Release Date: May 12, 2015
Pages: 407
Genre: Magical Realism/ Contemporary
Publisher: Balzer + Bray (Harper Collins)
The Cost Of All Things exists in a world pretty much like our own except spells are real and can be created by women known as hekamists. When a group of high school students in Cape Code start buying spells to cope with their insecurities…it doesn’t go well. I went into this book excited because it had blurbs from so many award winning YA authors and the premise sounded so fascinating. But overall this book didn’t work for me.
The magic system never felt fully developed and it’s existence within the world didn’t feel real . One thing that bothered me is that being a hekamist is illegal, but there doesn’t seem to be any illegality with buying a spell–which feels like the opposite of what should be happen.There were also very little stakes, the book sets up the death of one character , Win, as being a main plot point but he has a POV, so it takes some of the mystery out. I think what kept me reading was that I thought there would be a twist ending but there really wasn’t.
Because this book has five point of views I thought I would enjoy listening to it on audio, but the narrators were really weak. Out of the four narrators (There is a third girl who doesn’t seem to have a narrator attributed to her) the only ones I liked were Nicholas Dresser and Shannon McManus. And interestingly enough their character’s POVs probably could have just carried the entire story.
The Cost of All Things has an interesting magical realism twist on the small town coming of age story, but a lot of it gets muddled in the POVs.
*Promotional copy received at BookExpoAmerica
I’m a lifelong reader who started blogging about YA books in 2011 but now I read in just about every genre! I love YA coming of age stories, compelling memoirs and genre bending SFF. You can find me talking all things romance at Romance and Sensibility.