The Book of Love

The Book of Love by Kelly Link.

Desperate Housewives but university first years and magic.

Not winning a Pulitzer, but it was an enjoyable ride. The opening gave me high hopes by teasing an interesting world beyond the protagonists' understanding, then let me down by proving it was still beyond their understanding right up to the end.

Every interesting secret or ability ended up being disgorged in their general direction or handed to them before they even needed to think about it. Need to learn magic by a deadline? Just don't think about it at all and it'll happen automatically! Curious what the deal is with the two mysterious, powerful figures who seem to be behind the events of the book? They'll break character to fill you in on their soap opera style drama! Towards the end there's an interesting twist, but was it set up beforehand or discovered by one of the protagonists? Nope. Just exposited by one of the exposition delivery vehicles.

Maybe it's a product of the book focusing more on relationships, but the story just kind of seemed to happen to the main characters rather than being affected by them. I like my protagonists to figure things out, take risks, rail and struggle against the unfairness of the world. This group just kinda... acted like regular teenagers who were suddenly given magical powers, being varying degrees of selfish, horny and short-sighted until the plot delivered them to a point where they had to take action or die.

Having said all that, I should reiterate that I did enjoy it. It was a nice 'turn your brain off for 15min before bed' type of story, and if you just let yourself be caught up in the flow without thinking too much it was pretty entertaining. It's not really the point, but looking back I started to write this review I struggled to explain why I liked it, and that makes it hard to recommend over any other average book you might have on hand.