Review: Seriously Wicked

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Camellia is a high school sophomore who lives with her adopted mother, who happens to be a witch. But witches are only ever wicked, as evidenced by the spell Cam saw the witch perform when Cam was five years old. She still doesn’t like to talk about it.

Growing up with a witch stinks, since their M.O. for child rearing includes really terrible punishments. Like turning fingers into noodles. Or turning the child into a pile of rotten tomatoes for the afternoon. And forcing them to gather weird ingredients such as goats blood, pigs ears, and… eggplant?

But now the witch is planning to take over the town using Phoenix fire, and needs Cam’s help to manage the demon she summoned in order to do it. Cam wants to undermine the witch’s plans AND pass her Algebra test at the same time, but she’s not sure that’s possible.

Cam’s PoV is a fun voice, amusing and clever. Everything goes wrong; but some things go right, like learning to trust a friend, Algebra tutors, and a cute boy named Devon. Cam is easy to like and the witch easy to hate. But as Cam learns, no one is completely good or bad, there’s grey in-betweens. Unfortunately, things take a turn for the worse when the demon takes over Devon’s body and begins kissing all the girls at school.

The setting is a modern small town, and we learn quickly what it takes to be a witch, and how their magic works. As well as the competition witches have with each other. Their ambition and ego knows no bounds–or their knack for being underhanded. Cam doesn’t want to be like that and you really can’t blame her. Connolly’s prose is clean and fluid, and the story moves forward at a brisk pace. I read this while we were on vacation and it went by too quickly, I enjoyed it that much. I hope there are other books about Cam and her crazy family and friends.

As in other books by Connolly — check out the interesting COPPERHEAD (EBR Review) and exciting SILVERBLIND (EBR Review) — the women are great and Cam comes into her own as she discovers who she really is–and part of that is deciding for herself what that means. In the end she risks everything to do what’s right, even if it means accepting hard truths about herself.