Genre: Fantasy
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.17 out of 5 stars
My rating: 3 out of 5 stars
All Clarissa wants to do is become a powerful witch, learn about her mother, and find her high school sweetheart, Derrick.
But it’s not that simple when she’s all but banned from using her volatile magic, her mother was apparently an evil dictator, and her high school sweetheart was swept away in a tornado. Oh, and she caused the tornado.
But, now that she’s a teacher at Womby’s School for Wayward Witches, she might have a chance to actually become part of the Witchkin community and achieve her goals.
Despite everyone despising her because of her mother, she’s making new friends like Josie, a video-gaming witch who loves all life, and Khaba, a Djinn with a kilt fetish. She’s also getting attention from the very sexy Julien Thistledown.
If only that jerk Felix Thatch would stop patronizing her and let her learn about her mother.
Witches Gone Wicked is essentially Harry Potter fanfiction,which had me skeptical at first, but it was really entertaining at the same time.
Womby’s is the Title I version of Hogwarts. It’s for witchkin too poor to afford other schools as well as ones who were kicked out of other schools. Clarissa, being an art teacher, feels the strain of this with an annual budget of $20. The previous art teacher apparently had the students make mud pie art because of lack of supplies. I really liked the idea of a Title I Hogwarts and found the entire school and the staff really interesting.
Josie and Khaba are really funny and entertaining. Khaba is a bit of a stereotype, but I didn’t mind it that much. Josie was fantastic. Gotta love someone who loves all life and has the guts to treat spiders like puppies.
My favorite character is perhaps Felix Thatch. He’s very sexy and funny and I love almost every scene including him. He’s definitely not a people person by any stretch, but he has a lot of integrity as a teacher and a person that Clarissa just refuses to see.
Clarissa is actually one of my least favorite characters. Her dislike and suspicion of Thatch is near identical to Harry Potter’s dislike of Snape. The only problem is she’s a full-grown woman!
Clarissa has a tendency to blindly trust everyone nice to her, not thinking for a second that anyone has ulterior motives. And she despises Thatch for being brutally honest with her despite proving time and time again that he has integrity as a person and a teacher.
Felix Thatch does the following:
- Trains Clarissa to use her magic (granted, the principal ordered him to)
- Emphasizes the importance of people wanting to take advantage of her
- Makes students write apology letters to her
- Lets one of his students read in his classroom during lunchtime
- Expresses concern over said student’s habit of hugging male teachers because someone might try to take advantage of her friendly nature.
Meanwhile, Clarissa thinks Thatch:
- is secretly trying to kill her
- might be trying to enslave her using sex magic
- condones student and teacher relationships
It’s completely insane! Hey, who’s the most likely to take advantage of you? Maybe not the guy who keeps warning you about people taking advantage of you.
Clarissa is sometimes funny and relatable. I like how much she cares about her students and her patience with the troublemakers in her class. That’s actually really admirable.
But half the time she’s juvenile and irrational and I just want to shake some sense into her.
She’s the daughter of a powerful witch who apparently terrorized the Witchkin community with evil and forbidden magic. Clarissa never knew her birth mother personally, but she’s treated with suspicion and fear because her mother killed and ruined the lives of basically everyone.
Because of her lineage and her volatile magic, Clarissa is under constant threat of being fired from Womby’s, drained of her magic, and turned into a Morty (Muggle).
So you think she would be really careful, right?
Lol no.
Clarissa goes around saying she wants to be the most powerful witch ever, uses magic when she’s not supposed to, and makes plans to break into the library’s restricted section. It’s a freaking miracle that she didn’t get drained and turned into a Morty.
Here’s another thing: why doesn’t she want to be drained? I really don’t get it. Because of her magic and her mother:
- everyone hates her
- her sister died
- her high school sweetheart blew away in a tornado
- Womby’s almost burned down
- anyone can turn her into a sex slave
As far as I can tell, there are very few benefits to her having magic and a staggering amount of drawbacks. Call me a defeatist, but if I was Clarissa I would be begging to be drained. Her conviction that magic is her true identity isn’t good enough for me.
All in all, this book is definitely three out of five stars. I enjoyed the worldbuilding and really like Thatch. Some of the magic concepts are surprisingly sexy, which I definitely enjoyed. I just don’t like Clarissa.
Get Witches Gone Wicked at your local bookstore.
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