cowbell

you might think that the fact i hated this series so much might be because i'm the wrong age demographic for this series, however i will say that i read books 1-8 in middle school when i was 12-13, but i never thought to review it until now, several years later. (no major spoilers) obviously my memory of the plot is not great, my memory sucks in general, but i know i despised these books so much that i still remember my biggest problems with them which i will generously leave here below: sophie foster. is becoming a mary sue. we know from the beginning that she has incredible abilities but later find out that that is because she is secretly an elf. however, she has no major flaws, basically everyone who meets her loves her, she is supposedly not the kind of girl who loves being in the spotlight, yet has gotten the attention of not one, not two, but THREE attractive boys who she also happens to be best buddies with. not to mention that she becomes one of the most op characters in their universe practically overnight, breaks a ton of rules with little to no consequences, goes on a bunch of adventures yet still manages to pass all her classes with flying colours, and everything just magically falls in her favour. another thing, the plot was so incredibly predictable, full of cliches, and there were so many questionable choices made by the characters. i have no words. another thing i hated was that elf technology was supposedly really advanced, but any gadget they ever used in the books just HAD to appear in the form of a sparkly gem-encrusted bracelet or necklace or any other wearable accessory. i'm not saying that bejewelled house arrest anklets shouldn't exist but.... really?? i didn't want to be THAT person, but STILL the continued lack of poc characters in modern YA novels still astounds me. yes, there are those weird asian twins and a black character here or there but the fact that they are all always background or side characters is really disappointing in comparison to our constant of glowing all-white main casts. but this isn't surprising. also, we yet again have the love triangle trope with the Cold Aloof Guy with a Dark Past and the Funny Friendly Cool Best Friend. please. i beg of you. please stop. if i read another book with this exact trope with the same exact characters and the same exact outcome where the female protagonist always goes for the Cold Aloof Guy with a Dark Past i am going to cremate my eyes with a curling iron. all in all the only reason i read through all 8 books of this hot trash was because a classmate conveniently owned all of the books and he was willing to share, and because there was nothing else left in my middle school classroom that i hadn't read except for maybe the instructions for feeding the fish tank. however i gave this 2 stars rather than 1 because it has potential, and the writing was decent in terms of technical skill. but garbage is still garbage even if you dress it in gold. thanks for reading and i do not recommend this series unless you are really into cliche chick flicks.