Stephen has been invisible for practically his whole life — because of a curse his grandfather, a powerful cursecaster, bestowed on Stephen’s mother before Stephen was born. So when Elizabeth moves to Stephen’s NYC apartment building from Minnesota, no one is more surprised than he is that she can see him. A budding romance ensues, and when Stephen confides in Elizabeth about his predicament, the two of them decide to dive headfirst into the secret world of cursecasters and spellseekers to figure out a way to break the curse. But things don’t go as planned, especially when Stephen’s grandfather arrives in town, taking his anger out on everyone he sees. In the end, Elizabeth and Stephen must decide how big of a sacrifice they’re willing to make for Stephen to become visible — because the answer could mean the difference between life and death. At least for Elizabeth.
I really liked this book, on Stephen’s the story played out a lot like Levithan’s ‘Every Day,’ but I didn’t like Elizabeth at all. In her POV the story is just really different, and I just generally didn’t like her outlook on things.
The whole SppellSeeker, CurseCaster world didn’t work for me. Yes, I’m a major Fantasy girl, I just love everything about it, but when you’re putting together a world like Cremer invented I kept getting flashes of the ‘Beautiful Creatures’ Castor World and that’s where I keep my standard for a world full of magic users. I know it’s a bit unfair because ‘Beautiful Creatures’ is like one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading and not a lot of books can hold up to that. However, despite my dislike of Cremer’s magical world I am glad that the story didn’t turn down Sci-fi lane because that honestly would have made the story cliché upon cliché and I wouldn’t have even bothered with finishing the book. As it is the plot was relatively interesting, it held my interest long enough for me to finish it in two days and the writing is decent. Levithan and Cremer manage to make Stephen’s and Elizabeth’s alternating POV’s distinct and recognizable, it’s one of the few things that I did like about the book.
I didn’t like Laurie, not even a wee little bit, his character was just peppy and involved with the group. Elizabeth and Stephan keeping the secret of his invisibility from Laurie would have made the story more interesting and would have added more character development for Elizabeth. It also really irked me when he helped Stephen push his grandfather off the roof, that should have been given solely to Stephen.
As it is I like all the other character’s, they all seemed pretty decent for background characters, Stephen’s father was a great character, not in the moral sense, but in the well-written/realistic sense, he was there then he wasn’t and his character played out exactly as you would expect him to from Stephen’s descriptions of him.
Everything else aside I give the book 3/5 stars, decent plot, decently written, a few good characters, but some bad characters, some things not written out well like the magic side of the world, and the story was just a tad bit predictable.
Out of Boredom 