Bewitching [Paperback]

Jill Barnett (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Pocket Books (1994)
• ASIN: B001KYLN2Y
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (75 customer reviews)

More About the Author

I am a native Californian, a baby boomer who grew up in a very idyllic place at a very idyllic time--on the coast of Southern California in the 60's, although I spent many childhood summers before that on my grandparents' farm in Texas.

So I'm a West Coast girl raised by Southern parents, who grew up in a place where you spent your free time playing volleyball on the beach and weekends dancing to local bands like Beach Boys, Dion, and the Righteous Brothers.

My husband and I met in high school, and I never knew I wanted to be a writer until I was in my thirties and back in college again. I had been an art major the first time around--it was the 60's--quit to make some kind of mark in the world, but I got married instead.

My love of history and reading and art all came together for me when I quit school again, after working toward my history degree and then becoming a mother--something we were told couldn't happen. (The child not the degree.) So with the miracle gift of my daughter, came a new career for me.

I knew then I wanted to write a book, had an idea and more importantly a vision of the kind of stories I wanted to tell. I told myself I could always go back to school.

Funny thing the way life works. Almost two years to the day I quit school, I sold my first book on 50 pages to Pocket Books, a division of Simon and Schuster. That was over eighteen years ago and many books later.

So the road I traveled to become an author had many twists and turns, joys and disappointments. Yet I'm doing something I really love. In so many ways I'm a very lucky woman.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BEWITCHING makes you want to take time to smell the roses!, June 28, 1999

By 

Suzanne Coleburn (Berlin, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bewitching (Mass Market Paperback)

When I first read BEWITCHING I had so many laughs at Joy, a witch who just couldn't seem to get her spells right that my family had to tell me to calm down. Joy landed herself in more trouble the moment she landed in the carriage with the handsome Lord Alex. The poor man didn't know what he was in for. I loved the way she changed Alex from a person who ran his life by the clock into a caring, loving man who was often covered in rose petals.

Joy's familiar was a riot and I laughed so hard at times I was crying, especially when he was working away on a certain footman's wig. I told a friend I couldn't read this in public since I would make a fool of myself laughing my head off at certain parts, and believe me my family concured.

This is a story that brings home the fact that many of us don't take time to laugh or do some silly things in life to make ourselves and others happy.

Jill Barnet is an excellent writer who knows how to bring love and laughter to her readers.

This is one author whose works go right on my keeper shelf whether they are of a serious content or down right tickle your funnybone.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the witty and incomparable jill barnett!, January 8, 2000

By 

Jeanine - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bewitching (Mass Market Paperback)

you know a book is really good when you can pick it up after years of it just lying there and laugh as hard as you did the first time you read it! this was the case for me. my favourite part of "bewitching" was when Joy was "cooling" off her face by plastering her lips onto the carriage window! I love how barnett described them like "pink leeches." A part of me wanted to cringe in mortification for Joy, but another part of me just thought it was too funny! this humor is continuous throughout the story and it provides comic relief for the staid and all too duke-like Alec Castlemaine. I think it is wonderful how his character develops from cold and unbearable to downright loving, foolish and sentimental. It's not as though those feelings didn't exist in Alec, it's just that they had been suppressed so long by his family and his sense of honor for his family. Best of all I like Beezle, Joy's familiar. This is a wonderful story and barnett employs a rhetoric that is uniquely hers. I would consider "bewitching" her best piece of work to date.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Saccharine sweet, superficial silliness., October 26, 2008

By 

Mah-li (Jonesport, ME.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bewitching (Mass Market Paperback)

Fantasy Romance with cavity inducing sweetness.
If it was possible to form cotton candy into a romance novel, this book would be the outcome.
Like cotton candy, the story is cloying, smells funny and leaves a weird taste in your mouth. The plot and characters could not have been spun any thinner.
Joyous is a happy, sweet young witch from Scotland. Skilled magic and reasoned thought are simply beyond her capabilities. She plans to rusticate in England and work on her spells and incantations.
Alex is a Duke from England. Warm emotions like love and compassion are beyond his capabilities. He has just been jilted and plans to marry the next Lady he meets.
Unfortunately for the reader, they meet each other and marry. Joyous confesses to being a witch. Alex hopes that if she is discrete and doesn't practice her magic that they will be able to survive Wicca adverse English society.
Joyous doesn't get it. She ignores Alex's command and continues with her bumbling, magical efforts. This is slightly amusing in a Three Stooges sort of way.
In response to her continued witchcraft efforts, Alex becomes more dictatorial. Joyous becomes more cute and clueless. And the Reader becomes more irritated and bored.
That's it, the book and characters in a nutshell, which is exactly where they belong.
Unless you have an amazingly high tolerance for pain, I would not recommend this exercise in spun sugar witchery.