The Crystal Princess, by Kimberley Norton

With the war between good and evil looming, Kelly must find the strength to harness her magical powers and summon The Crystal Princess inside her. 

Kelly lives the life of a typical teen in the suburbs of Southern California with her football star boyfriend and loyal best friend. It’s her senior year, and she’s looking forward to her eighteenth birthday. But her life totally changes when she’s abducted by her birth family, a family she didn’t even know existed. Meeting her mother and two sisters for the first time is almost too much for her to handle. Kelly learns she is a witch born from a coven of witches with special powers. She’s called back to help her family fight the evil, power-hungry witch, Victoria, and the Wizard Council, who want to destroy all that Kelly’s family holds dear before the Immortality Ceremony, a ceremony that will seal the girls’ fate and powers for all eternity. 

To make things even more complicated, Kelly falls in love with an Indian named Max White Bear. But because of a longstanding tradition, their relationship is a hard sell to the chief of the Indian tribe. 

With the war between good and evil looming, Kelly must find the strength to harness her magical powers and summon The Crystal Princess inside her.

It seems pretty covers are always lying these days.

On goodreads, the only other ratings are five stars. I gave it one.

I’m not sure why this is. Well, actually, and I don’t want to be mean or anything, I don’t understand how anyone thought it was worth five stars. I feel really bad saying that, because I got my copy from the author herself, and for free (all internet of course, I don’t know her personally).

Right, so, the blurb pulled me in a bit. I was really excited to read it. From page one, it was evident that this would not live up to my expectations. Complications arose from the structure and content of the writing.

a)      1. It was a young adult concept. There were teenage main characters, a teenage romance and supernatural powers is mainly young adult.

b)     2. It was written basic, flying between plot points without much explanation or description. Also, things happened incredibly fast and ridiculously cliché, which would only be acceptable for young kids, under ten years.

c)       3. The story was the length of a novella, but it was completely unsuitable. Novellas are for short stories that have a lot of points and characters to explain. Not for an idea that could have been a proper book.

Essentially, I loved the idea of the plot. However, it was completely ruined by the bad way in which it was written. I would have really liked to see this plot in a four-hundred-page book. In my opinion, expansion and extra writing skill would have been a huge improvement. There’s no need for specifics in this review; everything was underdeveloped.

I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone, personally, except possibly a ten year old girl.

My Rating: 1/5

P.S. If Kimberley Norton actually reads this, I don’t mean any offense, but this is my constructive opinion.