Charm

by Cat Hellisen

Irene Kerry has grown up with the memory of her mother's suicide, and has been in love with her best friend Rain for as long as she can remember. She thinks she's dealing with both just fine until the day her best friend falls in love with a much older man. A man who knew her mother, and believes Irene is a magician like her. In order to protect her friend and family, Irene gets dragged into a hunt for an ancient magician who steals and eats magic, and discovers that the things she thought she knew about her mother's death were all lies.

Genres: Fantasy

222 pages, ebook

First published May 1, 2015

About the author

Presumably a person, occasionally a table.

I write stories.

Reviews

[Frieda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Freaky and twisted but brilliant

So freaky in the start, the types of fear I felt when I was younger - although I'm sure I wouldn't cope as well as Irene if that happened to me. Me chicken.

[Tallulah Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cat's descriptive writing is amazing. Every work of hers has a very distinct mood that's easy to get lost in. Her stories are always different from the norm, meaning anything can (and often does) happen. I loved her portrayal of a gritty Joburg and the characters in this story were all interesting and flawed.

I look forward to being able to purchase a hard copy for my bookshelf :)

[Janice · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dark read with beautiful writing from Hellisen, as I've come to expect. I really liked the incorporation of the Pied Piper folktale and the new elements of the supernatural.

[Vernice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, but for the first half I struggled to get into it. Everything was just so bleak and dark and depressing. I hated the negativity and couldn't stand the characters. I also felt like nothing particularly happened the first half, except that we got front row seats to Irene's obsession with Rain... because I'm sorry but whatever she feels for him is not pure love... but I'm not going to get into their relationship psychology right now.

So there I was at 50%, hating that I was about to DNF a book that I really wanted to like going in... when suddenly it just got incredibly good! I don't even know what changed, because I still don't like the characters (I guess it's more realistic when you have characters that are not the normal trope?) ! I don't know, but I went from about to give it up to being riveted! Suddenly the plot had me hooked and I enjoyed the originality and the grittiness and the familiarity of the customs and location (even though I've never been to Joburg... and after this I really don't want to go either).

There were still parts that I think could have been elaborated on... like Irene's whole family and their vibe and backstory. I would especially have loved to learn more about her mother and the vague remark about Dale also being affected by her magic. And it could definitely have done a better job of drawing me in from the start. If I had rated it simply on the last part of the book it would have been an easy 4... Maybe even a 5! I'm still rating it a 4 (simply because I can't bring myself to go any lower... it really got good man!), but for overall experience it's probably closer to 3 1/2

[Walks Through Walls · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, this was a bit of a long slog. Compared to the other couple of books I've read by Cat Hellisen, this one just doesn't measure up. It starts out as basically one long, angsty, emo whine-fest about the main character's one-sided obsession with her love interest... and it doesn't really go much beyond that, honestly. When the plot finally gets more interesting and things actually start to happen, it then just turns into one long, angsty, emo whine-fest while simultaneously being one of those stories where everyone knows more than the protagonist and refuses to tell them anything. So TWO sources of aggravation!

None of the characters are particularly likable or sympathetic (least of all the protagonist, if you ask me), and very little personal growth is seen in the main character. Only at the very end, when everything has gone to shit and the ashes are falling over the aftermath does she show some inkling of stepping outside her self-absorption.

I am disappointed.

[A.B. Neilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Irene is a young woman with lots of problems. She is in love with Rain, but he doesn't love her in the same way. Irene's mother died and she is scared of being as crazy as her mother was. And she suffers from eczema so her skin is always itching and bothering her at the worst moments. Everything will change when she sees an accident. Her life and her believes will be challenged. I really enjoyed this novel. It is really well written. Irene tries to do her best in very strange circumstances. It has magic intertwined with real life problems and the characters are really alive. I felt so touched with the story. I read it in three days because I needed to know what was next. And the end was amazing. Thank you, Cat Hellisen, for touching my heart.

[Melissa Polk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought it would be hard to separate Charm from the Black Wings of memory. But this story swept me up so quickly that I hardly had time to blink. Cat is one of my very favorite authors and in my eyes can do no wrong - I'm so glad to have this on my shelves.

(I highly recommend listening to Lark while reading this book. Cat introduced me to their music years and years ago and it just feels right to combine the two.)

[Zoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charm is a hard book for me to rate or review because I have a problem with the ending. That being the case, how do I talk about the problem without spoiling the whole thing? I guess I should give the basics and then talk about what I liked, and then carefully pick my way around the ending to avoid spoilers.

