Witches of East End (The Beauchamp Family, Book 1)

Witches of East End (The Beauchamp Family, Book 1) by Melissa de la Cruz (2011)

ISBN:  9781401323905
Pages:  272
Publisher:  Hyperion
Audience:  Adults  and Older Teens (Especially fans of the Blue Bloods series)

The Beauchamp woman, Mother Joanna and daughters Freya and Ingrid, live on the tip of Long Island, New York.  They seem to be regular family, but they are actually a family of witches who cannot use their powers.  Ingrid, the youngest daughter, is getting married to the wealthy Bran Gardiner, but things do not go as they should at their engagement party.  The Beauchamp women all end up using their powers to help the people around them, but their helping hands seem to have negative consequences.

de la Cruz’s attempt at writing adult fiction falls flat.  As with her Blue Bloods series, she writes about two different types of mythologies together.  Not only are these women “witches” they are actually goddesses from Norse mythology.  However, if you are looking for a book with actual characters (besides names) from Norse mythology  this is not it.  The characters are flat and rather irritating and do not act as adults, but rather a group of adolescents.  It is as if she just looked up the various gods and goddesses from the Norse mythology pantheon and wrote aspects of their characters from some list.  Not much actually happens in this story until the end when the reader is slammed with numerous references to Norse mythology where we discover this really isn’t a book about witches.  There are even characters from the Blue Bloods series that pop in for no reason whatsoever  which detracts from the narrative (what there is of narrative).  This is nothing more than another Blue Bloods novel with more explicit sex scenes in it.  Definitely a novel to skip and no need to continue reading the series.

Adaptation:  There is a television adaptation of this series that came out in 2012 on Lifetime Television.

Score:  1 out of 5