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Brewer Archives
Ophelia Brewer’s life was embarked by numerous strange occurrences which her parents shrugged off as innocent coincidences. The capabilities of healing, foreseeing the future, traveling through time in the present, soaring in the air and possessing remarkable physical strength manifested early in her life. She was submerged into layers of mystery and self-discovery. She uncovered the existence of part angel and part witch within herself. Some relatives were cautious of her powers; meanwhile, others craved her uniqueness for their own will. Brewer Archives is a timeless story about the recurring choice we all face between the good and evil in our lives.
152 pages, Paperback
Published December 15, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 23, 2016
*I received a copy as part of a GoodReads Giveaway*
Okay. So the premise of this book is A+. Girl finds herself with magical powers and is drawn into a world of witches, angels, and fairies? Sure! Kelly Armstrong's Women of the Underworld series does it beautifully. The Sookie Stackhouse series? Yep. Another good one. Skulduggery Pleasant is a fabulous series that employs this sort of thing! Unfortunately, the Brewer Archives is a book that has a great premise but the execution is miserable.
I'll start off with the biggest, most inherent issue of the book: the main conflict and point of the book is that Ophelia's grandmother "Gramsie" has been hoarding and using Ophelia's blood ~for years~ to supplement her own powers. This is problematic on approximately all the levels. First off, Ophelia is eighteen. Legally, even if a family member is diagnosed with a disease requiring a blood transfusion, you can only donate as young as 16 with a parents consent, and only in certain states! If Gramsy and Ophelia have been doing this since Ophelia was a kid, then the blood bank they're doing it at isn't above board. Why haven't Ophelia's parents clued into that? Secondly, hemophilia isn't a disease you catch like a cold. It's genetic and has symptoms from birth. Ophelia's mom would have known her entire life if her mom had hemophilia AND that her mom's insistence on needing her granddaughter's blood 'because it was a match' was irrational, as well as being fully aware that her mom and her daughter had different blood types (it is no joke if a hemophiliac gets into an accident! The mother would have known blood types in case of an emergency).
So what really allows this to go on is the fact that her mom never talks to a doctor about hemophilia and takes her daughter to a black market blood bank. Good job, mom.
There's also a very large disconnect between the idea that her grandmother is powerful enough to give an angel cancer - let that sink in for a minute - but in the "years" that she was getting this power hadn't gone on a total rampage and utterly destroyed both the angels and witches and brought the world under her rule.
Then you have general issues with the characters. Ophelia is really a non-character. You never get a sense of who she is except in one telling passage where she 'was never interested in the superficial subjects her peers were' - a snooty statement if there ever was one, and a bald-faced lie since in the beginning of the book she says she was interested in fashion and tennis. Fashion is definitely a subject that most people see as superficial and popular, and tennis has its own cult following like any sport. Ophelia says that her physical appearance sets her apart (even implies it to be ugly) because of her - mostly European - lineage, but apparently this means she looks like a stereotypical Irish girl with curly red hair and green eyes. And, of course, has stunningly good grades except in math when she reaches college; that presents yet another characterization issue when late in the book her grandfather compliments her as always having been good with numbers. If she's good with numbers then why is she failing math?
The biggest issue with her characterization is that, after killing one of the witches that she went to school with, she's presented as having a serious moral dilemma of killing a person and vows never to do it again. Thirty pages later and with no thought whatsoever as to the right or wrong of it, she's gleefully, honest to goodness laughing as she does it killing more. Afterwards? She just sweeps up the ashes and moves on. That part was the most disturbing since I was actually feeling for the witch she killed; he had lost his sister because Ophelia had burned her to death. If there's someone pinning you and deeply scarred by their loss, do you say
A) "I didn't know, they hid my powers from me!"
B) "She was trying to kill me! I didn't know what else to do!"
C) "They shouldn't have been so mean to me."
The answer? Not C.
