My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In Spellbound, Emma Connor has not had an easy life. Her twin brother Ethan died a couple years ago, her mom not long after. She was left with her step-father because her father ran out on the family when she was young. Her step-father is no savior either – he’s a drunk who almost costs Emma her life in a car wreck because he picked her up from school while under the influence. After this horrifying incident she decides to take her Aunt Christine up on her offer to let her live with her in New York.

You’d think it’d be a fairy tale: girl gets rescued from horrible home situation to live a well-loved and wealthy existence far away from her past. Not so much. Vincent Academy is a private school, exclusive for those with the right contacts or the money for their kids to attend. Emma’s Aunt Christine is able to finagle her spot since she’s on the school board. Emma’s also not alone; her cousin also goes to Vince A. so at least she’s guaranteed one friend.

From day one it seems the other girls don’t think she’s good enough, and Emma doesn’t exactly start off on the best of terms either – lying about her past so she doesn’t have to talk about it. One boy seems to see right through her though, Brendan Salinger, he even takes an interest in the pendant she got from her brother.

Emma makes a few friends including the resident school witch Angelique, and finds herself more and more attracted to Brennan every day it seems. She doesn’t understand why one day Brendan is nice and friendly and the next day he’s cold and distant. Then the dreams start, dreams where she’s in another time period and she gets warnings to stay away from Brendan. She isn’t sure what to think, but she’s hoping Angelique can help her figure things out, and that hopefully her new life won’t end in tragedy.

My Confession:

I have to be honest; the first part of Spellbound (say the first 100 pages) was slow for me. I mean I can’t say I
DIDN’T enjoy it, because I DID, but I was also wondering “when in the world is the magic or whatever the title means going to come into play…” It takes awhile before you get around to the central theme of the book, in my opinion, which some people like that, some people don’t. For me, I was neutral; I was just starting to wonder a bit when things were going to take off in that direction.

Spellbound wasn’t fantastic for me, it was a good solid read, I enjoyed the characters for the most part, some did get on my nerves but they were also the characters that were SUPPOSED to irk you. I really enjoyed the stories within the story that are told in order to explain the mystery behind the pendant and Emma’s history.

I think the biggest thing for me was the last part of Spellbound – Emma makes one of the dumbest choices in my opinion. I won’t say what she does, but I just shook my head! It was obvious that no good was going to come out of it! Part of me says it was a necessary part of the book to get to the very end, and the other part of me says “no, there could’ve been a better way to do it so Emma wouldn’t be like those people in the scary movies that do the wrong thing” but who knows, I am not an author. All I can say that as a reader, those moments bug me.

I think my FAVORITE part of Spellbound was a cool add on at the end. The author includes a playlist of the songs that Emma and Brendan listen to, and also writes descriptions for when they are listening to that particular song and why. I thought that was an awesome addition and hope more authors do things like that to make the characters more three dimensional.

Spellbound is Available From: Amazon /  B&N / Harlequin Teen

*Galley provided from Harlequin via NetGalley. This review and all opinions expressed therein are my own.