Harley Merlin and the Secret Coven

This reads like a teenager wrote it. The vocabulary is limited and sometimes just a little off the mark. Sometimes it comes across as if she used a thesaurus and chose words that sound fancy, with no regard for the nuanced meaning.

There is also the odd glaring grammatical error that makes it difficult to take this writing seriously. Who edited this?

Similar to the vocabulary problem, the characters display a limited, and also sometimes misplaced, range of affect, as if the author lacks emotional insight.

As for the story line, I was bored by the end of chapter 2. It is formulaic and predictable. The gift of a good genre author is to make even a genre that is supposed to be predictable (like young adult fantasy and some romance novels) feel fresh and fun to read. I was hopeful that the empath angle might be the fresh element, but it did not succeed.

I will not buy the next one.

This book was advertised as the next book to read after Harry Potter. NO. Just no.

The first book was the best one I read out of 2 1/2. I stopped reading in the middle of the 3rd book. The premise after the introductory book is that there is this insanely powerful evil magician on the loose and out for blood and they have a handful of teenagers just coming into their “powers” and still being trained at the weakest coven in the world who they have put in charge of finding and eliminating her. In reality, for an evil woman this bad they would have had the greatest magicians from the greatest covens in the world after her. But they don’t seem to care at all. I would have enjoyed reading about the great magicians battling this evil woman but instead I got to read about bumbling teenagers and their love interests instead.

By the time you get to the second book, the author begins to get potty mouthed (if you have kids or just don’t enjoy bad language, like me), and begins adding sexual innuendo, and yet her writing level goes down to junior high level with such engaging comments as “You could’ve heard a gnat fart.” My son at 10 would have enjoyed it, but I would not have let him read it due to the bad language and sexual innuendo.

So, no, I don’t recommend the books. The first was OK. It went downhill after that.

I am only part way in and am now having to convince myself to keep reading. I found the scene in Chapter 9 about the blood draw very disturbing, it was abusive and bordered on forced violation of her body. Wade physically restrained her and then they forcibly inserted a needle and took her blood. Some might call this rape! And since when is being part of a group so forced with a very obvious “Or else” attached!?!?! Cult much!?!?!
I will try to go on from Chapter 10 but this book might end up in my “started but…” file on the Kindle. If I manage to make it the rest of the way through I will update this review but I have serious doubts about this one. SAD

Take the Harry Potter series, throw it in a blender with some unflavored yogurt, tap water, the ghost/monster mask from a Scooby-Doo mystery, a BRATZ doll, and pour it all into a Hallmark Channel original movie glass, and you’ve got Harley Merlin. This was touted as being as good or better than the Harry Potter series, but it’s got nowhere near the depth of tone or intricacy of JK Rowlings writing, and it’s clearly pulling a lot of the concept directly from there with only surface attempts to rearrange the characters and setup. I found Harley to be a shade too angry/angsty, with other characters and plot-lines not fleshed out enough… yet. Personally I think this book could have done well with another 100 pages of character and scene development, something more to catch the mind and really open up the series for further plotline exploration.

That being said, there are some unanswered questions and cliff-hangers that I hope are more fully explored in the next book. Its an easy read, which is fine for when youre just looking for something casual that you can read between other stuff going on or to appeal to a younger audience. The book caught my interest enough to warrant going ahead with the next one, but not nearly enough for me to want to seriously recommend it to any friends or family members. I was vacillating between 2 and 3 stars on this one.

My hope is that the second book provides more depth and gets me fully hooked into the series, enough to where Ill happily buy the rest in one shot. But for right now, the best I can say about this is its meh.

I am seriously upset that Amazon called this a book in the same realm as Harry Potter, but for adults. It is juvenile, the writing is ridiculously terrible, her characters are trite, obnoxious, and this book is definitely not worth a sequel. I have no idea if refunds can be made for a misrepresented Kindle suggestion – but if there was, I would be demanding it. Whomever recommended this book to adults should be relieved of his/her job. I will be taking any further recommendations with a truckload of salt from this point forward…

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