I am a long-standing fan of James Patterson - I’ve read many of his books, my favorite of which is When the Wind Blows. I’ve read the Alex Cross series, and have enjoyed some of the Maximum Ride series as well. So, overall, I’ll definitely say that he’s a talented writer, and his books are generally very good. I received a copy of Witch & Wizard for my birthday from a family member, along with its sequel. I was pretty excited, as I’d been wanting to read this book since it first came out, but I’d never really gotten around to it. So, this past Sunday, I sat down and decided to read it, pretty much all in one sitting. That’s what I did, but I can’t say that I enjoyed it.

The premise of the book is this: two siblings, Whit and Wisteria (“Wisty”) Allgood, are suddenly ripped from their normal, everyday lives by some new form of government that they don’t know anything about (but everyone else seems to), and are accused of practicing Witchcraft. Pretty cool premise, right? Yeah, sure! I was down with that - I love stories like this. Discovering magical powers has the potential to be really awesome in books, when done well. I mean, look at Harry Potter - that pretty much speaks for itself.

So, the first chapter opens with Whit and Wisteria being woken from their sleep in the middle of the night by soldiers breaking into their house to take them away. Already, the narration seems forced, rushed, and while I’m sure their situation is very traumatizing, the reader is not given any time to establish an emotional connection with the characters. Why should we care that they’re being uprooted from their lives and dragged away to who-knows-where? That might sound harsh, but as of the beginning of the novel, everything happens so fast that there’s no time for character development. I was hoping that this would change throughout the text, but I was, unfortunately, disappointed. The whole story, told in variation between Whit and Wisteria as the first-person narrator, is completely disjointed and rushed, moving from plot-point to plot-point much too quickly for the reader to absorb anything but the basics of the not-so-well-developed-in-the-first-place story.

Even the chapters in sequence don’t seem to make any logical sense in some places. There were several times when I was confused as to what had just transpired - it felt like there were pieces of the book that had just been ripped out entirely, and were missing. These pieces would have been key in understanding just what was going on, and so at times, I was completely and utterly lost, and not in a good way. I don’t feel as though Patterson intended to keep the reader in the dark on purpose for effect; rather, it seemed as though he was rushing to get out the first book for a series which he hoped would follow the same path as Maximum Ride in way of popularity.

Whit and Wisty, the two main protagonists of the series, are completely unbelievable as teenagers. Their language seems awkward and, again, forced - almost like that one ‘un-hip’ grandmother trying so very hard to use modern ‘lingo’ to interact with their grandchildren. There is one instance in particular that completely shocked me to the point that I had to pull my mother over and read the passage to her. I will type out the two sentences below. Do note that this is not in conversation between the characters, but in the narration itself:

My parents looked horrified - but not actually surprised. So WTH?

- p. 26

I was baffled by this inclusion of internet chatspeak in the normal narration of the novel. Just because this is a YA book does not mean that a written-out curse word is unacceptable. “What the hell?” would have sufficed. This is probably about where I lost all hope for this book, and it was only 26 pages in. But I digress.

When Wisty and Whit begin to discover their powers in violent and destructive ways, they seem surprised (or at least, the reader is told by Patterson that they are ‘surprised’). However, rather than be afraid or genuinely confused, they seem to brush off these new, strange powers. As they develop their skills throughout the book, they never seem to have to actually try. At any rate, the reader is not shown their struggle, which makes it very unrealistic when on the second try, Wisty is suddenly able to control her powers masterfully. True, she does get better the more she does it, but the powers do not seem to develop as much as they just suddenly appear. Also, new powers just seem to appear out of thin air at a nonsensical and unrealistic rate. Some might argue that this is Fantasy, but even Fantasy needs to have some type of logical progression. Definite failure on Patterson’s part.

Of course, as with any story of this type, there are also antagonists. These villains are described in a way that makes them seem almost cartoonish, even though they are obviously supposed to be terrifying in the “Big Brother” kind of way - intimidation, holier-than-thou, that sort of thing. However, these villains are laughable! They are not intimidating or scary in any sense of the word. In fact, they seem downright stupid and have no motivation behind their actions.

The only character who seems to experience any sort of dynamic change is Byron Swain, and even that does not seem entirely believable. For whatever unknown reason, the Allgoods’ former schoolmate and bully is suddenly in league with the higher-up bad guys. Then he randomly has a change of heart. It’s as if he just gets up one morning and decides: “Oh! Character decision - I want to be good now!” Sorry, Patterson, that’s just not how character-development works.

Overall, the characters were not well-developed at all. The reader is told a little bit about them, but Patterson never offers a chance to get to know the characters through their actions, or interactions with other people. The small love story between Celia and Whit is supposed to be tragic, and could conceivably be heartbreaking if the reader was given any time to establish an emotional connection with Whit, or Celia, or any of the characters in the novel, really.

Anyway, I suppose I’ll stop my review here. I felt obligated to read the entire book because it was a birthday present, and I don’t like to stop books in the middle. I don’t plan to read the sequel, and I think this novel is some of Patterson’s worst work. I was entirely disappointed, and even a little disgusted by the sheer (I can’t even call it ‘mediocrity’ as that is completely too charitable) lack of effort put into this book.