She's not the only one to suffer a distinct lack of characterization. Ophelia and her friends often are used to moralize to the reader. Ophelia is a good granddaughter because she donates her blood. Good girls like her (sweet enough to rot teeth) listen to Christmas music all year round. She camps outside of grocery stores to get food for foodbanks. These things are blatantly stated, implied or suggested in actions. There's a whole paragraph devoted to how her mom is considered near sainthood at her Alma Matter because of the charity she started. Her friends never have any problems beyond family health issues (used to show how MAGICAL and AMAZING Ophelia is when she heals them). Her roommate? She lets Ophelia go missing for two days. What person in this day and age would let it go without making a report to the police? Even when one guy, Vincent, says - cheerily, I will add - that he lost his parents in a terrible storm when he was a kid, his grandparents gave him the structure and stability to succeed.
Who talks like that?
Which brings up even more issues about this book. The writing is painfully stilted. No one knows how to contract words, and they use archaic phrases like 'cellular phone' in casual conversation (protip: an 18 year old in 2016 just calls it a 'cell' or 'phone'. They might not even know what a landline is). They don't talk like real people and because of it they don't read like real people. The author also doesn't really understand what details are important to the story and which ones aren't. There's the specific names of stores and games that will make this book dated in three years; she goes into incredible and unneeded detail of her father's favorite band and songs, we get long and boring descriptions of three different types of ice cream. In the meanwhile, I want to know what the painting of Ursula looks like and why her eyes turning yellow is striking; I don't give a flying whoop that she's a 'role model and commanded five ships'. I don't need to know what the five-name-long tunnel is, I want to see Ophelia actually struggle with learning her skills instead of taking about five minutes.
What it boils down to is that there's too much fluff and not enough plot. The author could have made this 25 pages shorter just by cutting down on repetition and ridiculousness, but then could have used those 25 pages to fill in on things like how no one saw Ophelia jumping from her dorm room on campus during the daytime or ever saw her flying, or what the vulture looks like in his human form. Stuff that I, as a reader, care about and want to know more about. Not what ice cream mix Ophelia gets at Cold Stone Ice Cream.
Okay. So the premise of this book is A+. Girl finds herself with magical powers and is drawn into a world of witches, angels, and fairies? Sure! Kelly Armstrong's Women of the Underworld series does it beautifully. The Sookie Stackhouse series? Yep. Another good one. Skulduggery Pleasant is a fabulous series that employs this sort of thing! Unfortunately, the Brewer Archives is a book that has a great premise but the execution is miserable.
I'll start off with the biggest, most inherent issue of the book: the main conflict and point of the book is that Ophelia's grandmother "Gramsie" has been hoarding and using Ophelia's blood ~for years~ to supplement her own powers. This is problematic on approximately all the levels. First off, Ophelia is eighteen. Legally, even if a family member is diagnosed with a disease requiring a blood transfusion, you can only donate as young as 16 with a parents consent, and only in certain states! If Gramsy and Ophelia have been doing this since Ophelia was a kid, then the blood bank they're doing it at isn't above board. Why haven't Ophelia's parents clued into that? Secondly, hemophilia isn't a disease you catch like a cold. It's genetic and has symptoms from birth. Ophelia's mom would have known her entire life if her mom had hemophilia AND that her mom's insistence on needing her granddaughter's blood 'because it was a match' was irrational, as well as being fully aware that her mom and her daughter had different blood types (it is no joke if a hemophiliac gets into an accident! The mother would have known blood types in case of an emergency).
So what really allows this to go on is the fact that her mom never talks to a doctor about hemophilia and takes her daughter to a black market blood bank. Good job, mom.
There's also a very large disconnect between the idea that her grandmother is powerful enough to give an angel cancer - let that sink in for a minute - but in the "years" that she was getting this power hadn't gone on a total rampage and utterly destroyed both the angels and witches and brought the world under her rule.
