Enchantment by Pati Nagle

I really hate writing reviews for books I didn’t like or just couldn’t read. It goes against everything I believe. I love books and most of my reviews are glowing because I only review what I like. As I get asked to review more and more, it means finding that I don’t like some books. More often than not, I push through unless it’s NetGalley then I politely decline writing a review. I can’t remember when I was asked to review this book but it’s been sitting in my tbr pile for far too long. I have spent the last week trying to muddle through the first 50 pages. I finally made it to page 86 when I said that was it. I was done. I was going to walk away and call this once lost in the tbr file. I can’t even remember who asked me to review it and they haven’t gotten back in all this time so would anyone notice if I just overlooked this review? The truth is – no, no one would notice but I would feel like I was lying. Am I a bad journalist if I only post reviews of books I like? Okay, it’s not quite that bad but it was when I started. I need to share the bad with the good. This isn’t the worst book ever written. The language is fine. The plot is okay. It’s just really boring. Just before the start of her senior year in high school, Holly discovers a being living in a spring near her house. The being is dying. She wants to focus on him than on finding a college to attend the following year. In 86 pages, I could tell you very little about Holly (to be honest, I’m not positive that’s her name). In one meeting, she is madly in love with the guy who she knows is not human and can’t leave the spring. She’s nearly obsessive. Day three she has to go with her sister, as her sister returns to college. The whole time she’s sure that the man in the spring believes she has abandoned him. Um, hmm. I found the characters very one dimensional – there was no feeling in this book. I wasn’t being pulled in. Maybe, it’s me. Maybe I just was the wrong audience. Maybe this was the wrong book. I don’t know. I just know that Nancy Pearl said to subtract your age from 100 and then that’s the number of pages you have to read before deciding a book is just not going to work for you. I’d love to say that I read those pages but truth is – I gave it many more and even trying to skim over the story didn’t help me like it.