A Quarrel Called

by Shannon Wendtland

[Beth C.]

Four kids, three have been friends forever, and the fourth is new in town. As they all get closer, strange things begin to happen. One is having dreams, one feels energy from the earth, one has an affinity for crystals, and one suddenly finds that he can wield a glowing sword when the chips are down. And when they all sit down around a Ouija board, all bets are off.

The premise of this sounded interesting, but...the execution left quite a bit to be desired. As per a quote from the book, "I was going to say contrived. Made up. Like this is some sort of a bad movie script.". This is, almost exactly, how I felt as I was reading the book.

There are some moments of interest - the groups workings together and the things each of them could do I liked. But overall, it just felt a bit overdone. The characters were not really people I felt that invested in, even by the end of the story. The cliffhanger (no spoilers) was an obvious attempt at leaving readers wanting more, but instead it just left me feeling frustrated that I had spent that much time for no real conclusion.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend it, and as it appears it will be the start of a series, I won't be making any attempt to read the following books.