Lisa Reviews: Brittany Geragotelis’ – “Life's a Witch”
I absolutely loved What the Spell, and when I was offered Life’s a Witch for review, there was no way I was going to turn down the offer! Brittany Geragotelis’s story was light and the characters were fun.
Even though I was excited to get into this one and see what some of my favorite characters were up to, Life’s a Witch rubbed me the wrong way right from the beginning. I was a bit thrown off when the story started with an entirely different character: Hadley Bishop.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like her. I actually found her pretty cool, but I was expecting this second installment to be from the same perspective as the first.
Hadley is the queen bee at her high school and, with the help of her spells, she can make herself practically perfect and absolutely beautiful. She isn’t just any queen bee though; she is a descendent of the first woman executed at the Salem Witch Trials.
Hadley and all the witches in her community are part of a coven where everyone knows about each other and their powers. The coven trains their children for safety and to protect each other. Their main goal is to keep their true identities and powers a secret. I mean, could you imagine what might happen if people found out about a witch coven?
Hadley, on the other hand, isn’t very interested in the coven. She doesn’t like going to the meetings and she can think of a million other things she would rather do. That is until some of the coven’s members go missing one night, and then the rest of the parents the next night.
Hadley doesn’t know what to do at first. She isn’t even sure if her mum is ‘missing’ or if she’s just out. When a whole day goes by, she decides to contact some of the other kids in the coven to see if they might know what’s going on. With every phone call she makes a worried kid answers and says they have no idea what’s happened and that their parents are gone as well.
The group of teenage witches gather to decide what to do and how to destroy the coven that has kidnapped their parents. They spend the next couple of days training, learning how to fight, and teaching one another spells. Hadley takes charge because she’s the strongest witch out of the group and it’s what she does.
The group is ready to do anything and everything to safe their parents, even if it means losing their own lives…
I have to admit, Life’s a Witch was an enjoyable read. It wasn’t anything too dark or crazy, but instead a bit of a lighter read. But even with this enjoyment, there were a few things that confused me and caught me off guard.
- The main character: Why wasn’t she the same person as in the first book? I guess I just assumed that the story would continue to revolve around Brooklyn. I really liked Brooklyn and found her hilarious!
- Asher: Who is he? I mean, I know who he is, but he is a completely different guy to the one I got to know in What the Spell. He acted differently and said things that I wouldn’t have expected from him.
I was just so confused about these two characters when they were each first introduced. I wasn’t sure what the author had in store for her readers, but I tried my best to remain open-minded throughout the rest of the book. Within a few chapters I started to like Hadley and the new Asher. Hadley was fun, hardworking, and wanted to save the coven’s parents. She wasn’t going to give up and she wasn’t going to let her mum just ‘disappear’.
Other than that, I guess I was just holding my breath for more fighting and action scenes. Don’t get me wrong, there were two, but I just figured it would take much more than a group of semi-trained teenagers and two battles to win a war.
Overall, the characters made this story for me, even though they weren’t who I was expecting. The third book is already out, and I do plan on reading it soon!
