THE GLITTERING EDGE - Alyssa Villaire

3.5 stars

What a fun, witchy YA novel with some drama and light romance. Very nostalgia coded for the 2000-2010s era of paranormal, witchy young adult reads!

The Glittering Edge is your standard young adult fare for novels of this type. I'm not going to sugarcoat it.

It's a small town, there are witches, there is some longstanding drama between two feuding families and it's led to some serious issues causing The Plot to happen. We've also got a "Mary Sue" relatively generic female main character who is, honestly, pretty forgettable—but she's not why we're here, we're here for the feuding witch families and their two attractive, polar-opposite, arch-enemy sons who are going to work with the main female character to solve a curse.

I bet you can tell from my lackluster blurb pitch: yeah, you've read something like this before. You've likely read a lot of novels like this before, if you're like me and you were a young adult reader for the 2000-2010s decades. The Glittering Edge is not trying to be new, or edgy, or subversive in any meaningful way.

HOWEVER. Just because it's a familiar blueprint doesn't mean it's not worth your time. I found this novel to be relatively entertaining, and it was the perfect, no-fuss novel to get me out of a reading slump. I enjoyed the familiar stakes and setups—this blueprint works with so many novels for a reason, folks—and I thought it was a very pleasant way to spend an evening.

If you're interested in the pitch and you're okay with getting exactly what you're expecting, give this a try!