Sunday 21 November 2010

The Secret Circle - Review

The initiation and the Captive part one
  
Review:
The circle's power has lured her home
Forced to move from sunny California to gloomy New England, Cassie longs for her old life. Even so, she feels a strange kinship to a terrifying group of teens who seem to rule her school. Initiated into the coven of witches that's controlled New Salem for hundreds of years, she's drawn into the Secret Circle, a thrill that's both intoxicating and deadly. But when she falls for the mysterious and intriguing Adam, Cassie must choose whether to resist temptation or risk dark forces to get what she wants—even if it means that one wrong move could ultimately destroy her.
The circle's power has lured her home
Forced to move from sunny California to gloomy New England, Cassie longs for her old life. Even so, she feels a strange kinship to a terrifying group of teens who seem to rule her school. Initiated into the coven of witches that's controlled New Salem for hundreds of years, she's drawn into the Secret Circle, a thrill that's both intoxicating and deadly. But when she falls for the mysterious and intriguing Adam, Cassie must choose whether to resist temptation or risk dark forces to get what she wants—even if it means that one wrong move could ultimately destroy her.
The secret Circle is a natural page turner like most of LJ smith’s books. You don’t really feel the pages or the time going by when you’re reading it, I like to think she’s the Jane Austen of our timeJ.

In the beginning the main character Cassie is coming to terms with her mother’s abrupt decision to move back to her hometown in New England, back with her estranged grandmother.  
Terrified about going to a new school Cassie adopts a positive attitude for her first day, but quickly realises this is no ordinary school, and there are a circle of students who are worshipped and feared like gods.

This is very hard to put into words but I’ll try! Even though the book was highly entertaining, I still felt the main underlying plot was drawn out and too slow. The first half of the book was establishing Cassie’s relationships with the other characters and I was expecting… I’m not sure really… maybe for Cassie to be attacked by a tree like Elena did in Vampire diaries. I think my head was in gear with pace of all the other LJ Smith books I’ve read and I should have just focused on this one. Ok I really hope that made sense.

The main character Cassie is shy and weak in the beginning but through out the book she finds her niche and subtly gets stronger. It didn’t feel forced at all and it was nice to see her character grow.

I didn’t feel the secondary characters had any special traits or unique personalities so the girls kind of moulded into one like Laurel, Melanie and Suzan, it was hard for me to see them as individuals. That being said the main characters were very engaging and interesting like Faye was the infuriating antagonist of the novel and Diana was the ever trusting popular girl.

The love interest was far too perfect for my liking, apart from the fact he was good looking there was no foundations of their relationship that I could see and be ‘oh I get why they’re drawn to each other’ so when Cassie was desperately fighting her feelings for him, I was like “Hey do you even know his last name?” 


 It was a fast paced book and the story never dragged the storyline developed with each word. Thought a couple of the plot points I could see from miles away the rest of the story was unpredictable. All in all The secret circle was a great read and I’m interested to see if the CW make it into a TV series.

Rating 3 ½ out of 5

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