Wicked - Curse by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguie

First published in 2003.

Holly Cathers and her twin cousins have just graduated from high school, and they're moving on toward their first semester of college. But no matter where they go, they will never be entirely free of their past. The three are descendants of a powerful coven of witches -- in constant danger from a rival clan.

Holly learns from a vision that Jer is still alive. As leader of the coven, she resolves to rescue him despite the fact that he is a member of the Deveraux clan and therefore her enemy. But her efforts are thwarted when her aunt reveals the nature of an ancient curse visited upon all Cathers witches. It becomes clear to Holly that the death of her parents was no accident, and a similar plague is sure to fall on anyone she grows close to. As her power strengthens, can Holly escape her destiny? And if her destiny includes Jer, does she want to? (www.bn.com)

Curse is the sequel to Witch in the Wicked series and the only reason I read it was because the two books were combined in one. Eh. They’re cheaper that way, actually. And to be honest, I didn’t have a choice. It was either two or none.

Really, Curse was just more of the same of Wicked. There was magic, struggles with magic, angst and running. Not much happened in this story except we find that Nicole’s run off to Europe because she freaked out (the more interesting plot line, in my opinion) and there was a final Hollywood battle a la The Craft towards the end. And Holly drowns a cat for the sake of her powers. I guess she’s getting back to her roots.

I’ll reiterate again, this type of book isn’t my cup of tea. I’m much more inclined to read about real witchcraft than the CGI version.

I actually ended up pretty bored with the plot, mainly because of the amount of angst around everyone. Keri’s pissy with Holly because she got Jeraud killed/undead/whatever he is now. Amanda’s pissed at Holly because she wants to find this guy and doesn’t want her leaving. Tommy will do whatever Amanda does. Tante Cecile and her daughter and pretty much filling in gaps in magic and really don’t serve any other purpose, as were Dan, Kialish and Eddie and Michael is hell-bent on world domination, from beginning to end. Strong on angst, short on action.

What I would like to know is with these witches and warlocks, are the only things they can conjure against each other fireballs? There had to be, like, three times as many fireballs in this book than in the last. Is that the defense du jour because it got redundant pretty quickly. Again, more of the same.

What really irked me, when Holly was commanding the dead army, she spoke in French and the third person proceeded to say she’d never spoken French in her life. Funny considering she explained away the odd, out of body French speaking in the first book by saying she took it in high school. Inconsistencies like this bother me. So did she or didn’t she ever speak French before?

Still, I found the historical subplot much more interesting than the current time plot line. There was change, deviation. Yes, more of the same but the methods were different. The scene changed. The characters changed. There was more promise. Not just stagnant characters that just stood around taking up space while the more prominent protagonists tried to figure out what the hell to do. Now it seems like the secondary characters are being picked off, in one form or another, as the story carries on. Am I right in guessing that Holly will have to face the final battle on her own because she’s the supreme witch that’s sharing a body with someone else?

I’ll never know because I’m not going to keep reading the series. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad. It’s written quite well but it just wasn’t something I could get into. Fireball magic doesn’t really hold my attention to begin with and when the story gets to a point where that’s all that there seems to be, I’m going to get bored quickly.