So Mote it Be

This is the first in a series of books by Isobel Bird. The story centers around Kate Morgan. She's interested in a boy named Scott, but Scott already has a girlfriend. Her group of friends figures Kate doesn't have a chance with Scott, which doesn't exactly make Kate happy.

Her history class is going to have to do papers and Kate ends up deciding to do one on witchcraft persecution. As she goes through various books she has chosen from the library she finds one that is a book of spells containing a Come to Me Love Spell, just the thing she feels would help her get the boy of her dreams.

The old saying "Be careful what you wish for" then comes into effect. First, Scott agrees to go with her to a Valentine's Day dance. Other boys start paying attention to her; she gets a high grade on a chemistry test, apparently due to another spell she uses, but this tends to upset some of the other students in the class since Kate's A on the test alters the grading curve, in effect making their scores lower.

More and more of her friends get angry with her over one thing and another, thus starting to isolate Kate. In effect, it seems the spells she has been casting have begun to have a much more wide-ranging effect than she expected. The good things happening for her come at the expense of bad things happening for others.

She then turns to one of the non-in crowd, Annie Crandall (an extremely intelligent student) who she finds has checked out a book on witchcraft from the library. Annie knows some about Wicca and helps Kate try to counteract the effects of the love spell. Unfortunately, when Kate gets to school she finds posters up on the walls asking people to vote for her for Valentine's Day Queen.

So another student is added to the group, Cooper Rivers, known as being anti-social (who I happened to like immediately since she wears Hello Kitty T-shirts!). The rest of the novel then deals with this group of three trying to learn a way to counter-act the original spell and return things to normal.

The book is rather good, actually. It tends to get a little long-winded on explaining about Wicca, but other than that it is really interesting, especially when Kate tries to balance the group of three she is in with her other group of friends at school who would totally disapprove of Kate's involvement with the first group.

The book does a good job with examining the seriousness of using spells and the necessity of thinking everything out before you just leap into doing things. It's a story of conflicting friendships and people learning to take responsibility for their own actions. It examines the social life of a school and what effect that has on what a person does in their own private life.

The book succeeds on a variety of levels and is well worth reading.

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