The Amaranth Enchantment Review

Title: The Amaranth Enchantment

Author: Julie Berry

Publisher: Bloomsbury

ISBN: 97815999903347

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Like to preface my review by saying that I own this book for 5 years and never could make myself crack the book open.  It was always bypassed by something more interesting.  Finally, I made myself and it wasn’t as bad as I thought. 

Lucinda lived a charm life until a fatal accident took away her parents.  Forced to live and work at her uncle's gold shop and under the evil eye of her spiteful aunt, Lucinda dreaded of ever escaping her lot in life.  Then a chance meeting with the Amaranth Witch changed her life forever. 

The story was an interesting reinterpretation of the ‘Cinderella’ fairy tale.  However, the one-dimensional characters and over-complicated plot made it hard to keep my attention.  The hero, Prince Gregor, was a jerk.  And I couldn’t care less for Lucinda either.  They probably spent less than an hour in the other’s company in total and knew they were in love.  Of course, something happened and even though they were actually strangers, their trust was betrayed.  And for what he did to Lucinda was unforgivable.  But not all was lost.  There were three characters that added a little extra flair to the main plot. Beryl (godmother), Peter the thief and even Coxley the villain, had a more fascinating story attached to them.  But you don’t get to see them much until the end.  So, readers, hold out till the end.  The ending will make up for the lackluster first half of the book.  It was packed with adventure and action.

The writing was good.  The main plot was okay with interesting side stories.  Didn’t really like the main characters.  No real romance.  Decent amount of drama.  ‘The Amaranth Enchantment’ was unfortunately a miss for me.  There were good aspects of it but just not enough to keep me interested.