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White Magic: Spells to Hold You
Need to attract a boy? Cure a fear? Let go of the past?
Yvonne has the spell for you.
After Chrissie's dad dies, her mom moves them to California to remarry. Chrissie's lonely new life is transformed when the amazing Yvonne jumps out of her apartment door and pulls Chrissie inside to join Yvonne and Karen in their coven of "good witches." Yvonne is part gypsy, and somehow wiser than other kids her age. Karen is sweet, shy, and madly in love with the wrong boy. Alone, each girl is an outsider; but when the friends share their powers and cast spells to help each other, a kind of magic starts to happen.
Kelly Easton is the author of the young adult The Life History of a Star, Walking on Air, Aftershock, and Hiroshima Dreams . The Life History of a Star was selected as the Golden Kite Honor Award, and as a Booksense 76 Top Ten Book for Teens. She lives and teaches in Rhode Island and Martha's Vineyard with her husband and their children.
Yvonne has the spell for you.
After Chrissie's dad dies, her mom moves them to California to remarry. Chrissie's lonely new life is transformed when the amazing Yvonne jumps out of her apartment door and pulls Chrissie inside to join Yvonne and Karen in their coven of "good witches." Yvonne is part gypsy, and somehow wiser than other kids her age. Karen is sweet, shy, and madly in love with the wrong boy. Alone, each girl is an outsider; but when the friends share their powers and cast spells to help each other, a kind of magic starts to happen.
Kelly Easton is the author of the young adult The Life History of a Star, Walking on Air, Aftershock, and Hiroshima Dreams . The Life History of a Star was selected as the Golden Kite Honor Award, and as a Booksense 76 Top Ten Book for Teens. She lives and teaches in Rhode Island and Martha's Vineyard with her husband and their children.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published August 14, 2007
3 people are currently reading
102 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
September 29, 2013
White Magic helped me get back into reading after going through a rough few months of not reading. It was a nice fun light read, but that's all it had going for it.
The book itself had NO plot at all. The story was very flat and all over the place at times. I never found myself getting attached to any of the characters. They were all pretty uninteresting and unlikable.
The book itself had NO plot at all. The story was very flat and all over the place at times. I never found myself getting attached to any of the characters. They were all pretty uninteresting and unlikable.
March 13, 2008
This book wasa too simplistic, even for a young adult book. The idea was good, but the author could have gone farther and done better. Good enough for me to finish, not good enough to have me looking for more by this author.
March 16, 2008
Cute book, but a little too short! It just skimmed the surface of the characters when I would have liked to read into their personalities in a little more detail. The end left many questions unanswered...
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July 4, 2022Underrated YA novel.
May 24, 2008
This is according to Yvonne, descended from Gypsies, and one of a coven of three white witches in Kelly Easton’s new young adult novel White Magic: spells to hold you, a book i picked up on a whim.
Some of Yvonne’s other rules:
You are not allowed to use drugs. Drugs are like running a race on broken legs and not knowing it.
You are not allowed to smoke, because (Yvonne) can’t stand the smell of cigarettes. (She) made her dad quit too. It was very hard on him.
Alcohol is okay, but only one glass of wine or beer. Being drunk takes away your power~i always included alcohol and cigarettes in the whole drug category but i guess that’s just me
Go easy on technology. Turn off your cell phone before meetings. Try to talk on the phone to each other instead of e-mailing; it’s too impersonal.
Limit all forms of media and technology, because it removes you from nature.
Have faith. If you have the right intention, the universe will take care of you.
Our coven is secret. You can tell people you are a witch, but not about the coven. Secret is sacred.
The other members of the coven include Chrissie, newly transplanted from Vermont, missing the snow, her dead father, and her best friend Jason; and Karen, boy crazy, misguided, and misunderstood. A character named Jimmy (Karen's current crush) who is going through some home turmoil of his own also gets some narrative space (is this the trend of the moment~this constant switch-up of point of view~or just the books i seem to be reading?)
Anyway, all in all, i wasn't entirely thrilled with White Magic~i suppose it was alright~i certainly whizzed through it (but is speed of reading any kind of criteria on which to judge a book?) Perhaps my adolescent girlhood is lacking. It wasn't terrible, but that's about the best i can say. I was also left unimpressed by Easton's research (or seeming lack thereof) into the whole metaphysical, wicca, witcherly (or whatever~i guess it sounded good) realm.
So there you go. My own opinions. For cheap. For free...
Some of Yvonne’s other rules:
You are not allowed to use drugs. Drugs are like running a race on broken legs and not knowing it.
