Bewitching (Kendra Chronicles) [Hardcover]

Alex Flinn (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 14, 2012 | Series: Kendra Chronicles

Bewitching can be a beast. . . .

Once, I put a curse on a beastly and arrogant high school boy. That one turned out all right. Others didn’t.

I go to a new school now—one where no one knows that I should have graduated long ago. I’m not still here because I’m stupid; I just don’t age.

You see, I’m immortal. And I pretty much know everything after hundreds of years—except for when to take my powers and butt out.

I want to help, but things just go awry in ways I could never predict. Like when I tried to free some children from a gingerbread house and ended up being hanged. After I came back from the dead (immortal, remember?), I tried to play matchmaker for a French prince and ended up banished from France forever. And that little mermaid I found in the Titanic lifeboat? I don’t even want to think about it.

Now a girl named Emma needs me. I probably shouldn’t get involved, but her gorgeous stepsister is conniving to the core. I think I have just the thing to fix that girl—and it isn’t an enchanted pumpkin. Although you never know what will happen when I start . . . bewitching.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Kendra, the witch behind the transformational curse in Beastly (2007), finally has the floor. In 1666, teenage Kendra relates the horror of watching her family die from a plague, halted only when she becomes aware of her own magic and heals her remaining brother. Starving, they set out for a new life and find themselves at a gingerbread house. Sound familiar? Flinn twists more fairy tales into this engaging, time-jumping tale as Kendra reflects on helping—and harming—those around her. The Little Mermaid rescues a Titanic passenger. The Princess and the Pea takes place at Versailles. But the showstopper is a clever spin on Cinderella, the pieces hovering just above the puzzle until they fall brilliantly into place in a satisfying and surprising retelling in contemporary Florida. Kendra’s chatty first-person asides can be jarring next to the larger sections filled with a rich storyteller tone. Regardless, the inventive takes on the traditional will please fans of Flinn and fairy tales alike and leave them eager for Kendra’s next volume. Grades 8-11. --Heather Booth

About the Author

Alex Flinn loves fairy tales and is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Beastly, a spin on Beauty and the Beast that was named a VOYA Editor's Choice and an ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers. Beastly is now a major motion picture starring Vanessa Hudgens. Alex also wrote A Kiss in Time, a modern retelling of Sleeping Beauty; Cloaked, a humorous fairy-tale mash-up; and Bewitching, a reimagining of fairy-tale favorites, including Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, The Princess and the Pea, and The Little Mermaid, all told by Kendra—the witch from Beastly. Her other books for teens include Breathing Underwater, Breaking Point, Nothing to Lose, Fade to Black, and Diva. She lives in Miami with her family.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: HarperTeen; First Edition edition (February 14, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062024140
• ISBN-13: 978-0062024145
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #611,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alex Flinn was born in Syosset, New York. She learned to read at three and wanted to be a writer at five. She received her first rejection letter (from Highlights magazine) at eight. At twelve, her family moved to Miami, Florida, where she had a really hard time making friends, due to congenital shyness and a really bad haircut. So she read a lot and tried to write a novel but never finished because she had no idea what to write about.

Flinn attended a performing arts high school program, similar to that portrayed in her book, Diva, then majored in vocal performance in college. Panicked upon realizing that there weren't a whole lot of jobs for opera singers, Flinn went to law school.

Law school was, it turns out a really good place to learn to write for teenagers. Writing for teens and writing for judges are very similar because both judges and teens have a lot of demands on their time and minimal time for reading. Also, Flinn interned at the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office, trying many domestic violence cases, which were later the inspiration for her first novel, Breathing Underwater.

Breathing Underwater was published in 2001. It received many honors, including being chosen a Top 10 Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association. It was followed by Breaking Point, Nothing to Lose, Fade to Black, Diva, and Beastly. Beastly is soon to be released as a motion picture. Her newest book is A Kiss in Time, a modern Sleeping Beauty.

Flinn still lives in Miami with her husband, two daughters, a dog, cat, and African Spur-Thighed Tortoise. She enjoys performing arts, biking, and travel.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully Witchy February 15, 2012

By anne-marie

Format:Hardcover

Alex Flinn doesn't disappoint with another one of her unique interpretations. Bewitching is an exciting start to a promising new series combining the chronicles of a beloved character's past and future adventures along with the modernized fairy tales Flinn fans have come to love.

The mysterious and magically mischievous Kendra steps out of the Beastly shadows and into the spotlight.

At least sort of. The main story line mostly involves Emma and her newly acquired stepsister Lisette. Emma's a total daddy's girl but Lisette isn't the sweet lovable new addition she pretends to be. Lovely Lisette is slowly stealing away everything Emma holds dear, and when she finally goes too far Emma enlists the help of a certain teenage witch.

But Kendra knows all too well that spells very often backfire. There's always a flaw in every plan. Emma needs to be mindful of what she truely wants.

The patent pending Flinn spin is in full tilt throughout Bewitching giving plenty of classics like Hansel and Gretal, The Little Mermaid, and Cinderella a fresh fictional face. Bewitching started out as a coming of age story about Kendra and her family, and seemed to drag a little. I became more interested in Kendra's current project Emma and Lisette. At times I wanted to skip the flashbacks and get back to the main story line but just went with the author's desired flow. I found the broken up story kind of stop and go, but once you get over the red light green light structure of the story lines, you find the layout makes sense and every plot enjoyable.

