#Bookreview The Selkie Spell by Sophie Moss a fantasy romance novel #amreading #books
The Selkie Spell by Sophie Moss
4 out of 5 Black Cats
The Selkie Spell by Sophie Moss is a fantasy romance novel about Tara Moore, a woman who fakes her death to escape her abusive husband and finds herself at a secluded island in Ireland called Seal Island. At first, the locals don’t trust her. It's obvious she’s keeping secrets, and the locals have dealt with other newcomers keeping secrets before. The locals tell Tara about a 200-year-old curse, and Tara laughs it off when it is suggested that she might be the descendant of the selkie. But when a ghostly woman appears to her with a warning, Tara realizes it was more than chance that brought her to this island. Desperate to escape a dark and dangerous past, Tara struggles against a passionate attraction to handsome islander Dominic O’Sullivan. But the enchantment of the island soon overpowers her, and she falls helpless under its spell. Caught between magic and reality, Tara must find a way to wield both when a dangerous stranger from her past arrives, threatening to destroy the lives of everyone on the island.
I’m going to start with mechanics first. The story was well-written and edited. There were few copyediting errors, and I didn’t encounter excessive back-story or telling. The Selkie Spell is written professionally in that respect. The kindle formatting is perfect. Everyone self-publishing fiction should look through this book to see how it should be done. Keep up the great work.
This book does shift point of view every couple of paragraphs. This is normal in romance novels so romance readers may not be bothered by it, but I think the fantasy description of this novel may attract some readers who don’t read romance regularly, like myself, and may find the shifting perspective confusing or annoying. I thought the changing viewpoint was handled well and didn’t leave me confused, but those picking this book up who don’t read straight romance like Daniel Steele regularly, be warned.
The beginning has a great hook and captures the reader’s interest right away. After that, the writing style is still excellent, but the subject of the story started to disappoint after I got about 40% in. I wanted the story to be more about the selkie and the curse than the abusive relationship. The abusive relationship parts are handled well, but the description of the book on Amazon makes it sound like the selkie story is the dominant element of this novel, and it’s not. It turned into another abusive husband story like the movie, Enough, or, Sleeping with the Enemy, and I was promised a modern-day fairy tale by the description. The book is good, but I was left wanting more fairy tale.
About twenty-five or so percent in, we get our first romantic encounter between Tara and Dominic. I felt this scene was forced, and at this stage of the novel, didn’t make sense yet. Why would a man who wouldn’t let his daughter near Tara suddenly be attracted to her and want to make out with her? There should have been more time for Dom to get to know Tara and trust her more before they were thrust together in a romantic interlude. It just felt rushed to me as if the author decided they needed to get some romance in the book ASAP or the romance readers would be upset. I would have been perfectly happy without the romance parts at the beginning, but I’m also not a romance reader. I was more attracted to the selkie in the story than the romance.
Overall, I recommend this book. It wasn’t what I was hoping for, an urban fantasy, but I still liked it. I hope that this review will help the right people find this book, people who will enjoy it for the right reasons.