Review: The Moonstone (Enchantment, #1) by Evelyne Contant

I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review, this does not have an impact on my honesty. The original story is written in French and I read the translated version in English, which may have affected the reading experience.

I found the beginning of the story good, despite it being a tad rushed. I read the first 150 pages a couple months ago, in February so I can't particularly say what happened as nothing really stood out. All I can really remember about these pages is that there was an excessive amount of 'incredible'. This use of incredible continued throughout the book however, I believe that this may be due to the translating, rather than being used in the original French. I can't confirm this though since I can't read French.

I found the storyline interesting though and this was the author's debut book, so I think in the next book - Atlantis - will probably be better in terms of writing quality.

The main character, Lou, is aged 21 in the book, which makes her the kind of age you would expect in a New Adult book, however, the book was written more like a Primary school book. I think the main thing that caused this was Lou. Throughout the book, Lou acted like a little child. Anytime anything happened Lou instantly kicked up a fuss and had a little temper tantrum, I myself am younger than the character but even I can react more maturely.

This paragraph contains some spoilers so please skip to the next bold bit if you don't want to read them.

Near the end of the book, there was a scene with the character Black, in which Lou walks in on him with another woman. Lou then kicks up a fuss - despite not actually being with Black nor has he made any move towards her - Lou then proceeds to run away and, although I appreciate that it was necessary to have Lou leave, I feel as though there could have been more build-up of the relationship earlier in the book so that this scene had more impact. Lou also calls Black a manipulator for pretty much no reason, which I consider to be a silly reaction.

Spoilers end here

Another part of the book that made it feel as though this was for younger readers was the food. Many of us, myself included would not consider food to change how I feel about a book, but this book may have just changed that. The characters only eat sweets. That's every kid's dream. Never eat normal food, just sugar. Lou is also rude to a character who offers her normal food which I didn't appreciate.

I liked how Contant included quite a few plot twists which I didn't expect to happen, I again thought these could have done with more build up, especially as everything between these major events was pretty boring. Everything felt quite convenient too, especially with how neatly everything was wrapped up at the end. Don't get me wrong, I live for wrapped up endings but it felt quite rushed, especially with the events that happened pretty much 10 pages before.

The Enchanters as a race were thoroughly annoying and annoyingly underdeveloped. We're given pretty much no reason as to why Human-Enchanter relationships aren't allowed and why they harbour so much hatred towards Humans and anything related to humans. I would have liked at least a little backstory into this and, I believe that this would have helped with the world building.

Rating 2/5 stars

I definitely recommend reading this in French if you can.

#bookreview #YA