Review & Comic Con Spotlight: “Spellcaster” by Claudia Gray

I have this weird thing about needing to read the books of authors that will be appearing at Comic Con before the event. I like to know the background of the author before I hear them speak on his or her panel and I like to know if I like his or her book or not before I buy it and have them autograph it.

So what ends up happening is that they release the schedules only two weeks before the event (here are Thursday’s and Friday’s) so then for the two weeks before the con when I should be cleaning by house and packing, I’m instead staying up all night and all day reading non-stop to prepare!

My first completed book of this frenzy is Spellcaster by Claudia Gray. It was available as an e-book through my local library so I could download it just moments after seeing her name on the schedule and researching her books on Goodreads. Here is the synopsis:

When Nadia’s family moves to Captive’s Sound, she instantly realizes there’s more to it than meets the eye. Descended from witches, Nadia senses a dark and powerful magic at work in her new town. Mateo has lived in Captive’s Sound his entire life, trying to dodge the local legend that his family is cursed – and that curse will cause him to believe he’s seeing the future … until it drives him mad. When the strange dreams Mateo has been having of rescuing a beautiful girl—Nadia—from a car accident come true, he knows he’s doomed.

Despite the forces pulling them apart, Nadia and Mateo must work together to break the chains of his family’s terrible curse, and to prevent a disaster that threatens the lives of everyone around them.

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I had just read another witchcraft-type novel, Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood, and I was worried that reading two books in the same genre so quickly would kinda make me not like one or the other. I can’t help but compare and contrast similar books but this wasn’t a problem because they were set so differently. Born Wicked was set in the late 1700s/early 1800s and this is set present-day.

There were a couple of things about this book that really stood out to me. I loved the way that the spells work in her world. They’re more like meditations, simple phrases that you have to expand upon in your mind to make the power more intense. It was a really beautiful way to get into Nadia’s head and see her most intimate memories and feelings.

I thought Nadia was a great character, definitely well-rounded. She had a great and loving heart but wasn’t so sweet that it turned to saccharine. I really liked the friendship between her and Mateo, it developed very slowly and naturally and it wasn’t an instant “I love you and I won’t live without you” sort of situation. Their relationship is lovely, **slight spoiler here** they only kiss a few times by the end of the novel and I liked how slow and teen-appropriate their love is. It’s a PG book which I find so endearing and I would be totally okay with my kids reading this.

Also, this book FREAKED ME OUT. It’s hard for me to get scared in books but I had to take breaks and text people I thought would be up in the middle of the night as a break from the scary parts of this book! Honestly, it was really fun to get a little jumpy, it makes the pages turn quicker than you can count.

The only thing that keeps me from giving this a super-high rating is that the villain was hard for me to understand. **Spoilers here** She works for the One Beneath but also consults with a demon Asael in her head, and their working relationship I didn’t quite understand. She had so many different endeavors, she could control people’s perspectives, cursed entire family lines and was herself trapped in a spell that went wrong but chose to ignore for the first three-quarters of the book Nadia and dismissed her as a non-threat even though she was the only witch to challenge her in a dozed years. The book had a bit of cliff hanger ending, which was fine, but it was difficult for me to understand what her objective is, and how they were working together to make it happen. I think the second book will definitely clarify this though!

You can buy the book on Amazon here and on Barnes & Noble here.

What are some of your favorite books on witches and witchcraft?