“[Tiernan] stirs the cauldron with engaging, even cinematic prose and sharply individuates her characters.”

 

NO MAJOR SPOILERS

Balefire was definitely an interesting read. I must say though, a few of the chapters were a bit tedious so I didn’t read them the first time I read the book. Every time after I did read the chapters and most of them do tell some key points ahead of the girls finding out on their own. Those ones are always shorter than the rest.

Cate Tiernan did a great job with the split perspective of the two girls, I feel like the things I write could never live up to her work. All of this paired with the fact that she got a good amount of her witch facts right made the book very attractive to me.

There were some funny moments to it as well, one of my favorites was the emotionless rake. Even though the twins keep going through bad things the book doesn’t seem overbearingly tragic for a mystery.

I’m not quite so fond of the strict outline for good and evil as I prefer to decide for myself who I’ll stick with and root for. This book makes that a bit difficult but even a couple of the “bad guys” won me over with their back stories. And some of them won my complete dislike (meant in the best way possible).

As for the girls, I don’t know if I’d really think of them as heroes in real life but I’d love to be their friend! They both seemed like normal teenage girls, not fake or made up like some characters.

 

Reviewed by:

KaiFeline

Added 24th June 2015

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