Gah. If Conjured had not been on the Cybils shortlist, I never would have finished it. I hated this darn book.
The idea of it was good. The ending of it was good. The first half (if not more) was so damn slow and repetitive that I was cursing it pretty much nonstop.
Eve is in a witness protection program. She has memory loss. A lot of memory loss. The agents guarding her want her to tell them… something… what, nobody knows because the author doesn’t tell us and Eve has memory loss. Eve can do magic and when she does, she blacks out. When she wakes up, days (weeks? months?) have passed and she’s apparently been awake and interacting with society but she can’t remember anything that’s happened at all.
Rinse and repeat. Over and over and over for a good 1/2 of the book. That’s pretty much all that happens. And it’s annoying. By the time the story started moving, I was so disgusted that I barely wanted to finish. But I did. It was hard but I did it.
I hate books like this. Move a little more quickly or give us some reason to keep reading the slow mess at the beginning. Do not make a book for kids a struggle to read. Stupid.