Review Detail

(Source: I borrowed a copy of this book.)
Jessie and her friends (including her ex-boyfriend Jimmy) are heading off to Las Vegas for a weekend, but spending time with her ex-boyfriend is going to turn out to be the least of Jessie’s problems during this trip.

Using a fake ID to get into a casino and play blackjack, Jessie and her best friend Alex sit down to play, when a high roller comes to the table. His name is Russell, and his winning streak is unbelievable. When Alex storms off in a huff, Jessie moves closer to Russell, and with his help wins almost $60,000 (when she started with $20).

On her way to see Russell again the next day, Jessie somehow ends up kidnapped, and locked in a meat locker – slowly freezing to death. Only to then wake up later in a morgue, about to get a front row set at her own autopsy!

Somehow managing to wake herself up, Jessie leaves the morgue (giving the poor necrophiliac pathologist a heart attack), and makes her way back to the strip to find Russell. But things don’t seem right – the gamblers in the casinos are playing 22 ‘red queen’, rather than 21 ‘blackjack’.

Eventually finding Russell again, Jessie finds out the truth – there are two parallel worlds – the normal world, and witch world, and Jessie is a witch. Jessie has 7 of 10 witch genes, and killing her and allowing her to return from the dead was a way to ‘wake-up’ her witch genes.

Even more shocking is the reason that Jessie has been ‘woken up’ – she has a daughter – Lara, who was born with all 10 witch genes (which has never happened before), and has been kidnapped by the bad witches of Witch world.
What is really going on though? What do the bad witches want with Lara? How is Jessie supposed to help get her daughter back? And what other shocks are in store for Jessie?


When I started reading this book I thought I was going to love it, it instantly sucked me in, and the first 50 pages flew by. Unfortunately this was not the case for the rest of the book.

After Jessie wins the money, things start to become strange. First Jessie gets frozen to death in a meat locker – I’m thinking ‘What? Where did this come from?’
Then she wakes up as her autopsy is about to be performed, and I’m thinking ‘Seriously? Where did this come from?’
The she starts beating people up, people start calling her ‘mother’, and when she eventually finds Russell again, he started telling her that she is a witch. So at this point I’m a little disbelieving of this storyline, but I decide to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Then something even more unbelievable happens – Jessie’s father talks to her on the phone (who she hasn’t spoken to for years), and tells her that the reason that he had to have her killed to reawaken her witch genes, is because someone has kidnapped her daughter. Daughter? Seriously? I mean she’s only 18 herself – and suddenly she has a daughter? This just didn’t fit with the story at all, and I seriously wondered if I wanted to read the rest of this book.

So, after a break I decided I’d give it the benefit of the doubt again, and keep reading. Things just got worse though, Jessie tries to convince Jimmy (her ex-boyfriend) that she’s a witch, and he’s a witch, and things get even weirder. They find some kid with a tail out in the desert surrounding Las Vegas, and take him back to the city for Jessie’s father (who has now flown in) to give him a physical, and then there’s a lot more discussion of who the bad guys are, what they want, what they hope to gain by kidnapping Jessie’s daughter etc. At this point I am seriously hitting my head into the wall just trying to get such a ridiculous story out of my head. I mean, I really wish I had never even started reading this drivel.

I did try to finish this book, but I just couldn’t. I really could not bring myself to finish this, the story was just so unbelievable, and I was just so bored!
I did read the epilogue, which just told me that the story didn’t end with a happily ever after, and that there is going to be a second book after this one! Believe me, I will definitely not be reading that!
This was my first Christopher Pike novel, and will most probably be my last.

Overall; unbelievable and ultimately boring. Someone else might enjoy this book, but I really didn’t.
3.5 out of 10.