in the first 38% of this book I was almost in tears. Ever since I have read the first sentence from Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble I have not been able to put these books down. When I started Witchful Thinking I was needing for the story to move forward, I wanted new interactions between Jolie and Rand, and many more interactions between Jolie and Sinjin... You might even say I was craving it.
The story does pick up just as Toil and Trouble left off, just as the other books have done. But immediately you can tell this one is going to be different as Jolie is keeping a diary. This diary turns into a way for her to remember past moments and to painstakingly retell the previous books that I had only just finished reading. Yes the story does slowly continue to move on and there are new story lines developing but every time there was a flashback or a retelling in full detail of a past event or who a person was I groaned and wanted to turn my Kindle off.
Thankfully I continued...
Now why is that this being the first traditionally published book in the series matter to the retelling of the previous books? It's for the newbies! This will have been the first book that somebody could find on the supermarket shelf or in the local book store. If somebody saw the cover, read the back and liked it they weren't going to go out to Amazon and download a Kindle version or try to find a self published copy of the first two books now are they? They would buy this book and so they needed to be informed of what was going on and what went on in the past. Fair enough for them, and I understand the need but for somebody that was reading them all in full it was frustrating.
However, at around 38% the retelling appeared to die down, yes there were still moments later that it popped up again but just little titbits here and there and it was no longer distracting.
Finally, we are all on the same page, what was happening to the story now that we could successfully carry on? It was amazing as usual! The characters are written so wonderfully that I struggle right along with everybody. I can understand how Jolie is so torn between Rand and Sinjin, I feel the same. However, if I am being honest with myself I think I know I love Sinjin more. But see even saying it here makes me feel guilt toward Rand... Wow, H.P. Mallory is an amazing storyteller. I speak as if these people are real! Maybe I'm just losing my mind.
As I have said before, I would strongly suggest these books to anybody but please start from Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble and read Toil and Trouble, do not just start at Witchful Thinking and hope to be caught up. You will have to reread quite a bit of back story but the first two books are too good to skip.
LOL Our thoughts on it are almost identical! Do we share a pod brain that nobody told me about?
ReplyDeleteI think they should have just bought and published books 1 and 2 and re-released those at the same time. They could have promoted and released them a month apart over three months, like I've seen done with other new series. I really don't think this book works as 'book one' after everything that's happened. No amount of recapping will be enough to full convey Jolie and Rand's beginnings.