You are not allowed to smoke, because (Yvonne) can’t stand the smell of cigarettes. (She) made her dad quit too. It was very hard on him.
Alcohol is okay, but only one glass of wine or beer. Being drunk takes away your power~i always included alcohol and cigarettes in the whole drug category but i guess that’s just me
Go easy on technology. Turn off your cell phone before meetings. Try to talk on the phone to each other instead of e-mailing; it’s too impersonal.
Limit all forms of media and technology, because it removes you from nature.
Have faith. If you have the right intention, the universe will take care of you.
Our coven is secret. You can tell people you are a witch, but not about the coven. Secret is sacred.
The other members of the coven include Chrissie, newly transplanted from Vermont, missing the snow, her dead father, and her best friend Jason; and Karen, boy crazy, misguided, and misunderstood. A character named Jimmy (Karen's current crush) who is going through some home turmoil of his own also gets some narrative space (is this the trend of the moment~this constant switch-up of point of view~or just the books i seem to be reading?)
Anyway, all in all, i wasn't entirely thrilled with White Magic~i suppose it was alright~i certainly whizzed through it (but is speed of reading any kind of criteria on which to judge a book?) Perhaps my adolescent girlhood is lacking. It wasn't terrible, but that's about the best i can say. I was also left unimpressed by Easton's research (or seeming lack thereof) into the whole metaphysical, wicca, witcherly (or whatever~i guess it sounded good) realm.
So there you go. My own opinions. For cheap. For free...
April 28, 2008
As my third bingo book, I read White Magic: Spells to Hold You . This book is about three girls who are each going through struggles in their lives. Chrissie is a girl who has just moved from Vermont to L.A. after her father had died. To make matters more complicated, Chrissie’s mom has just become engaged to a new man who tries to win Chrissie’s love with material items. Soon she meets two new girls, Yvonne and Karen, who are in a witch coven. These two girls only use their “powers” for good and ask Chrissie to join their coven. Yvonne is a young girl who lives with her father but she has always wanted to meet her mother who had been a witch and a gypsy. Yvonne has high expectations of how her mother is but is soon disappointed when she meets her for the first time since Yvonne’s childhood. Karen, lives with both her parents and is a smart pretty girl but she has always had trouble with boys. She feels as though she needs to become more independent and reliant on herself instead of looking for boys to lean on. The witch coven is just for fun but it creates a friendship between the three girls.
I thought that this book was very good. I liked how the characters were easy to relate to and how they were honest about everything. The plot was enjoyable and it also kept me interested. I liked the setting because it showed how different things could happen even in big cities like Los Angeles. I also liked how the book was written because every chapter was written by a different character which showed each person’s point of view on what was going on. Overall, I enjoyed this book.
I would recommend this other people because it was a good book. I would specifically recommend this book to teenage girls.
I thought that this book was very good. I liked how the characters were easy to relate to and how they were honest about everything. The plot was enjoyable and it also kept me interested. I liked the setting because it showed how different things could happen even in big cities like Los Angeles. I also liked how the book was written because every chapter was written by a different character which showed each person’s point of view on what was going on. Overall, I enjoyed this book.
I would recommend this other people because it was a good book. I would specifically recommend this book to teenage girls.
May 20, 2008
Chrissie loved Vermont. She loved everything about it. The quiet woods, her goat Wilbur, her best friend Jason, and the way she and her father bonded over everything. After her father dies, her mother moves them to California, which Chrissie hates exactly as much as she loved Vermont—which is to say, a lot. There is absolutely nothing at all about California that she likes—until she meets Yvonne and Karen.
Yvonne is half Gypsy, half German, and all witch. She believes in the power of spells, the power of the spirit, and the power of friendship. She lives with her beloved father, a hot dog vender who stole her away from her Gypsy mother when she was five years old. She pretends to be happy, but more than anything, she wants her mother back.
Karen is boy crazy. She can’t help it. She’s desperately in love with Jimmy, who never notices her. Her parents love her a little too much, and her mother is still pretending that she’s eleven.
Together, the three of them form a coven, a sisterhood to protect and help each other and see each other through all the hard things that life throws at them. And they need each other’s help. Because each of them is soon going to realize that sometimes, getting what you want isn’t what you needed after all.
This is a very, very quiet, almost unremarkable book. It’s nice—the friendships between the three girls is nice to see—but it doesn’t stand out in any real way. In fact, I think my favorite part of the book was Chrissie’s chapters—in particular, the way she evolves her thinking in terms of her mother and stepfather.
It’s an okay read, but it feels a little abrupt in too many places for me to really recommend this book.
