Thank you to Entangled Teen and Netgalley for providing me with an early e-copy of this book
Love Spells and Other Disasters is a cute, fun YA contemporary - with a pretty big magical element mixed in. In this book we follow Rowan Marshall, who has never believed in magic, despite her mother apparently being pretty much surrounded by it. So when she is paired up with her 'worst enemy' for a project, and they decided to sell crush spells, Rowan thinks no more of it.
However, the crush spells work, and their project is going swimmingly. Rowan even starts gaining the attention of what has to be the dream guy. Everything seems to be going so well.. until it doesn't, and Rowan starts realizing that dabbling in magic might not have been the best decision.
This book was fun. That is the strongest point of it. I had a lot of fun while reading it. The plot is definitely unique and it succeeded in grabbing my attention very quickly. It's written in a way that keeps the reader engaged, and while the plot is very predictable at times, I was still excited to find out where things would go as I kept reading.
As for the characters... pretty much none of them stood out to me, except Ethan. We stan Ethan. Rowan was a little bit of a stereotypical YA protagonist (which I'll get back to in like 2 seconds). The love interest Luca, was pretty much the dream guy. He was great, but at no point did I manage to feel a connection to him, nowhere in the book did I find myself really invested when it came to him.. which wasn't great. Rowans mom really annoyed me. Towards the end things are explained more and things from the start of the book does start making sense.. But I'm tired of seeing parents who are basically there but not really there, you know? As for the rest of the side-characters... stereotypical, pretty much. A lot of the book centers around Rowan suddenly being part of the popular group of kids, and these characters are all pretty much standard popular-kid characters. There's nothing more to say honestly.
Right from the start it becomes very apparent that our main character Rowan is one of the token 'not-like-other-girls' main characters. She's not one of the popular girls, she's sort of an outcast because everyone thinks her mom has lost it.. And of course, her not being like other girls, gives her the right to look down on other girls for liking other things than she does. Luca, her love interest, even says so. TWICE. He outright says 'you're not like other girls'. Just please don't. Stop it. Thank you. I'm just very tired of that narrative. Not my favourite.
This book was also very insta-lovey. There is a sort of explanation for the instalove, which I can't go into because it would be a major spoiler. That definitely made me a little less mad at it, but I still did not love it. I just, get where it came from, I guess. That brings me to the fact that I did not feel any chemistry or connection, or any sort of feeling, between Rowan and Luca. Zero. The romance made no sense to me, even with the way everything unfolded towards the end. Still made zero sense to me. So while the romance was cute.. I didn't find myself enjoying it as much as I probably could've, had it been developed better.
Besides that though.. it's very, VERY, cliché. So many clichés. Not gonna lie, some of the more cliché moments were very cute and I did not mind. But.. there were one too many. Maybe more than one. Probably like 6, at least.
I would have loved for the magic element to be further explained. I think Angie Barrett set up the magic use in an interesting way, and definitely used it in a great way, but it was never explained. It just was. And then at the very end of the book, we get some sort of explanation as to why this magic is present. But it's still just.. there. There is no logical explanation. No reasoning. At the core, this is a contemporary. It deals more with the consequences of the magic use and also focuses more on other things than the magic. But I still would've liked for it to be explained better. Because the magic was very interesting.. it just didn't make any sense.
I did like how things weren't fixed all quickly and nicely. There were costs for the main character, and she actually had to work for it. That being said, I would've loved it to be shown even more, not just told to us - mostly related to the magic again. Rowan had to fix the mess she made and there were consequences for her actions, but at the end of the day, it was fixed, and that was told to us.. not really shown.
Overall, I didn't hate this book. But I didn't love it either. It was fun, but not something I am every going to go back to. Entertaining but not something that left any lasting impression on me.