Alejandro's Sorceress by Alyssa Day

Title: Alejandro's Sorceress
Author: Alyssa Day
Genre: Paranormal/Romance/Adult

Maturity Rating: 17+
Initial Rating: 2/5
Technical Rating: 2/5

My Quickie Synopsis: Garden-witch Rose Cardinal has a problem of the paranormal variety; a family of basilisks has taken over her garden! When her mother calls in the help of a federal agency, Rose quickly finds that she may have a bigger problem on her hands. Agent Alejandro is too tall, dark and handsome to be ignored and his sights are set on her. Opposites attract in this quirky, light novella.

My Initial Response: Whew! I made it through in one piece! Meet one of the prime reasons why I normally don't read novellas: Alejandro's Sorceress. I found myself rolling my eyes all too often, shaking my head every other sentence and feeling generally detached while reading.

The range of emotions I went through while reading

The writing reminds me of watching a sitcom. I could picture this being on TV, me watching for all of a few minutes, and then swiftly changing the channel. Why? Because it's shallow. I generally don't take issue with instant love syndrome, but this was just ridiculously unbelievable. I think overall that I just wasn't the right audience for this book. I'm guessing Ms. Day wrote this for her established base of fans who already know her world and her style of writing; maybe this was just a quick appetizer to whet the appetites of her fans waiting for her next full-length book. Who knows? The writing wasn't altogether terrible though, so maybe I'll give one of her novels a try in the future. Maybe.

Character Building: 0.5/1
I have to give Ms. Day some credit here because she did try to flesh out her characters. I'm not saying that it was a masterpiece by any means, but I could see the beginnings of some concrete building. Overall though, I didn't really care about the characters. I didn't hate them, I didn't love them. They were just there. Some of the interactions were amusing, some even steamy, but most were very awkward.

Plot Strength: 0/1
There was a plot? If there was, I missed it. Completely. There isn't any major conflict, unless you count the cat and mouse game of the instant love syndrome. There are a few cool ideas introduced along the way though and my bet is that those ideas come more into play in Ms. Day's other books. But these ideas were mere decoration and really didn't add on to the story at all. Highly disappointing.

Sincerity: 0.5/1
I struggled with this rating a bit. To be perfectly fair, I didn't want to give any points for sincerity at all. However, I think that the events of the book fit in with the world that Ms. Day created at the very least, so I had to give some credit. I don't want to spoil the story, but if you read it, you'll understand why I was hesitant to give it credit at all.

Editing: 1/1
There were a few minor errors here and there, but they didn't detract from reading.

Pacing: 0/1
This story is a little all over the place. The progression didn't feel natural at all, especially with the insta-love element added into the mix. Beyond that, there wasn't even an actual plot.

My Icing on Top:
I didn't get much out of this book. As I said earlier, I think those who already read books by Alyssa Day would probably enjoy this more than I did though. Aside from that, I suppose if you love crazy instant love syndrome, this story may be up your alley as well. Anyway, this was the second book in the anthology that I mentioned in the last post, so if you really want to give it a try, I'd suggest heading over to Amazon to buy the set. It's currently on sale for the low price of $0.99 so you can't go wrong! Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance

Check out my informal review on Goodreads!

Happy reading!

-K