Hey everyone! Welcome to my stop in the Family Magic blog tour! Family Magic by Patti Larsen is a young adult paranormal novel that won 1st place in World’s Best Story contest and is published by Premiere. The tour runs August 3-31 with mostly reviews as well as author interviews and guest posts. Check out the tour page for more information.
So for my stop, I bring to you my review of Family Magic, an awesome guest post from Patti Larsen AND an amazing international giveaway you don’t want to miss. Enjoy and thank you so much for stopping by!
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Family Magic by Patti Larsen
(Hayle Coven Novels #1)
YA Paranormal / October 27th, 2011
Her mom’s a witch. Her dad’s a demon. And she just wants to be ordinary.Sydlynn Hayle’s life couldn’t be more complicated. Trying to please her coven, starting over in a new town, and fending off a bully cheerleader who hates her are just the beginning of her troubles. What to do when delicious football hero Brad Peters–boyfriend of her cheer nemesis–shows interest? If only the darkly yummy witch, Quaid Moromond, didn’t make it so difficult for her to focus on fitting in with the normal kids. Add to that her crazy grandmother’s constant escapes driving her family to the brink and Syd’s between a rock and a coven site. Forced to take on power she doesn’t want to protect a coven who blames her for everything, only she can save her family’s magic. If her family’s distrust doesn’t destroy her first.
My rating: 4/5 stars
Guys! If you love fantasy and paranormal–magic, a hidden society, a good old dark force waiting to destroy the balance, among else–then you should definitely go get yourself a copy of Family Magic. It’s such a fun read, you’ll be basically flipping pages non-stop!
To begin with, the world-building is superb. Patti Larsen really thought it out well and I loved how everything just fit into the story, like you could actually expect to come across a town with witches, vampires, demons, and other mystical creatures. The way their hidden society works intrigues me and even though I learned lots about them, there’s just so much left to explore.
Sydlynn Hayle is this book’s heroine and I enjoyed her character a lot. She’s not exactly the brave heroine you would expect to come across–seeming that she refuses to accept her powers–but I believe she is a strong character for the fact that she is not afraid to admit her doubts and push for what she wants. She is in no way perfect, I definitely thought she was way too hard on her family and coven, but I understood her fear of never fitting in and of being afraid of controlling the wild power she has.
Family Magic deals with several issues including school bullying, low self-esteem, and how miscommunication affects relationships. I really liked that this book wasn’t just about a girl fighting for her life using magic and falling for the hot guy. Instead, it deals with real life problems proving that any society–magical or not–is based out of the same foundation. It also teaches how magic has it price, thus it should be used carefully or face the consequences.
I really hope that in the sequel there’s a bit more of action and we find out more about Syd’s father because I do need more details about him and his side of the family. Those are basically the only things I felt lacking, but overall, Family Magic was a great read for me and I’m excited to continue with the series.
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And now check out the guest post the lovely Patti Larsen wrote for us!
The challenges faced when writing about magic
I love writing about magic. There’s something truly amazing and exciting about developing power structures and mythos behind magic worlds that fires me up. Most of the books I write have a paranormal element to them, all different and all total fun.
It’s usually easiest to start with limitations and understanding where the power you’re creating comes from. Are you repurposing traditional magic, as in vampires, demons and werewolves? Or are you creating an entirely different kind of magic unique to your world?
Deciding the cost of using power is also important. It has to have some kind of price in order to not only be believable, but to keep the characters from solving everything too easily with magic. For example, the lead in Family Magic, Sydlynn Hayle, is a powerful young witch whose mother runs her coven and father is a demon lord. But, Syd hates magic. It makes her physically ill when she uses it and she just wants to be ordinary. So, despite the fact she’s very strong, she resists using her power. Because of her reticence, it often slips out of her during times of stress creating hilarious and embarrassing results.
I also like to ensure that magic alone isn’t the only answer to solving the character’s problems. While it helps, of course, it’s the nature and heart of the people in the books that truly resolve the crisis.
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About the Author:
Patti is an award-winning author with a passion for the paranormal. Now with multiple series in happy publication, she lives in Canada with her patient husband and six demanding cats.
www.pattilarsen.com | Twitter @PattiLarsen
Giveaway:
5 paperback copies of Family Magic (US/CA) and a $25 Amazon gift card (INT)
Hosts are not responsible for prizing, prizing is provided by the publisher.
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I love this part of her post "I also like to ensure that magic alone isn’t the only answer to solving the character’s problems. While it helps, of course, it’s the nature and heart of the people in the books that truly resolve the crisis." because YES, that's what makes it REAL to us. Love this guest post! And love the review, I'm so glad you enjoyed the book! Thank you so much for hosting a tour stop!
Yes! I loved that. Sometimes in books it all comes down to the character saving the day with surpressed magic or something like that, but in this book, it goes deeper into the character's inner strength. 🙂
I really dig the concept and the idea of the story but I don't know that it's the book for me. Great review though Melissa, as always!
Thanks, Jazmen! If you get to read it someday I'd love to read your thoughts about it. 🙂
I didn't realize I had this on my TBR list. I like the concept and it's interesting to hear the authors motivations when developing characters. Something I will keep in mind for future reference. Great review.
I've also had this book for ages, but not until I decided to join the tour did I remember to pick it up. So glad I did!