Review : The Midnight Spell by Rhiannon Frater and Kody Boye

Posted by Kay on February 26, 2013 1:08 am in 4 stars reads | 6 comments

The Midnight Spell by Rhiannon Frater and Kody Boye
Pages : 288
Genre : YA, Paranormal
Stand Alone
My Rating : 4/5

From the back of the book :

Get your copy on Amazon today!

My Thoughts :

I’ve been really sick with the flu in the past couple weeks, which sadly kept me away from almost any kind of entertainment, including blogging. Fortunately, reading was one of those things I managed to do a little off, by reading small amounts at once before falling back in a confused, syrup-induced sleep. At times, I almost feared I wouldn’t managed to finish the book in time for the tour; happily for me, The Midnight Spell was such an entertaining book that reading it was a breeze!

First thing I have to say, and it’s something I always have to mention when I come across such an opportunity (which is too rarely, really) : I loved that Adam was a gay main character, and that his story wasn’t all about this single fact. It’s also refreshing to have a story where the homosexual character isn’t used as an humorous device.

I also found that Adam and Christy were a fantastic pair of narrators. They had distinctive voices, but not in a way that clashed; their chapters had a nice flow and completed each other. Also, how nice is it to have two narrators who aren’t in love with each other? It created a narration that is less about creating tension, and more about seeing different parts of the story develop through different perspectives.

My favorite thing about The Midnight Spell though, was how light and fun it was. There’s magic, and of course there is a dark, ominous danger looming around; but more importantly, the story is about friendship, love, relationships. Even though I sometimes felt that the dialogue wasn’t completely natural, Adam and Christy’s banter made up for it plenty. Also, loved Christy’s parents and their cat Callie, who was a character as much as anyone else in the book.

In the end, The Midnight Spell turned out to be a really fun read. It’s a YA novel that doesn’t take itself too seriously, even with its teenagers’ dramatic lives. I do hope we’ll see more of Frater and Boye’s work in a close future!

A digital copy of the book has been generously provided in exchange for this review.

Rhiannon Frater is the award-winning author of the As the World Dies trilogy (The First Days, Fighting to Survive, Siege,) and the author of three other books: the vampire novels Pretty When She Dies and The Tale of the Vampire Bride and the young-adult zombie novel The Living Dead Boy and the Zombie Hunters. Inspired to independently produce her work from the urging of her fans, she published The First Days in late 2008 and quickly gathered a cult following. She won the Dead Letter Award back-to-back for both The First Days and Fighting to Survive, the former of which the Harrisburg Book Examiner called ‘one of the best zombie books of the decade.’ Rhiannon is currently represented by Hannah Gordon of the Foundry + Literary Media agency. You may contact her by sending an email to rhiannonfrater@gmail.com.

Kody Boye was born and raised in Southeastern Idaho. Since his initial publication in the Yellow Mama Webzine in 2007, he has gone on to sell nearly three-dozen stories to various markets. He is the author of the short story collection Amorous Things, the novella The Diary of Dakota Hammell, the zombie novel Sunrise and the dark fantasy novel Blood. His fiction has been described as ‘Surreal, beautiful and harrowing’ (Fantastic Horror,) while he himself has been heralded as a writer beyond his years(Bitten by Books.) He currently lives and writes in the Austin, Texas area.