Today's review will be of Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins. This book had been getting a lot of good press since it got released, and "teenage witches" (especially witch school) is a genre that I like, so I thought I'd give it a try.
Things I liked:
Engaging narration. Weak first-person narrations annoy me. This one maybe could have been a little stronger and Sophie maybe could have even been a better-developed character, but her voice works. Best of all, there are humorous moments. Each time I felt myself starting to get bored of the book for other reasons, one of these charming moments would come along and keep me involved.
Things I didn't like:
CLIFFHANGER ENDING. A cliffhanger of the first in a series is one of my biggest pet peeves in fiction. Writers have to earn that cliffhanger, by proving that it is worth the extra inconvenience of reading the next book by writing a good book the first time around. The problem with this cliffhanger is that the plot didn't resolve, and for a book that is so plot-heavy to begin with, I thought this type of ending was a poor choice. I guess a lot of people disagree with me, since the sequel has been very popular.
Things I liked:
Vampire best friend. I actually found it kind of refreshing to have the vampire character here be the heroine's friend, rather than her love/lust interest. We still get to see themes of existentialist teen angst and being a social outcast through the form of vampirism, but the relationship between Sophia and Jenna the vampire comes off as difficult, but touching. It feels genuine, not tired, and I found it much more interesting than an angsty romance would have been. (Not to mention the fact that this book already has its share of angsty romance.) I wish these things had featured more prominently in the book so that the issues surrounding them could be explored more fully, especially the unique prejudice towards vampires.
Things I didn't like:
Fantasy elements don't deliver. This is an expansion of the first thing I mentioned not liking, so let me elaborate. All of the main, prominent, and plot-important characters in this book (with the notable exception of Jenna the vampire) are witches. Yet, the author spends a lot of time introducing us to characters who are fairies and shape shifters, other students at the school, people whose names we are expected to remember but who never really come into the story at all. I realize that not everything needs to be brought full circle if there are going to be sequels, but still, an opening book should be more than just a teaser or background reading for the "real" story.
Other things to note:
I wondered more than once if I would have enjoyed this book more if I'd been younger. After all, I am 21 years old, and Sophie Mercer is sixteen. The thin characterization and fast-paced plot might have appealed to me more, and the cliffhanger might not have bothered me as much. In fact, I probably would have liked this book at lot at 13. It would have been just the right amount of simplicity and wouldn't have felt overly simplistic. That being said, 13 is still three years younger than the heroine's age. I wouldn't have related to her at 16; in fact, I remember lots of book heroines felt younger than their age when I was 16. Still, just because this isn't the right book for me, doesn't mean it isn't the right book for somebody and I encourage people to take their own reading experience and preferences in mind before picking it up. There are certainly things to like about this book, and it does feel much more refreshingly contemporary than the books that I remember enjoying when I was younger (no doubt because those were published about a decade ago!) YA fantasy has come a long way.
Conclusion:
I'm not sorry I read it (I rarely am about any book) but I probably won't read it again, and I probably won't read the sequel unless I was very bored and at an airport and that was all I had to read or something.
If you've read this book and want to say your opinion about it, post a comment! Were there things that you liked about the book that I didn't mention? Anything you didn't like about it that I didn't mention?