Charm is about a young woman named Irene, who grew up believing her mother Hestia was crazy, and that her madness eventually led to her committing suicide. Irene wears a charm that belonged to her mother, a ward against the evil eye that behaves in a strange way around certain people. Despite this unusual pendant, Irene doesn't believe in magic, and she's more worried that she has inherited her mother's madness.

Irene has one lifelong friend, Rain, who she loves deeply, but who cannot love her back in the same way because he's gay. Rain lives with his abusive mother Lily and is locked in a co-dependent cycle with her and Irene. Lily keeps Rain close and uses him to host her own pity party, while Irene enables his heavy drinking while jealously stalking him through his various romantic encounters. Dysfunctional is the order of the day for most of the characters in this story.

The arrival of another magic user upsets the cyclical pattern for everyone, as Caleb takes Rain away from Irene and Lily by casting a spell on him. Shortly thereafter, things begin to get very weird for Irene, who learns from Caleb that her mother Hestia was not crazy at all, and neither is Irene. She is a witch of considerable power, and Caleb hopes to use her in a fight against a powerful mage.

There's some parts in the middle of this book that kind of remind me of American Gods. Not the deities so much as the theme of a main character coming to learn about the secret world hidden away from normal people, a world she should know about, but doesn't because she's been living in denial her whole life.

There's some fights with monsters leading up to the point of Irene learning how to control her power, and then there's the ending. There's no tension to it, and it's over quite quickly, making it a bit of a letdown after the rising tension from the previous chapters. Part of this has to do with Caleb's plan, which everyone but Irene knows about. And this is mostly fine if not for Rain. Rain was apparently told this plan, and how it would involve using Irene, and despite him being her best friend since childhood, he says nothing. Then, even knowing Caleb is manipulating his best friend, he abandons Irene like the ending is her fault. Ultimately, it takes all my sympathy for Rain and chucks it out a window. As for Caleb, his plan stinks, and even the big reveal twist at the end doesn't change my opinion of him. What he does to Irene to beat the bad guy is dreadful.

There is one other thing that I felt unsatisfied with as well, and that's Rain's back story. There's an event hinted at that explains why Rain is so messed up, but it's never really revealed what happened to him. I can't help but wonder at that, but I guess it's something so unspeakable that it had to be left hidden. Sure, not everything has to be explained in a story, but I would have liked an answer to that question.

In the end, I guess I have to give Charm 4 stars. Okay, I really didn't like the ending, but I did like most of the book leading up to that point. It's a good story that I'd recommend to fans of modern dark fantasy.

[Siobhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in 4 days which pretty much tells you how much I enjoyed it.

Cat paints South African youth as I know it.
Irene annoyed me a little because she was so hard up in love with Rain but I could relate because at her age, I was like that too.

The only reason I gave Charm a 4 star review was because of the ending. I really wanted more. It left me with so many things I wanted to know more about. I want to know more about Irene's mom and what happens in the future!

I loved everything about this book. The imagery and scenes and characters. It is truly a great story.
There's a great amount of action and magic in this book.

I really loved that one of the main characters was a homosexual. Not enough books have this diversity with their characters. Real life isn't always just straight people going about life or who fall in love with regular/straight people (though this book is NOT a romance novel.) I just enjoyed this quality.

[Janie G]

I am completely sold on Cat Hellisen's ability to write unusual fantasy. Her most recent book, Beastkeeper, was downright fantastic. I've read her short stories Counter-Curse and Mother, Crone, Maiden. Both shorts are excellent examples of Hellisen's vivid, lovely prose.

If what I gather from the 'acknowledgements' section in Charm, the book is an example of her early work. Charm earned Hellisen her first agent. It's definitely a worthy read to see where this writer got her start.

Told through a first person narrative, Irene comes across loud and clear as a snarky, self-deprecating, self-centered, incredibly reluctant hero.

If you haven't read any Cat Hellisen I recommend starting with Beastkeeper or Hellisen's short stories, then read Charm if you want to see this writer's beginnings.

[Tiah]

- Irene Kerry; the Girl of Failed Good Intentions. -

- The day she died, she saw her death coming and she sat me down on her bed and held my hands in hers and told me. I think it messed me up a little. -

- There's nothing slow-motion about car-accidents. One moment there's noise, then a single empty space where everyone takes a breath, and then the vultures crowd in. -

- My mother's voice is gone, the stories she read from her book can't scare me any more. -

- Making good art is painful. It sucks you up. I can feel how I've dried up inside, like a prune or a raisin, withered before my time. -

[Lisa Tristram · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cat Hellisen is a good writer, the problem with this book was mostly me. I struggle to read books based in my every day life, books based in places I know.
Her writing was descriptive and captivating. The middle of the book felt a bit like it was in slow motion and then suddenly it sped up at the end and boom, it's over. The pacing was weird in that regard.