The Healing Spell~ Kimberley Griffiths Little Review

Enjoyment: ☺☼

Plot: ☺☺☼

Characters: ☺☼

Setting: ☺☺☺

Overall: ☺☺

Eleven-year-old Livie is keeping a secret, and it's crushing her. She knows she is responsible for her mother's coma, but she can't tell anyone. And it's up to her to find a way to wake her mamma before anyone uncovers the truth of what really happened.

Added to the list of Livie's problems are being stuck in the middle of three sisters, trying to hide a forbidden pet alligator, and possibly disappointing her daddy, whom she loves more than anyone else. Livie feels like an outsider and prefers the solitude of the wild bayou to her ever-crowded home. But she can't run away from her troubles, and as she struggles to find her place within her family, Livie learns a lot about the powers of faith and redemption. Is her heart big enough to heal her mamma and bring her family back together?

~*~*~*~*~*~

What captured me about this book was that it was the setting. It is set in the bayou of New Orleans and I really liked the thought of that. I thought that it sounded cool because since I am a Southern California girl I do not really know all that much about the anywhere else than California. At least not beyond theory or what I have read in books. The problem is that books are not always that accurate unless the author themselves lived or visited the places that they use in their book. I liked the fact that the writer of the book lived in the major setting of the book.

Yet it opened up with this big huge secret about what happened to Livie's mother and you as the reader have no clue. Livie is continually going on and on about how it is all her fault that her mother is in a coma and yet you never really find out until the very end what it is that happened. The hugest problem for me was that every time I turned the page I was praying that the answer would be on the next page if only so that I could quit reading the book. It was boring. You spend most of your time in Livie's head which is not a place I would wish my worst enemies. The cherry on the sundae though? That had to be the fact that since you were forced to spend so much time in Livie's head that when you finally got out and something happened you had no idea what was really going on. It made me miss the narrators that notice what goes on around them while at the same time being able to think to the audience. The book was not bad it was just really slow and I thought that they unnecessarily kept us in the dark for a frustratingly long time.