Friday, March 4, 2016

BOOK REVIEW: "Suddenly Spellbound" by Erica Lucke Dean



Suddenly Spellbound 
By Erica Lucke Dean 
Genre: Paranormal Romance 

Something witchy this way comes. 

Kindergarten-teacher-slash-sorceressIvieMcKiehas officially sworn off magic.With herfather back fromthedead—just in time for herupcoming wedding tosexyformer magician Jackson Blake—Iviehas plotted a course straight to happily-ever-after-ville.And she won’t let anything get in her way this time. 

ButDaddy Dearest has something sneaky up his sleeve.When“just one more spell” goes horribly wrongand detoursher intothe path ofherfather’sdangerously hotnew apprentice,Iviehas toscrambleto getthe magic… and her love life…back on track.  

Along the way,sheencounters apromise made before she was born, aclan of Scottish sorcerers in kilts, andyetanother goat.  

Suddenly Spellboundis a newmadcap adventurefeaturingIvieMcKiefromSuddenly Sorceress.   

Author Bio 
After walking away from her career as a business banker to pursue writing full-time, Erica moved from the hustle and bustle of the big city to a small tourist town in the North Georgia Mountains where she lives in a 90-year-old haunted farmhouse with her workaholic husband, her 180lb lap dog, and at least one ghost.  When she's not busy writing or tending to her collection of crazy chickens, diabolical ducks, and a quintet of piglets, hell bent on having her for dinner, she's either reading bad fan fiction or singing karaoke in the local pub. Much like the main character in her first book,To Katie With Love, Erica is a magnet for disaster, and has been known to trip on air while walking across flat surfaces.  How she's managed to survive this long is one of life's great mysteries.



On Red Adept: http://bit.ly/RAPSpellbound 
Erica on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericaluckedean  

MY REVIEW:

I read the first book in this series as a fan, not a blogger, and I had liked it. Ms. Dean wrote a quirky paranormal romance, heavy on the romance. Unfortunately, the sequel does not quite live up to its predecessor.
While Ivie is still adorably quirky, Jack is still sexy, and the magical elements are well written, there are new additions to the story that were questionable. Ivie's father comes back from the dead, and starts very nearly controlling her life, making her break not just her vow to stop using magic, but quite literally ruining her life. Now,  I understand that, and the fact that Ivie's father wants her to marry someone else. Those are necessary plot points, and in most cases they would serve to make the heroine buoy herself up and face them head-on. Instead, Ivie adds to her own problems. She never stands up to her father or tries to fix the problems for over half of the book. To top it off, she starts feeling lust towards the other man, betraying Jack.
She seems to prefer having others influence her own thoughts rather than thinking for herself. This book could have been great, but Ivie's own personality change from book one to book two sabotages it.
I will, however, read the next book in the series, because I want to see where this is going.

3/5--not as good as the first book, but still good.

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