Wednesday, January 10, 2007
*** The Scot, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by Annette Blair. Contemporary paranormal romance.
Hmmm. As is my habit, especially when I'm so far behind (I've read 13 books since finishing this one), I browse through reviews to refresh my memory and see what other people thought. Oddly, on average, people preferred The Scot, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to last year's My Favorite Witch (#22), but I thought the opposite.
Victoria Cartwright is not a witch. Her family and friends think she is, and those rhyming wishes of hers do have a way of coming true, but she's definitely not a witch. She is, however, the descendent of one. Lili Lockhart left a key to her descendents, and legend has it that only the one who inherited her powers can use it to open a wardrobe. Victoria opens it and finds a carousel unicorn.
Which just happens to be the missing carousel unicorn given to Lili by her erstwhile fiance, Drummond Mackenzie... or that she tricked him out of, depending on who's telling the story. Regardless, once the unicorn was gone, the carousel wouldn't work, and it destroyed the livelihood of the town and the reputation of the Mackenzies. The reclusive Scottish carver, Rory Mackenzie, comes to retrieve the unicorn and restore the carousel and his family's honor.
But Rory and Victoria have steamy dreams about each other, and end up falling in love, and he has to choose between love and duty.
It was a cute story, and if I'd read it really really fast, I'd probably have enjoyed it more. But I didn't, so I didn't.
Both Victoria and Rory keep their identities--or rather, their ancestors' identities--secret from each other for no good reason, which made me want to smack them both. And both of them waffle back and forth on the subject of whether or not Victoria is a witch way too much. At times, Rory seems to be encouraging Victoria to accept her magic, then shortly afterward, he's horrified at the thought that she might be a witch. And there's the waffling on their attraction to each other. Part of that is the contrast between their steamy dreams and their actions when they're awake, but there's still a lot of "I want you but I don't want to want you" going on, and that's one of my romance pet peeves.
And then, about halfway through the book, Victoria's three half-sisters show up, half-sisters she never knew about, and they sort of take over the story. They were cute, too, but the late and abrupt introduction really threw me, and it seemed like a whole new story from that point.
The Scot, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is nevertheless cute, and fun, and it was nice to see the characters from the previous books and to get a glimpse of ones from future books (the half-sisters, I'm guessing), but not a keeper for me.
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Categories: Books, 3stars, ParanormalRomance
Labels: 3 stars, books, ParanormalRomance
