The Fyne sisters continue to try to battle the curse preventing them from finding lasting love in this second volume in the series, The Moon Witch. This one involves a shape-shifter who kidnaps the middle Fyne sister, Juliette, in the tradition of his people. They know who their true mate is, and are led to them, then they kidnap them and bring them home.
In the first book, I reported feeling engaged early on, but losing patience as time wore on. I felt the same way in this book. At first, I was intrigued by Juliette’s visions, and her part-wolf captor. But the tension didn’t hold. I knew the cures wouldn’t break at the end of this book, because there was still another Fyne witch’s story to tell, but that was only part of the problem. It was all too easy for me…their coming together. I never for one second doubted it. And I realize that thanks to the HEA structure, I never *really* doubt it, but in this case there was more, or maybe less, depending upon how you look at it.
When it comes to fantasy, the whole “meant to be together” thing sounds good in theory, but is a PITA to pull off for real. I’m struggling to remember if I’ve ever seen it done well, and nothing is coming to mind. (Doesn’t mean I won’t think of something later.) The trouble is, once you’ve got some magical connection binding two people, the story’s basically over. Okay, nothing more to see here. Let’s move on. The magical binding, as I’ve just decided to call it, undermines “that which keeps them apart.” The only thing keeping these two people apart was that they weren’t together yet.
There was one aspect that could have worked well, but didn’t. Ryn started having second thoughts when he learned about Juliete’s true destiny. (Won’t give details for the sake of spoilers.) Actually, it probably should have worked, but I had a feeling that it was going to end up being sort of hand waved away. Something in the way both this book and the previous book were written led me to that conclusion long before discovering that indeed, his fears ended up being ridiculously simple to overcome and the whole potential complication amounted to nothing.
There is one book left in this series. I hope that when the curse is finally overcome, it will truly satisfy.
Rating: 3/5
Title: The Moon Witch
Author: Linda Winstead Jones
ISBN: 0425201295
Published May 3rd 2005