Secondhand Charm, Julie Berry

Secondhand Charm, Julie Berry.  ISBN: 9781599905112

Read August 13

 

So I re-read Amaranth Enchantment recently, and was reminded of how thin it really was - everything so twee and interconnected and massive plotholes unraveling at the slightest serious thought.  This one is MUCH better.  Not exactly what I had expected, and I'm a bit disappointed in that, but it was interesting and fun.

 

First off - the bad. 

 

The medicine/study is a red-herring.  It's teased as a story of a studious girl heading off to a medical university to become a healer, and that actually is right, as far as it goes.  Sadly, it's mostly the first-act mcguffin to get Evie out of her village and onto the road so that events can occur.  I would really have liked to see more evidence of the healing - instead of it simply being a magical gift, to instead show more of what she did with the Chancellor: actual herb-lore and medicine.  Without it, she's well on the way to turning into a boring magic dream girl.

 

The king is USELESS.  Doesn't he have parents?  Courtiers?  He's always on his own except for Annalise, which is somewhat suspect, considering all the flunkies she has around her.  Considering he's the lynchpin of the whole story, I found him a bit on the irritating side.

 

Coincidences again... like Amaranth, this story relies heavily on a smallish cast of characters who keep showing up in convenient (or inconvenient) times and places.  Unlike Amaranth, it actually somewhat works in this story without seriously violating suspension of disbelief, but it still was a bit heavy-handed (especially the circus).  

 

The meh.

 

Aiden.  Eh.  More a cipher than anything else, and honestly comes off as well as he does because the King is so flamingly useless in comparison. 

 

The continual "bad luck" of the initial journey.  This is somewhat in the line of the coincidental repeated meetings of the main cast, but it was less of an irritant while reading, and more of an after-the-read thought of how really unlikely that whole scenario was, and how it could have been changed easily without altering the plot. 

 

The good:

 

The representation of Evie's "companion" was excellent.  I loved that he didn't really know or think about or care about much beyond Evie the person.  I loved the impetuous nature that causes her problems that he then regrets, I love the beauty/terror dichotomy.  I love the co-dependent feel for that relationship; "if you really loved me you would...." Really lovely touchpoint through the whole story.  

 

I really like Annalise.  She is a perfect little sociopath, and her storyline was very nice.  Would have liked a bit more background on how her relationships got going, and how everyone else doesn't know that princesses of her realm are what they are, but those are niggling details.  Annalise was quite nice of herself.  I loved the complication that her relationship with Evie created for the climax, and that her total blissful inability to see that she was a sociopath made her a little less "one-dimensional-grandiose-evil."

 

Loved Grandfather.  That was a very clever touch, and one that isn't seen very often.  I figured something was off-kilter there, but I wasn't expecting it to twist the way it actually twisted.  That was quite enjoyable.

 

So overall, Secondhand Charm: Not amazing, but much better than Amaranth, and a sweet little heroine who gets where she's going through dogged determination, grit, and persistance.