Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood- Review

Reviewed by: Aneeqah's Not So Real Life- Teen Reviewer!
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Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood
Rating: 3.5/5 Stars
Genres: Historical Fiction, Dystopia
Release Date: Feburary 7, 2012
Source: The library!

Let me start of by saying this: I really wanted to love this book. I've heard so many good things about it, and I just had that feeling that I was going to love it. Also, the authors is so nice on Twitter, and I love her. But unfortunately, it didn't live up to my expectations.

So, let's start with the characters. Our protagonist is Cate, who is trying to balance everything from managing her sisters to keeping up with town appearances so no on suspects the Cahill family of witchery. I didn't like Cate at first. She was so stubborn, and sometimes was really plain mean to her sisters. But, I did grow to like her as the story went on. I liked that she wasn't perfect, but sometimes she just got on my nerves [especially towards the end, where she makes some really stupid decisions]. But overall, I liked her, even though she did irritate me.

The setting of the book was interesting. It seems like it's set in a dystopia 1900s type thing. Throughout the book though, I kind of wanted some more information. There was some mention of a Indo-China and war or something like that, but it was only mentioned once or twice. I'm hoping that we get to learn more about that in the next book, because it actually seems pretty interesting. The world-building doesn't seem complete to me in this book, so hopefully we'll learn something in the next one.

The plot started off quite boring, actually in the beginning, but the book really started getting interesting in the middle. There were some good plot twists that I didn't see coming, but there were also a few that were kind of obvious. I definitely wouldn't say this is an action packed book or super fast paced, but it was intriguing; you wanted to know what happened.

Now... the love triangle. I didn't really like it. To me, there was a case of almost insta-love, and I don't really like either of the guys. It's not very well done, and it seemed... a little forced, I guess. It would have been nice to see a little character development in both of the guys, so we could really see what they were like. So, I didn't really like it, at all.

Sometimes in the book, especially at the beginning, everything was downright depressing. Everything was going wrong, their mother is dead, Cate has to protect everyone, keep their identity a secret, etc. I mean, how can a 16 year old girl do that?! I wanted something actually happy for her. I can't imagine living through all that and still being totally sane. A little bit of happiness or happy events would have been great to the story, and make everything seem a little less hopeless, in my opinion.

And then the ending. I feel like it was so abrupt, a definite cliffhanger. We're left with so many questions, and I didn't really understand it. I felt like the events were so rushed. A little more time at the end would have been really good, so that we could understand everything. The book wasn't that fast paced, so the ending felt even more rushed at the end. It seemed like an almost awkward place to stop. Overall, it wasn't a very good ending, especially because it's a total cliffhanger [and we all know how everyone hates a cliffhanger ending].

So, in the end, it was a pretty good book, despite the problems. It was compelling to read, and I was interested in the story. But, there were so many problems that I couldn't fully enjoy the story. I still probably will read the next book [which is going to be called Star Cursed], although I won't be buying it, just getting it from the library.








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