Bewitching is layered like a black and white cookie aligning the lighter and darker parts of Kendra's life side by side giving readers a complete picture of the flawed character. Little vignettes of past exploits depicting Kendra's magical mishaps were fun and interesting ways of interpreting history with fairy tales. Flinn paints her heroine as a good witch who isn't exactly good at being a witch, since her best intentions usually go awry with ill and unforeseen consequences. But by the end I don't see Kendra as being bad at her craft. I think the linchpin of a successful spell isn't dependent on the caster but by the person it's meant to help, because ultimately they chose the outcome of the spell.

Curl up in a cozy corner and prepare yourself for an extended stay because Bewitching is the kind of book you'll want to keep reading and finish with a smile on your face.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Live To Read August 15, 2012

By Chels

Format:Hardcover

Another amazing fairy tale from Author Alex Flinn. This is a book to watch out for come February! The reader is introduced to Kendra Hillferty, a young girl with too much responsibility on her shoulders. Her entire family is suffering from the plague, one of the only member of her family left alive is her brother. Kendra doesn't know it yet, but she is a witch. She makes this astounding discovery when she heals her brother who was at the brink of death. Knowing that she will be charged and tried as a witch, Kendra takes her brother and runs.

Kendra doesn't seem to have very good luck. She finds a gingerbread house that appears to be empty. Starving, her brother and her decide to stop and eat. The reader will likely know what happens after the witch who owns the gingerbread home comes back... Kendra's bad luck doesn't end there. She attempts to help a mermaid, an attempt that goes horribly wrong; she tries to help a prince, but she is banished instead. Finally, Kendra has found a stable-ish life. She goes to high school and stands out, but is relatively normal as compared to her prior self. It is there that she meets a potential friend and someone she could maybe help. She knows how her "helping" has turned out over the centuries and is understandably wary.

Kendra's character is different. She is certainly not like most main characters a reader will find in other books. She has "personality" and isn't one to be pushed around. Clever, enigmatic, and with a sense of humor, the reader will enjoy Kendra's narration of events and past stories. The other secondary characters are just as interesting, from all walks of life and status levels. The events were fast-paced and exciting, these stories were not necessarily predictable. This book is recommended to young adult/teen readers.

*Complimentary copy received for review, this in no way affects my opinion*

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars first installment of the Kendra Chronicles has some interesting, if unsatisfying, retellings of classic fairy tales March 8, 2012

By Dark Faerie Tales

Format:Hardcover

Review Courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales

Quick & Dirty: This first installment of the Kendra Chronicles has some interesting, if unsatisfying, retellings of classic fairy tales.

Opening Sentence: If you read fairy tales, and who doesn't, you might believe there are witches all over the place-witches baking children into gingerbread, making princesses sleep for hundreds of years, even turning normal boys into hideous beasts to teach them a lesson.

The Review:

Mis-marketing might be the biggest problem with this book. After reading the synopsis you might think this story is going to be about Kendra, the badass witch we've met in Alex Flinn's other books. After the first 45 pages, it's not. It becomes a montage of Kendra's other curses and spells gone wrong. Some of them are pretty funny, if not clever, but with the exception of Lisette and Emma's story nothing was very engaging. We weren't given enough time to like the characters, much less care about them. I think the series is supposed to be more about Kendra's life, with little snippets provided in each book. Personally, I don't like it. I don't really like Kendra in this, and though it's supposedly her story, she's not the main character. After the short story about her beginnings as a witch at the start of the story, we really only get paragraphs from her perspective.

Hansel and Gretel transforms into Kendra's own story, but other's featured are Little Mermaid, Princess and the Pea, and most prominently Cinderella. Lisette and Emma's Cinderella story is broken up between Kendra's retelling of her other fairy tale mishaps. Except here, Kendra epically fails at playing fairy godmother-to Emma, the step-sister. Both girls are in high school, and Emma's lived with her step-father since she was three. Lisette's mother just died, and her father takes her in. He's really sweet, loves Emma like she was his own, but is very excited to have Lisette living with them. Emma's excited to-at first. She's always wanted a sister, she's never really had a best friend. Emma is a great narrator for this upside-down fairy tale. She's quirky, loving, wants to see the best in people, and she's really smart.

Kendra, on the other hand, is not a character you end up feeling sympathetic towards, though Flinn certainly tried. She's just a snarky centuries old witch who chooses to relive high school and meddle in other people's lives-no matter how horrendously her previous exploits have gone. She's funny and insightful, but she's also vengeful and a little stupid-not a good combination. But as I said, she's not the main character; she's just retelling all her exploits to the reader.

The conversation of this book really kept it moving for me, because honestly everything else was a little blah or rage inducing. The blah factor comes in because we don't get a chance to like the characters. I really liked Beastly, Flinn's Beauty and the Beast book, and would probably have liked her retellings of these stories if they had been less two-dimensional, if she had more pages to develop the characters. The Little Mermaid retelling happens post-Titanic sinking chaos, which was so cool, until she reached the end of Doria's story and I wanted to strangle something or someone. There was nothing technically wrong with it, which my grammar-oriented self appreciated greatly. It's the narrative format that makes it easy to read, and I did like Emma a lot because she sounded like the kind of girl I'd have been friends with in high school.

This brings me to how this book made me feel, which was horrendous. The theme throughout the novel was "If you don't have a boy, your life isn't worth anything." I wish I could say I was exaggerating. The only character who isn't portrayed as pathetic without a boyfriend is Kendra-who is described as pathetically lonely. So while this book fulfills the characteristics of a romance, it is horrendously degrading to teenage girls. It was a really easy read, and it was a relatively short book, but even the fairy tale aspect-which I usually adore-isn't enough to make me recommend this book.

This Kendra Chronicles Series:

1. Bewitching

FTC Advisory: Harper Teen provided me with a copy of Bewitching. No goody bags, sponsorships, "material connections," or bribes were exchanged for my review.