Spells Like Teen Spirit
Kate Williams
3 Stars
A few months after the summit that changed all the sitters for good Esme is still struggling with all of the thing she has learned. She still can't help her mother, her dog Pig is still missing and she is still mostly clueless about the sitterhood overall. Her and the friends she made at the summit have decided to all meet up on the first long weekend of the year. This just happens to coincide with the schools Valentine's Day dance. When Cassandra's house is broken in to, the girls follow clues to a band with a constantly changing naming who are clearly using red magic. They must work together to find out what these guys want and take them down for good.
Ugh, this was just not what I expected. I pushed through this series hoping it would get better and it genuinely didn't. I loved the concept sooooo much, but it had just too many issues to be good. It did have a few redeeming qualities which is why it isn't two stars. It was charming and the actually ideas although poorly executed which interesting and I needed to know what happened. But the two big bads from previous books were kind of just forgotten about? They had so much exposition to just be ignored, and their stories never finished.
The amount of references made no sense at all. I still have zero sense of when this is supposed to take place, and considering the references range from the 80's to the 10's I don't think anyone else would know either. They was also so many plot holes, plot contradictions and far too much plot shoved into the last chapter for it to be considered a last book of the series. I also hate when a book has romance shoved in just to have romance. It wasn't even a subplot in any of the books but was squeezed into every one. This could have been sooooo good, if it got just a little editing to make it seem less like one big reference and focus on the story or the world building even a little bit. This didn't feel like a true final book, more like the last book the author was approved to write that tried to shove as much in to create some kind of "ending".