Title: Crushed
Series: The Witch Game, #1
Pages: 249
Genre: YA Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Clean Teen Publishing
Synopsis:
The Noah girls have beauty, powers, and brains.
They use all three to play their games.
They blow the dust,
the boys are crushed,
and no one is ever the same.
Each year the Noah girls play a secret game— Crushed. The rules are simple.
1. Use wisdom to pick your target. The boy can't be too weak or too strong-willed.
2. Blow the enchanted dust into your target's face to enchant (Crush) him.
3. Give verbal commands and assign them tasks to perform throughout the year. The more tasks completed, the stronger the witch's power grows.
4. At the end of the year, the witch with the most power wins cold, hard cash.
As if being a witch in high school isn't complicated enough, Kristen picks the wrong boy to Crush. Zack is tall, handsome, and a little scary. Her Crush spell isn't working on him like it has with the others. In fact, he is behaving the opposite of every other boy she's Crushed, hating her instead of adoring her. Something is definitely wrong. After someone attempts to kill her, Kristen realizes there is more at risk than a few hundred dollars. She may be betting with her life.
Review
I'll start by stating that the characters start out a little cliched at the beginning. You have your popular girl who rules the school and you have your typical bad boy who's secretly not horrible. Oh and they hate each other, or that's what they think. I'm glad to say that as the book progresses, their cliched personalities get left behind. They develop into their true characters, who have motives and things that influence their actions.
I felt at times, though, that Kristen was a bit bipolar. Her and Brittany both act that way, actually. One moment they could be putting up with each other, and the next they could both be swapping insults and threats. They were like this before the troubles in the book made it justifiable.
On the other hand, there were many aspects of this book that I truly did enjoy. At first I felt sorry for Morgan, then I grew suspicious, and then I knew her for the character that she truly was. Although I didn't like her character, I certainly admired how well she had everyone completely fooled. Zach was definitely one of my favorite characters because you can tell he cares for his sister and tries his best to protect her and take care of her. He has an intensity about him, especially at the beginning where you can almost feel how he feels, particularly his anger and disgust.
The other part I really loved was the mystery behind Brittany's actions and what Morgan's story and motives are. There is a huge tangle of lies in this book that get unraveled one by one as the book progresses. It all developed at a steady rate and had a satisfying ending. Crushed get 4/5 Platypires!