Happy New Year! 1st Review - Witch & Wizard

First things first...the lovely Miss Lucy over at Delightful Reviews gave me this lovely little award/mention! Thank you so much, Lucy!
Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link. Pass the award to 10 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award..
So, just 10 of the lovely new blogs I've found are...



1. A Bookful of Thoughts
2. Loves to Read
3. StephTheBookworm
4. Elegantly Bound Books
5. Cleverly Inked
6. Lisa & Laura Write
7. A Haunt of Ancient Peace
8. Simple Life and Reading
9. Books At Midnight
10. Amna Writes

Alright, down to business. I just finished Witch & Wizard by James Patterson & Gabrielle Charbonnet.



"It's overwhelming. A city's worth of angry faces staring up at me like I'm a wicked criminal. The stadium is fulled past capacity. Hundreds of thousands of curious, uncaring, or at least indifferent, faces...And there are no moist eyes, much less tears. No words of protest. No stomping feet. No fists raised in solidarity. In fact, as the countdown ticker flashes onto the giant video screens, it's looking to be my family's last day. I see my brother, Whit, wondering if there's some last-minute way out of this. I see my mother crying quietly for Whit and me. I see my father, stooped with resignation, but smiling at me and my brother - trying to remind us that there's no point being miserable in our last moments on this planet. But I'm getting ahead of myself. There's a lot to cover before we get into the details of our public executions. So let's go back a bit..."

Sounds good, huh? Ok, so Witch & Wizard follows brother and sister duo, Whit and Wisty, in the midst of a New Order led by The One Who Is The One. They're captured by an army in the middle of the night and told they are going to jail because they are a witch and wizard. In this jail, they find out that hundreds of kids are on trial and death row because they bend the rules, or slip up, or make the New Order harder to control. While in prison, Whit and Wisty are judged by The One Who Judges, condemned to death, and somehow run into Whit's dead girlfriend, Celia, who is lingering in the Shadowland. We learn that there are five levels of reality, and Whit and Wisty have been captured to evade the outcome of a prophecy saying this witch and wizard combination will bring down the New Order.

I was so excited to finally read this. Even the inside front cover is ominous, saying the book you are holding is one of the last references to the old order, and all other music, books, etc., have been banned. I guess I thought this might be a cross between Fahrenheit 451 and The Crucible. It wasn't. To be honest, this book was so devoid of emotion, it was almost painful to finish. All the villains - the Matron, The One Who Judges - they all have the stereotypical greasy bad-guy look. I also didn't know Whit and Wisty were actually a witch and wizard. It would have been ok if there had been a process to discover their powers. There wasn't.

On one single page, I count 32 exclamation points, and it was kind of a pattern throughout. Even the number of analogies in the book were overdone. I hate to give bad reviews, especially when I was really excited to read a book, but at best, I'll give this a 2 out of 5, and I'm being generous. The cover, the excerpts, all of it...it's much better than the book actually is. Here's to hoping the eventual sequel is better because, yes, it's a cliffhanger ending.