Then you have general issues with the characters. Ophelia is really a non-character. You never get a sense of who she is except in one telling passage where she 'was never interested in the superficial subjects her peers were' - a snooty statement if there ever was one, and a bald-faced lie since in the beginning of the book she says she was interested in fashion and tennis. Fashion is definitely a subject that most people see as superficial and popular, and tennis has its own cult following like any sport. Ophelia says that her physical appearance sets her apart (even implies it to be ugly) because of her - mostly European - lineage, but apparently this means she looks like a stereotypical Irish girl with curly red hair and green eyes. And, of course, has stunningly good grades except in math when she reaches college; that presents yet another characterization issue when late in the book her grandfather compliments her as always having been good with numbers. If she's good with numbers then why is she failing math?
The biggest issue with her characterization is that, after killing one of the witches that she went to school with, she's presented as having a serious moral dilemma of killing a person and vows never to do it again. Thirty pages later and with no thought whatsoever as to the right or wrong of it, she's gleefully, honest to goodness laughing as she does it killing more. Afterwards? She just sweeps up the ashes and moves on. That part was the most disturbing since I was actually feeling for the witch she killed; he had lost his sister because Ophelia had burned her to death. If there's someone pinning you and deeply scarred by their loss, do you say
A) "I didn't know, they hid my powers from me!"
B) "She was trying to kill me! I didn't know what else to do!"
C) "They shouldn't have been so mean to me."
The answer? Not C.
She's not the only one to suffer a distinct lack of characterization. Ophelia and her friends often are used to moralize to the reader. Ophelia is a good granddaughter because she donates her blood. Good girls like her (sweet enough to rot teeth) listen to Christmas music all year round. She camps outside of grocery stores to get food for foodbanks. These things are blatantly stated, implied or suggested in actions. There's a whole paragraph devoted to how her mom is considered near sainthood at her Alma Matter because of the charity she started. Her friends never have any problems beyond family health issues (used to show how MAGICAL and AMAZING Ophelia is when she heals them). Her roommate? She lets Ophelia go missing for two days. What person in this day and age would let it go without making a report to the police? Even when one guy, Vincent, says - cheerily, I will add - that he lost his parents in a terrible storm when he was a kid, his grandparents gave him the structure and stability to succeed.
Who talks like that?
Which brings up even more issues about this book. The writing is painfully stilted. No one knows how to contract words, and they use archaic phrases like 'cellular phone' in casual conversation (protip: an 18 year old in 2016 just calls it a 'cell' or 'phone'. They might not even know what a landline is). They don't talk like real people and because of it they don't read like real people. The author also doesn't really understand what details are important to the story and which ones aren't. There's the specific names of stores and games that will make this book dated in three years; she goes into incredible and unneeded detail of her father's favorite band and songs, we get long and boring descriptions of three different types of ice cream. In the meanwhile, I want to know what the painting of Ursula looks like and why her eyes turning yellow is striking; I don't give a flying whoop that she's a 'role model and commanded five ships'. I don't need to know what the five-name-long tunnel is, I want to see Ophelia actually struggle with learning her skills instead of taking about five minutes.
What it boils down to is that there's too much fluff and not enough plot. The author could have made this 25 pages shorter just by cutting down on repetition and ridiculousness, but then could have used those 25 pages to fill in on things like how no one saw Ophelia jumping from her dorm room on campus during the daytime or ever saw her flying, or what the vulture looks like in his human form. Stuff that I, as a reader, care about and want to know more about. Not what ice cream mix Ophelia gets at Cold Stone Ice Cream.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 4, 2016
I received a free copy of this book via a Goodreads giveaway. Many thanks to the author for her generosity.
I don't know where to start other than this was such an odd little book. I know books like this are typically self published and it's an author's labor of love from start to finish...However...There was no true flow to the narrative. It felt like each chapter was its own vignette and they were barely and loosely strung together to make it look like some sort of story. The fantastical parts were such a mishmash and way overdone. They were also just plopped right in the middle of the narrative with no explanation or warning. The overall writing style was infuriatingly choppy and really didn't make any sense.