Yvonne is half Gypsy, half German, and all witch. She believes in the power of spells, the power of the spirit, and the power of friendship. She lives with her beloved father, a hot dog vender who stole her away from her Gypsy mother when she was five years old. She pretends to be happy, but more than anything, she wants her mother back.
Karen is boy crazy. She can’t help it. She’s desperately in love with Jimmy, who never notices her. Her parents love her a little too much, and her mother is still pretending that she’s eleven.
Together, the three of them form a coven, a sisterhood to protect and help each other and see each other through all the hard things that life throws at them. And they need each other’s help. Because each of them is soon going to realize that sometimes, getting what you want isn’t what you needed after all.
This is a very, very quiet, almost unremarkable book. It’s nice—the friendships between the three girls is nice to see—but it doesn’t stand out in any real way. In fact, I think my favorite part of the book was Chrissie’s chapters—in particular, the way she evolves her thinking in terms of her mother and stepfather.
It’s an okay read, but it feels a little abrupt in too many places for me to really recommend this book.
March 28, 2012
I really like this book, very interesting and funny in a way. I liked how three witches all became friends just like that when Chrissie just moved to Los Angeles. The spells Chrissie cast might have brought her some bad carma, but it was funny at what she did to other kids at her new school. I would recomend this to ages 12 and up because there is difficult language and some really bad and innapropriate words... But overall loved it and did this book for an oral book report came out good but i couldn't decide on what the climax was so it was between one thing or the other... :)
October 25, 2008
This book follows the lives of 3 students.
One of the students has just moved into LA and has to be away from her friends. Another one has been in love many times but the person that she has just fell for is in love with her best friend while she is always been called a slut. While the last friend who organized this coven has been a descent of a gyspy has always been trying to find her mom and wants to know who her mom really is.
One of the students has just moved into LA and has to be away from her friends. Another one has been in love many times but the person that she has just fell for is in love with her best friend while she is always been called a slut. While the last friend who organized this coven has been a descent of a gyspy has always been trying to find her mom and wants to know who her mom really is.
December 4, 2008
I thought this book was just OK. I did like that it was a realistic book about witchcraft although I felt the spells and such in the book were hokey and immature. As a Wiccan I felt it made Wicca look like a game and that the book didn't take it seriously enough. All of the characters in the book seemed to have Mommy issues too, whatever point was being made wasn't strong enough. Like I said, it was just OK....
February 19, 2008
What really enchanged me was the cover. Great blend of colors, but of course I don't mean to be like that...
It was kind of a short novel, but very insightful. There seemed to be a lot of meaning between the words.
I like the way the author changed the perspectives, that is indeed a hard thing to do.
It was kind of a short novel, but very insightful. There seemed to be a lot of meaning between the words.
I like the way the author changed the perspectives, that is indeed a hard thing to do.
July 20, 2008
Chrissie moves from VT to CA and has a hard time adjusting. Then she meets and becomes friends with two other girls who claim to be white witches. Alternates perspectives between 3 girl characters, with a slow pace and an interesting combination of realism and magic.
January 21, 2013
This book was okay. Just that. It wasn't spectacular. And nothing to remember.
I never read some of a book and decide "Hey, I don't like it. I'll stop now."
I always read a book until the end. I wait to see if it gets better.
This book just stayed the same - flat line.
I never read some of a book and decide "Hey, I don't like it. I'll stop now."
I always read a book until the end. I wait to see if it gets better.
This book just stayed the same - flat line.
January 31, 2016
Chrissie lived in Vermont quite happily with her mom and dad until he dies and they end up moving to CA. There's no real reason why but of course when she gets here, she doesn't fit in, big surprise. The story is all about acceptance and being one of the witches. Meh!
November 5, 2007
Too much going on in here--too many problems. The "magic" element is really no more than a distraction.
September 25, 2009
Herumph!
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February 16, 2010This book was half bad, half good. The story was alright, but I didn't really enjoy it that much.
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January 12, 2011on page 15 this book is all about magic and things you can do with things you mix up into one thing.
September 2, 2011
Plotless. Pointless.
February 19, 2011
I enjoyed the different POVs, but sadly find the ending somewhat lacking.
March 21, 2011
I did like this one very much because it didn't always make sense to me. I also didn't like the ending at all.
March 13, 2015
Okay.... but it has more potential to be abetter story. I stopped at about the same time I expected it to get interesting.
April 3, 2015
Needed more.
June 6, 2016
A good novel! Kind of boring though. And too short. Other than that I love the characters problems.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews