BOOK REVIEW: The Hawkweed Prophecy by Irena Brignull

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. The scheduled release date for this book is September 6, 2016.

Poppy Hooper has managed to deceive her father into believing that there is nothing mysterious or unnatural about her. He ignores the cats that find her wherever she goes, the spiders that weave beautiful lacy patterns for her, even her eyes - one blue, one green with an extra black dot orbiting the pupil. Ember Hawkweed is a pitiful excuse for a witch. When the other girls in her coven brew vile potions, Ember makes soap and perfume. Fair and pretty, Ember is more like a chaff than a witch. When the two girls meet, Poppy discovers her powers, and finds out the truth. Bound by their unlikely friendship and the boy they both love, the girls try and find their place in the world. But the time of the prophecy draws nearer - and the witches won't give up the throne without a fight.

This review might seem all over the place, but that's because the book was kind of all over the place. The beginning of this book was beautiful. I loved the writing and I absolutely loved all the talk of magic and two mothers loving the wrong baby. It started off amazing. I just wish the book had kept up that momentum.

So Poppy is a witch, but Emma's not. But since they are switched at birth (this is revealed on the very FIRST page, so that isn't a spoiler), Poppy is raised by "chaffs" (witches' term for non witches) and Emma is raised by witches. Neither girl feels like they fit in. Poppy's mom is in an asylum because she had a breakdown or something and part of that was due to all the weird things that would happen around Poppy and she always knew something was different about her. Poppy goes from school to school because of all these weird things and her dad basically ignores her. I hated him a lot. Meanwhile, Emma doesn't have any of the powers that the witches around her have, so she gets bullied a lot. Her aunt Raven is the queen of the witches and the prophecy says either her daughter or her sister's daughter will be the next queen. Naturally, Raven wants it to be her daughter, Sorrel.

When Poppy and Emma met, I liked the friendship. I wanted to see Poppy learn about her powers and about magic from Emma. I wanted Emma to learn how to fit in from Poppy. Their friendship was sweet, but at some point it stopped being about the friendship and the magic and it started being about some guy, Leo. That's where the author lost me. First, Poppy liked him. Then Emma liked him. Leo liked Poppy, then he liked Emma. Then Poppy was going to "let" Emma have him because they're friends, then she was mad. Then Leo was using Emma to make Poppy jealous, then he actually liked her. Okay, you get how confusing that is right? In the meantime, all the magic and the world building with the coven that Emma lived with just got lost. Poppy borrowed magic books and learned about her powers away from Emma and they stopped spending time together. It was frustrating, especially with all the questions I had about the witches and their coven. One question was who were these witches procreating with? There were NO men in the village and women were given poison to get rid of the baby when it was a boy. Weird, right? So I just had no clue who fathered whom.

The whole "switched at birth" thing wasn't even very suspenseful because I knew that from the first chapter so it's really just a matter of waiting for the big reveal. Poppy's family was ridiculously neglectful so there was no emotion about potentially leaving them. And the ending for Emma was just anticlimactic. There was a struggle for power and some random clan trying to assassinate the real queen, but there was no suspense there either.

I did warn you about this review being all over the place. So basically a book that started about witches and magic and ended up being a love triangle with some cliche versions of witches thrown in every once in a while. 

Buy/Borrow/Skip: Skip this one.