Book Review: Tris & Izzie by Mette Ivie Harrison

Tris & Izzie
Author: Mette Ivie Harrison
Reading Level: YA
Genre: Fantasy/Romance
Released: October 11th 2011
Review Source: Gifted
Available: Amazon

Summary: (from goodreads) A modern retelling of the German fairytale "Tristan and Isolde", Tris and Izzie is about a young witch named Izzie who is dating Mark King, the captain of the basketball team and thinks her life is going swimmingly well. Until -- she makes a love potion for her best friend Brangane and then ends up taking it herself accidentally, and falling in love with Tristan, the new guy at school.

Tris & Izzie is a story of a girl who has always been around magic but was told she would never have it because it’s skipped her generation. Or so she thought. She has a friend who she considers a best friend but things start going downhill once a new boy comes into to town and captures Izzie’s interest. Izzie already has a boyfriend. They have a steady relationship and she’s in love, but when something terrible happens she’s magically attracted to this new boy and wants nothing to do with her boyfriend. Izzie begins to question her existence and but doesn’t have time to do so because she needs to save her school but with years of no training, how will she succeed?

I will begin with this; I am not familiar with the story of “Tristan and Isolde”. Therefore, I can only base my review on this book alone and can’t make a comparison. However, this story captured my interest from the beginning because of the characters. I loved how well they were written and the story line was a bit of a twist. Instead of a love triangle it was a love quadruple! It was interesting to see how the author would play that little scenario out and she did a great job. The sense of undying love, devotion and a little bit of magic can make for a great story, and this was it.

The plot was a little harder to get into, it seemed a little generic. Like I said I’ve never read “Tristan and Isolde” but this story did not have the WOW factor I thought it would have. Yes, there’s magic and yes, there’s romance but what else? There are no twists, with the exception of the love quadruple; it was inevitable that action part would happen otherwise the story wouldn’t have been a story. Don’t get me wrong it’s a good story; I just thought it lacked a little more WOW factor.

The writing of the story was crisp, clean and easy to read. It allowed me to breeze my way throughout the entire book in a day and that’s something I can’t say about a lot of these books. Overall, it’s a good story and I recommend it. Remember this is only my opinion. You may think it’s the best book around, so don’t get discouraged by my review and give it a shot! You never know you might like it!