Witch’s Brew (Spellspinner’s of Melas County #1)
Heidi R Kling
Publisher: Coliloquy
Release Date: January 11, 2012

Rating: 5 stars

Spellspinners is an “Active Fiction” title, a new type of e-book from Coliloquy. In this Active Fiction series, your input influences future books from this author. Specifically, in Spellspinners, your input influences what happens to star-crossed lovers Logan & Lily. Spellspinners is a young adult series about a witch, a warlock & their forbidden love. Once soulmates, the witch & warlock covens have been estranged for a century. Twice a year, their teens meet in the Solstice Stones, a magical battleground, to draw energy from each other. Logan & Lily have trained their whole lives for the Stones. In Witch’s Brew, Lily is torn between her feelings for Logan & her loyalty to her coven. The lovers race against time, their distrust for each other & their powerful elders to unravel the mystery of the past before their future is destroyed. While Lily & Logan’s fate may be decided, the author explores several paths to get there. The author sees the aggregate statistics on what option gets picked the most, so the more you read, the more you influence what she writes!

Fantasy has always been my favorite genre, so when I learned Heidi R Kling was writing a fantasy book, I was beyond ecstatic. For those of you that have read my blog at any point before, you will know of my love for Heidi R Kling‘s debut, Sea, and how I harbor this immense crazy love for it. Something I didn’t think was possible happened with Witch’s Brew – I loved it even more. I should learn to never doubt Heidi R Kling, as she is simply a mastermind with words and can write the most beautiful stories.

Witch’s Brew is told in split point of view between Lily and Logan. First off, I just loved this – Split point of view is one of my favorite things for an author to do, and Heidi R Kling rocked it. Lily and Logan both had great voices and I found them to be great narrators – I really liked both of their voices.

Another really neat aspect to Witch’s Brew is that there are two different options for the story to go You reach a point a little ways into the book and are given two paths, like a choose your own adventure. That means you get double the characters (specifically double the Logan) and double the story! I loved both options – both were super intense and I loved them for different reasons.

The world Heidi R Kling has spun is wonderful. Her take on witches is fresh and new – which made reading so much fun. I never knew what the rules of the witches and the warlocks were or how they lived. It was a completely new experience. I also just love Kling‘s prose – it is so whimsical and has a musicality about it. My emotions were running high the entire time I was reading – I found myself cheering with the characters or get upset when things weren’t going the way I wanted or well for the characters. That is my favorite type of book to read, one where I can get so into the story!

The originality of the witches in Kling‘s world really helped make the plot that much more interesting. I had no expectations for what would happen, so I just loved walking through Lily and Logan’s world to figure out what would happen next. There were elements of mystery in the cases of both the witches and the warlocks, and I’m very curious how that will all pan out.

The characters of Witch’s Brew were so much fun. Logan will be sure to catch every girl’s attention – I know he has definitely made the top to my list of hot YA boys. He is just so nice and so pure hearted I felt like. I loved Lily – she is a great main character and another great soul. Daisy was a character who was so fun any scene she was in – I hope to hear a lot more from her in future books! Orchid had so much spunk – She’s another character I’m looking forward to see more of. Maggie only appears in one scene, but she’s yet another character to hear more from in the future.

I simply cannot wait for the second Spellspinners of Melas County book. Kling has built the perfect structure for the series with this book and it will simply take off from here. The last pages of Witch’s Brew built with an immense amount of intensity to just the perfect point, then breaks off in quite the cliffhanger. It is a cruel ending, yet definitely peaked my interest beyond belief for the next book.

Witch’s Brew by Heidi R Kling is the book I have been waiting for since the day I finished the last page of Sea. There’s something about Heidi R Kling‘s books that is so magical. The stories she tells and the characters she chooses, they all are just so wonderful and worthy of being told. The cast of characters in this series definitely have a story worth telling, so the wait until book 2 begins now.