Harley Merlin and the Secret Coven

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The whole administrative system and hierarchy inside the coven seems haywire and it's obvious that the writer did not put a lot of thought into it. As I said, lazy writing. The Writing Style - After about 50% into the book it stopped bothering me because the plot was engaging but it seriously bothered me until then. It's clumsy and lazy.

Merlin and the Dying Song by Bella Forrest | Goodreads Persie Merlin and the Dying Song by Bella Forrest | Goodreads

I loved the ups and downs, and the book kept my attention. I couldn't tell what was going to happen next! I loved Finch and thought that this was an amazing book to finish the series. This author is amazing! I saw the plot twist the moment the revelation occurred (it was dark & I hated it! & not the guilty pleasure, secretly-loving sort of thing! downright hate that I was wondering about lowering my rate, but in general I liked the book, so... let's be fair)rather than the author’s writing style, the plot or the characters that tanked this for me. Let me explain.

Harley Merlin and the Secret Coven by Bella Forrest | Goodreads

Second, there are quite a few excess coordinate commas, and a good few vocabulary issues - homonym errors (like diffuse/defuse); wrong word choices for what the author means (like "conscience" when she means "consciousness"); and one of my pet hates, the jargon "going forward" repeatedly used to mean "in future" or "from now on". I love their humour which had me laughing out loud at times. Whilst I love them and their motley crew, the same can't be said about that humongous pain in the ass Davin! Honestly as a HP fan I didn't think there'd ever be a character I hated more than Umbridge, but Davin definitely gives her a run for her money! I honestly felt myself sharing Finch's fury at how often that asswipe, as Finch would call him, managed to get the better of them! Harley Merlin can sense people’s emotions, among other things. It’s how she snagged her first job pinpointing cheaters at a casino. The Character-building - Other than Wade (the love interest, which was laughably obvious from his intro) I couldn't connect to ANYONE in the book, including our MC. Well I did like the premise of this story, but I had a few peeves with the characters that kept this from being a 4 star read.

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Wade - one of the main characters, I could connect with him as a person easily enough and liked him. Our MC, for example, is an orphan, so there are all these little quirks about her that one might imagine her having from the abuse she suffered in her foster care days. These qualities are MENTIONED but sometimes don't reflect on her actions. She's supposed to have trust issues but she practically falls in love with this big happy supposedly "rejects" family she finds, within days and trusts them. Now, it's mentioned that she herself is surprised that she put herself in mortal danger for people she barely knew, but again, it feels like the writer is preempting it rather than dealing with these quirks in her behavior patterns (which would be harder work), instead mentioning them and trying to reinforce the idea, using clumsy inner dialogue later on. As I said, lazy writing. As for the book itself. I loved it. At the beginning I didn't like Harley's point of view and then the book really got going. An annoying thing, though, was the minor plot-holes I'd been ignoring them so far but I couldn't any more. The one plot-hole that I'm glad for is the humans seeing monsters. In the first book humans couldn't see the monsters and I'm glad that the author changed that.

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As Harley works to save the children and uncover whatever her aunt is up to, she is still trying to find answers to some questions about her past. For example, what pushed her father to murder her mother? What is the extent of her magical powers? Is there a chance that Wade Crowley will stop being so annoying? but introducing many characters all at once was another Negative point. I forget their names until they came into more focus.

Both siblings got to show the talents we love them for separately whilst executing a very Old Finch-esque plan, with Harley-influences. I really enjoyed a cross-over with them both to finish off this iteration of this insane family's drama... for now... Third, there are two - TWO - Convenient Eavesdrops, and even though neither one is completely essential to the plot, I still despise this plot device with a mighty hatred. It's weak writing, a convenient way to get around point-of-view limitations. Similar to Book 2, which is narrated in the alternating first-person points of view of both Harley and her teammate, Tatyana, this book is narrated in the alternating first-person POVs of both Harley and her teammate Santana, whose magical powers come from powerful spiritual entities called Orishas.

Harley Merlin 12: Finch Merlin and the Djinn’s Curse

Will be having a little time apart from this series since I've been binge-reading it for weeks now. I think I need to distance myself from it for a while before diving in on the new series, if I decide to read it, so I can seperate them in my head and so I won't have as many expectations. Time-skips of more than a year can go so wrong. I think it would be better if I view it as a completely different series altogether. Curious about it, though. I experienced this book both in Kindle and audiobook format. The narrator is Amanda Ronconi, who does an excellent job acting out the dialogue for all the various characters, portraying with equal skill male and female voices and various national accents. Holly continues to grow in friendship and loyalty to a team of young magicals who are all in their late teens like her. They include Tatyana Vasilisa, Santana Catemaco, Raffe Levi, Astrid Hepler, Dylan Blight, and Wade Crowley, who is Harley’s romantic interest throughout this series. In addition, Garrett Kyteler, who was formerly close friends with Finch before his betrayal of the SDC, is now a member of their team. Up until now, he has been presented as continually acting like a sneering jerk, so it is a difficult transition for the team incorporating him into their midst. Sometimes the writer would preempt something that the book might be critiqued upon, case in point - I can happily say things aren't being too dragged out, we're starting to learn Katherine's plan, more of Harley's past and we actually meet Katherine. I was worried that we wouldn't see our bad guy and would continue lurking in the shadows forever a looming figure. She's actually pretty fun and I really like her, she's at that point of crazy where she's more annoyed that Harley got her dress dirty. I'm looking forward to Katherine becoming part of the story.I gave my rating based on the series, not necessarily this book standing alone. This book was different. For some reason, perhaps it was me but I felt the timing was off with this book. Some parts were dragged out and boring then it sped up and major things happened so fast I literally almost missed them. The ending definitely felt rushed like she needed to wrap this up with a bow and end it. I did expect a bit more in the way of things feeling more tense and fraught, the magical council is starting to take more notice of the San Diego coven in light of everything that's happened and decide to leave two agents to oversee the investigation into the missing kids. Oh, and there's still a spy lurking in the coven. I loved the quirks of the characters, Melody with her rainbow magic, Santana with Slinky, Tobe and his hugs, and of course Harley & Finch glowing! But she has no clue where she got these freakish powers because she spent her childhood jumping from home to home in the foster system, and her father left her with nothing more than a cryptic note.