{"id":1215,"date":"2017-10-05T20:36:34","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T00:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/?p=1215"},"modified":"2017-09-04T20:38:15","modified_gmt":"2017-09-05T00:38:15","slug":"book-review-summer-at-east-end-double-eclipse-by-melissa-de-la-cruz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/?p=1215","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Summer at East End: Double Eclipse by Melissa de la Cruz"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

Summer at East End: Double Eclipse<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Melissa de la Cruz
\nG.P. Putnam\u2019s Sons Books for Young Readers, 2016
\nISBN-13: 978-0399173561
\nAvailable: Hardcover, Kindle edition<\/p>\n

Double Eclipse<\/em>\u00a0is the second book in\u00a0Summer at East End,<\/em>\u00a0 a YA spinoff series of Melissa de la Cruz\u2019s adult urban fantasy series\u00a0Witches of East End<\/em>, which was about three sisters who discover they are Norse goddesses with witchy powers.\u00a0Summer at East End<\/em>\u00a0 takes place ten years later and focuses on their teenage nieces, twin daughters of Thor, Mardi and Molly, who are human\/goddess hybrids. As background, Norse gods and goddesses live as humans, and when they die they are reincarnated in another human body without memories or powers; these manifest in their teen and young adult years in a process called Reawakening. Mardi and Molly are brand new goddesses in their first lifetime, so they\u2019ve never had to go through this and won\u2019t acquire \u201cgrown-up\u201d memories like the other gods do, because they don\u2019t have them. \u00a0The premise of this book is that the girls learn their mother is the famous tennis player Janet Steele, who moves to East End after purchasing their family home and throwing their relatives out of the house, on the pretense of developing a relationship with her daughters.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t sent\u00a0Triple Moon<\/em>, the first book in the series, but\u00a0Double Eclipse\u00a0<\/em>does a fairly good job of standing on its own (although I have read the original\u00a0Witches of East End<\/em>\u00a0books, and without that background I might be lost, so for teens unfamiliar with the previously written adult series or the television show, it might be more important).\u00a0Unfortunately, even given the background from the previous series (which I enjoyed) I found this book to be disappointing.<\/p>\n

I think a large part of the problem is that it\u2019s difficult to relate to the characters. The sweet twin\/bad twin trope can work and even be kind of fun, which is what makes the\u00a0Sweet Valley High<\/em>\u00a0books work. It can even work when the girls in question are ridiculously wealthy (like the sisters in\u00a0Hotlanta)<\/em>\u00a0but on some level, the characters have got to be relatable, and have at least a semblance of a believable relationship with each other. Twin Molly is the sweet one interested in fashion, makeup, and boys. She\u2019s also easily bought by Janet, instantly loving her and moving in without a second thought, especially after she\u2019s offered expensive shopping trips and the use of a Maserati. Mardi is the cynical one, suspicious of Janet\u2019s sudden interest, particularly since she\u2019s evicted Mardi\u2019s boyfriend (yes, there\u2019s an ick factor there, in dating one of your relatives who just happens to be reincarnated into a seventeen year old boy\u2019s body). Caught in the middle is cute boy Rocky McLaughlin, who is carried away by Molly\u2019s sweetness (and her Maserati) and baffled when she stops texting him. Due to misunderstandings over said cute boy and a spell cast over everyone\u2019s cell phones, disaster ensues.<\/p>\n

Molly, as the \u201cgood twin\u201d is supposed to by a sympathetic character, but she was totally insufferable and so superficial and self-centered she almost forgot that her boyfriend was grieving his mother. Mardi was slightly more likable, but her rebelliousness basically consisted of \u201cI don\u2019t wear makeup\u201d and grudgingly working in a sandwich shop while hitting on her sister\u2019s boyfriend, after she spent most of the book moping over her boyfriend breaking up with her when he realized the essential \u201cick\u201d factor of his dating a teenager. Also, much of the plot hinged on a lack of communication between the two girls. While they weren\u2019t in constant contact through texting, nobody ever suggested they meet face-to-face, although they actually lived on the same small island, interacting with the same people. It also seemed unrealistic that their only same-age peer was the boy they were fighting over. As a side note, these two girls were constantly being offered alcoholic drinks by their relatives, and sucking them down as if this were no big deal. Even in fiction, yes, it totally is. They aren\u2019t in school anyway, so why not just make them 21?<\/p>\n

Honestly, having read both her adult fiction and her children\u2019s books, I expect better from de la Cruz. She\u00a0had a great opportunity here to take advantage of a growing young adult interest in books with mythological settings, thanks to Rick Riordan\u2019s expansion into the world of Norse mythology, the\u00a0Loki\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0Wolves<\/em>\u00a0series by K.L. Armstrong and M.A. Marr, and Kate O\u2019Hearn\u2019s\u00a0Valkyrie<\/em>, and I feel that she really squandered it by turning it into a series about two material girls who also happen to be goddesses, rather than digging deeper into the mythology and providing a little more action, character growth, and connection to the mythology, or even just exploring more of their family connections. I hope there\u2019s more to the next book than there is to this one. However, with Melissa de la Cruz being as popular as she is, and with the interest in\u00a0Witches of East End<\/em>, it probably will be in demand.<\/p>\n

Contains: mild sexual situations, violence<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summer at East End: Double Eclipse\u00a0by Melissa de la Cruz G.P. Putnam\u2019s Sons Books for Young Readers, 2016 ISBN-13: 978-0399173561 Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition Double Eclipse\u00a0is the second book in\u00a0Summer at East End,\u00a0 a YA spinoff series of Melissa de la Cruz\u2019s adult urban fantasy series\u00a0Witches of East End, which was about three sisters who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[64,53,20],"tags":[40,196],"class_list":["post-1215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","category-witches","category-ya-books","tag-melissa-de-la-cruz","tag-witches-of-east-end"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Eu9f-jB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1216,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions\/1216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}