Ophelia, the main character, was about as bland and vanilla as they come. She accepted everything about her without any sort of feeling or struggle or hesitation. She accepted everything at face value and never really thought for herself.
It also suffered from a major case of telling instead of showing. It was pure author summarization.
The plot line of Ophelia not knowing where she would be going to college IN THE FALL after graduating from high school was just completely inaccurate. So, so wrong. Plus, college was initially referred to constantly as "James Madison University", both in descriptor and dialogue. After the first introduction of something, especially a college/university, it's okay to refer to it simply as "college".
The book also ends abruptly. I'm assuming this is the first in a series...And a series I really will not be continuing to read. It was, however, a very quick read so at least there was that.
I don't know where to start other than this was such an odd little book. I know books like this are typically self published and it's an author's labor of love from start to finish...However...There was no true flow to the narrative. It felt like each chapter was its own vignette and they were barely and loosely strung together to make it look like some sort of story. The fantastical parts were such a mishmash and way overdone. They were also just plopped right in the middle of the narrative with no explanation or warning. The overall writing style was infuriatingly choppy and really didn't make any sense.
Ophelia, the main character, was about as bland and vanilla as they come. She accepted everything about her without any sort of feeling or struggle or hesitation. She accepted everything at face value and never really thought for herself.
It also suffered from a major case of telling instead of showing. It was pure author summarization.
The plot line of Ophelia not knowing where she would be going to college IN THE FALL after graduating from high school was just completely inaccurate. So, so wrong. Plus, college was initially referred to constantly as "James Madison University", both in descriptor and dialogue. After the first introduction of something, especially a college/university, it's okay to refer to it simply as "college".
The book also ends abruptly. I'm assuming this is the first in a series...And a series I really will not be continuing to read. It was, however, a very quick read so at least there was that.
February 26, 2016
This was a very quick read, just took a few hours. The story is in desperate need of an editor, with odd, very stilted dialogue, and a few factual errors, as well as grammatical ones. There was very little tension to the frequent drama, with incidents described in a very matter of fact manner. No usual teen anguish over the events! There was no slow build up, resulting in no excitement. The lead character is able to kill without any real feelings of remorse, which was rather disturbing. The main theme of good and evil was handled in a very ham-fisted way. The writing was very poor, and with the frequent errors, I was left wandering if English was not the authors first language. I think they wrote the story using a thesaurus as word choice was frequently bizarre. The story itself was a bit of a jumbled mess, with elements lifted from many different sources, and few of them explored in any real depth. As for the ending, There wasn't one! The book just stopped. Very odd. Sadly, with poor writing, poor story-telling, and poor production values, I could not recommend this book to anyone.
March 7, 2016
*I received a copy as part of a GoodReads Giveaway*
I'm not sure what book the reviewers who gave this 5 stars read but it couldn't be the same book. I give the author credit for coming up with the premise of the book but it was so poorly written it was difficult to read even though it was only 144 pages. Editing was desperately needed throughout the book. For example, at the beginning of the book Ophelia sees the neighbor boy in a tree trying to get his kite but later in the book when she refers to the incident he's trying to get his ball. Teens saying things like, I pushed the end call button on my cellular phone. The writing made me cringe since no one in real life would speak the way the characters did in the book. The main character Ophelia had no emotion each time she learned she had another magical power. Flying, transporting, frying witches, all no big deal to Ophelia, just what else can I do.
I'm not sure what book the reviewers who gave this 5 stars read but it couldn't be the same book. I give the author credit for coming up with the premise of the book but it was so poorly written it was difficult to read even though it was only 144 pages. Editing was desperately needed throughout the book. For example, at the beginning of the book Ophelia sees the neighbor boy in a tree trying to get his kite but later in the book when she refers to the incident he's trying to get his ball. Teens saying things like, I pushed the end call button on my cellular phone. The writing made me cringe since no one in real life would speak the way the characters did in the book. The main character Ophelia had no emotion each time she learned she had another magical power. Flying, transporting, frying witches, all no big deal to Ophelia, just what else can I do.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 21, 2017
My five stars review of Brewer Archives by Misha Camm.
