Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Book 79: Dime Store Magic

 
In this third novel of the series, Armstrong changes perspectives and narrates the novel from Paige's point of view.  It works very well, too - the first novel introduces Elena, in the second novel Elena realizes there are more supernatural beings than just werewolves and meets some of them, including Paige, and now that the world has expanded, Paige tells her story.  Of course, it also makes sense because Paige had the most changes to her life as a result of the actions in Stolen.  Her mother is dead, she is now in charge of the coven and Savannah, a thirteen year old orphaned witch, is living with her as her ward.
 
The coven is incredibly conservative and Paige butts heads with them on quite a lot of things, but keeps believing that they are an important part of her life.  Personally, I thought they were incredibly stuffy and I couldn't believe how much Paige put up with from them.  In fact I couldn't help but think of a comment from Damon in The Vampire Diaries: "Witches.  Judgey little things."  That description can also apply to Paige, though she is much more open-minded than her coven.  Paige gets a court summons in the beginning of the novel, and finds herself with a custody suit from Savannah's father, a powerful sorcerer.  The coven doesn't want Savannah, and tells Paige they will not assist her, and she angers the only lawyer in town, so even though she has no one to turn to she resists when Lucas offers his services as a lawyer.  He is a sorcerer and Paige has been raised to believe that sorcerers are corrupt, evil and the enemies of all witches.  Eventually, circumstances get so bad Paige has no choice but to lean on Lucas.
 
I enjoyed this novel but it started out slower than the other two for me, and honestly, a custody battle just isn't going to be as exciting as kidnappings and murders.  Armstrong adds plenty of hijinks to the proceedings and caps it off with an action packed ending.  While I could understand Paige's actions, I also got irritated with her a bit, especially after having Elena as a narrator, but I think it will be interesting how her journey continues in the follow up novels because quite a few developments occur that will have repercussions in the next few novels.  While romance isn't the purpose of these novels, it is a big part of them, and naturally, there ends up being some attraction between Lucas and Paige.  Since I liked Lucas, that was a good thing, but the sex scene was a bit ridiculous, involving a lot of stopping to show off with magic tricks and an oddly comfortable basement/laundry room (I tend to think of basements as cold, and even the nice ones have hard floors).  Basically, it was definitely a fun novel, though not as good as the previous two in the series, and Elena and Clayton have the better sex scenes, even if Lucas works for me more as a love interest since he doesn't have that whole macho Alpha male thing going for (against?) him.

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