A review by kblincoln
Conjured by Sarah Beth Durst
4.0
I'm a huge Sarah Beth Durst fan...loved Ice and Vessel and Enchanted Ivy. All of them had the wondrous, youthful fascination with the beauty of the world, and a sympathetic view of the evil found therein.
Conjured certainly contained my well-loved Durst flavors: wondrously imaginative and creepy visions of a twisted carnival, a horrible villain who has lost sight of his own humanity, a brave protagonist and her motor-mouth boy-helper.
And the protagonist, Eve, is an unreliable narrator to boot. (I love me those unreliable narrators, it adds such a complexity to otherwise guessable tropes) She's got memory lapses and long-term amnesia and can't remember if she's met people before or what their relationships are. She just knows she's in a Witness Protection program, guarded fiercely by agents, and is the key to unlocking the puzzle of a serial killer.
And she can make the drawings of birds on her room's wallpaper take flight, but she'll pass out and have aforementioned creepy-carnival (Magician pulls a severed hand holding a bouquet of roses from his hat, for instance) visions whenever she uses her magic.
Until she meets a boy in a library and all of a sudden things get different.
So why only 4 stars from me? Well, it's kind of a too much of a good thing kind of thing. As creepy, fantastical, and disturbingly lyrical the passages where Eve has visions of the Magician and they Storyteller in their fantastical carnival are in the first half of the book, they got a little cloying in the second half when all I wanted was for Eve and her boy to make magic together, figure out the obvious clues about Eve's identity hidden in her visions, and confront the bad guy.
Once we get to the actual bad guy confronting, the plot concludes in a satisfyingly Eve-centered way while still giving a nod to the complexity of the bad guy.
There is some kissing between Eve and her boy, very integral to the plot, and very sweet, so I would totally have no problem with my elementary aged daughter reading this.
This Book's Snack Rating: Like a box of fancy chocolates beautifully shaped with slightly outrageous flavors for the beautifully written creepy carnival passages and sweet character arc of unreliable narrator Eve that got just a bit too much for me midway through the book
Conjured certainly contained my well-loved Durst flavors: wondrously imaginative and creepy visions of a twisted carnival, a horrible villain who has lost sight of his own humanity, a brave protagonist and her motor-mouth boy-helper.
And the protagonist, Eve, is an unreliable narrator to boot. (I love me those unreliable narrators, it adds such a complexity to otherwise guessable tropes) She's got memory lapses and long-term amnesia and can't remember if she's met people before or what their relationships are. She just knows she's in a Witness Protection program, guarded fiercely by agents, and is the key to unlocking the puzzle of a serial killer.
And she can make the drawings of birds on her room's wallpaper take flight, but she'll pass out and have aforementioned creepy-carnival (Magician pulls a severed hand holding a bouquet of roses from his hat, for instance) visions whenever she uses her magic.
Until she meets a boy in a library and all of a sudden things get different.
So why only 4 stars from me? Well, it's kind of a too much of a good thing kind of thing. As creepy, fantastical, and disturbingly lyrical the passages where Eve has visions of the Magician and they Storyteller in their fantastical carnival are in the first half of the book, they got a little cloying in the second half when all I wanted was for Eve and her boy to make magic together, figure out the obvious clues about Eve's identity hidden in her visions, and confront the bad guy.
Once we get to the actual bad guy confronting, the plot concludes in a satisfyingly Eve-centered way while still giving a nod to the complexity of the bad guy.
There is some kissing between Eve and her boy, very integral to the plot, and very sweet, so I would totally have no problem with my elementary aged daughter reading this.
This Book's Snack Rating: Like a box of fancy chocolates beautifully shaped with slightly outrageous flavors for the beautifully written creepy carnival passages and sweet character arc of unreliable narrator Eve that got just a bit too much for me midway through the book