It fast moving story well written, I loved it. This why I gave it five stars rating.I wish this was a book series.
It fast moving story well written, I loved it. This why I gave it five stars rating.I wish this was a book series.
December 13, 2016
What happens when a being of good falls in love with a being of evil?
Can one overcome the other?
From a young age, Ophelia Brewer experienced strange occurrences. Premonitions and the ability to heal were followed by sightings of supernatural beings. Coming from an upbringing where “normalcy” is the norm, she tries with all her might to dismiss the extraordinary happenings all around her.
Still, the evidence that she is not a normal girl starts to become too much to ignore. Her struggle to be herself becomes more difficult when more and more she is forced to question just what she is.
Ophelia is a wiccangel, part witch and part angel. Having discovered a deep family secret, Ophelia must learn to live in two worlds (the one she’s grown up knowing and the second that is just beyond the human eye). However, when the reality that the world she’s grown up knowing is filled with lies, she becomes ...
Reading this book, I found myself becoming emotionally attached to the characters. Camm’s ability to create intrigue throughout the story keeps the reader turning the pages.
I would recommend this book to young readers who are interested in fantasy. Brewer Archives promises to be a thrilling start to a great fantasy series!
Can one overcome the other?
From a young age, Ophelia Brewer experienced strange occurrences. Premonitions and the ability to heal were followed by sightings of supernatural beings. Coming from an upbringing where “normalcy” is the norm, she tries with all her might to dismiss the extraordinary happenings all around her.
Still, the evidence that she is not a normal girl starts to become too much to ignore. Her struggle to be herself becomes more difficult when more and more she is forced to question just what she is.
Ophelia is a wiccangel, part witch and part angel. Having discovered a deep family secret, Ophelia must learn to live in two worlds (the one she’s grown up knowing and the second that is just beyond the human eye). However, when the reality that the world she’s grown up knowing is filled with lies, she becomes ...
Reading this book, I found myself becoming emotionally attached to the characters. Camm’s ability to create intrigue throughout the story keeps the reader turning the pages.
I would recommend this book to young readers who are interested in fantasy. Brewer Archives promises to be a thrilling start to a great fantasy series!
December 11, 2015
I enjoyed reading this book. It was a page turner and I didn't want to put it down. I loved the development of the characters and the descriptions of the scenery. I didn't have to imagine what it looked like the author's descriptions were so vivid that I felt like I was there. Hoping this is the beginning of a series as I look forward to reading more within this story line. Love the versatility of this author as I have read other books by her and this was a pleasure reading.
December 6, 2015
This book was an excellent, easy read. There are many twists and turns packed within a mystery. Honestly, it appeals to all ages. I am in my late twenties and my niece also read it, is fourteen years old. This is the first book I have read from the author, Meisha Camm. I hate reviews with spoilers so all I'm saying is read this book, you will enjoy it.
April 20, 2016
I enjoyed this book, it was a good read. The descriptive writing of the author allowed my imaginations to the see the things she described. The fact that the main character was able to recall events from her past that culminated to the present was great. This way I understood the progression of the main characters abilities. Waiting impatiently on the sequel. :-)
April 20, 2016
Very good story line. It was hard to put down because I wanted to see what would happen next. Now I'm mad because the next book in what I hope is a series isn't out yet. Interested to see if there is something developing between Ophelia and Victor. Enjoyed reading this book.
December 7, 2015
This book is a must-read. Good and evil lies within all of us. Gramsie and Ophelia were my favorite characters.
June 3, 2016
It has been a while since I had a book I couldn't wait to read at the end of my work day. I absolutely loved this book and cannot wait for the next installment!
October 14, 2016
I have been a fan of Meisha Camm for so long. She has a wonderful way with words that make you want more and more. I hope to see Brewer Archives on the big screen soon!!!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews