Book Reviews by Ehlen Administration

David Finkleman and Dangerous Magic by P.K. Burian My rating: 4 of 5 stars It’s hard enough to be a sophomore in high school, especially when you number among the smaller, nerdier crowd, rather than the jocks. It’s even harder to keep a secret about your personal identity, which David Finkleman must do. But when strange things start happening in your high school, and you just happen to know a little bit of magic to expose those who may be causing kids to do drugs with stranger than average side effects, can you really keep that to yourself? David has to figure out how to help and hide at the same time. David Finkleman and Dangerous Magic follows a teen who is training to be a wizard in a muggle world. He can’t tell anyone about his powers, and relies on his family secret, especially his grandfather to help hone his natural skill. It’s not quite the rip off of Harry Potter that you may think, although I think the same type of audience would really enjoy this book. It’s a little a...

From Frights to Flaws by Sunayna Prasad My rating: 2 of 5 stars A good book for older kids and tweens, Alyssa McCarthys Magical Missions: Book 1: From Frights to Flaws, begins the story of Alyssa McCarthy as she discovers what the evil magician who is disrupting her life suddenly really wants from her. She is kidnapped, learns about good and evil magicians, and save her friends from danger. Although I can see this appealing to kids, as an adult I was pretty underwhelmed by the writing and character development. The reactions of adults to magic and kids’ explanations of magic, particularly, did not seem logical, and the kids characters were somewhat one-dimensional. Some of the plot points seemed pulled straight from Harry Potter, such as an unaware pre-teen living with an overly-strict caregiver who were not her parents, due to their untimely demise. The underlying story conception has a lot of potential, but the actual writing did not quite live up to the expectations. Still, s...