Pub. Date: August 20th, 2013
Publisher: Zondervan
Hardcover
368 pages
I was sincerely excited for this book. I loved the Alice in Wonderland, Princess Bride kind of feel I got from
the synopsis. But Doon is more Twilight melodrama, than Alice in Wonderland fantasy world
building – which isn’t a bad thing; it just wasn’t what I was expecting. The writing
was solid and consistent, but as a reader, I was left looking for more fantasy
from this ‘fantasy’.
Discontent with her life at home, Veronica wonders if she’s
going crazy when she starts randomly seeing a strange Scottish boy telling her
to come to Doon. Jumping at her best
friend McKenna’s invitation to spend the summer in Scotland at her recently inherited
Aunt Gracie’s home, the girls soon find a set of rings and Gracie’s old diary, telling
the story of a hidden land over a bridge called Doon. At the mention of Doon Veronica
knows the boy she has been seeing is real, and feels compelled to find Doon and
him. McKenna on the other hand is not convinced Doon really exists. Finding and
crossing the bridge to Doon is easy compared to getting both of Doon’s Princes,
Jamie and Duncan, to believe they are in Doon with good intentions. Prince
Jamie – Veronica’s dream boy – is especially hard to convince because he suspects they were sent by Doon’s evil witch to destroy his land. The girls know there’s a reason
they found Doon, and they need to figure it out before the witch destroys them
all.
Was this novel cute and entertaining – Yes. Does that mean
I loved it? No. For a novel that was about another land, there is so little
description of Doon, and next to no world building. Doon is basically our world
with a very high Scottish population. I found the narrator distinctions included at the beginning
of each chapter to be distracting and unnecessary because the girls are in the
same place, talking to each other for the majority of the novel, and when they aren’t,
the speaker is clear. The pacing of the novel also didn’t really work for me. I
found it much too slow. Near the end of the novel McKenna references how in
plays everything builds to one major event. I assumed this reference
foreshadowed a major event at the end of the novel. But, getting their took too
long for me, and I found the major events to be unsurprising, predictable and
not entirely worth the extensive buildup.
Narrative-wise, the characters were the selling point and
they are what truly kept me reading. I appreciated the girls intelligent,
capable, strong-minded characterizations. What fell short in the narrative was
the ‘magic’, or what is described as the power of Doon’s ‘Protector’. The magical
elements from ‘The Calling’ – where two people dream about their soul mate (aka
Veronica’s dreams about Jamie), to the use of magic at the end of the novel,
felt contrived. The magic was not backed up with enough logic, or explanation for
me to find it effective. If we are supposed to just have faith in the magic, without
explanations of the how’s and the whys, then I really did not have the faith.
I can see this novel working really well for teen romance
lovers because the romances between the girls and the Princes are full of
angsty goodness. But for readers looking for more action and world building in fantasy
novels, I don’t think they will be satisfied.
Rating 5/10 – The aspects I liked, I really liked. The
aspects I didn’t like, really frustrated me.
*** I received a copy of the novel from the publisher to
read and honestly review. I was in no way compensated.
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