Enchantment by Pati Nagle

Title: Enchantment

Author: Pati Nagle

Publish Date: December 20, 2011

Publisher: Self-published

Pages: 288

Buy the Book: Amazon

Rating: ★★★

Holly Parker’s life changes forever when she visits Enchantment Spring with her older sister Madison. They hike through the woods, and when they reach the spring, Holly’s disappointed. A concrete coffin full of water? She expected a pool surrounded by flowers, birds, dancing dragonflies.

But fine. They eat the lunch they packed, and lounge around in the sunshine a while. As they get ready to leave, Holly dabbles her fingers in the water.

And sees a face beneath the surface.

The joy of first love fills her, but Holly’s happiness turns to horror when she learns that the government plans to demolish Enchantment Spring. Her passion for Ohlan — the beautiful water spirit who inhabits the spring — is so strong that she’ll gladly risk her life, standing between the spring and the backhoes, to save him.

You know that moment when you have such high expectations for something? When you are certain you know this book will be amazing? I'll be honest when I say that it fell short of my expectations. I hate saying stuff like that because there really was so much I liked about this book but I hesitate to give it a higher rating than three stars.

Enchantment by Pati Nagle tells the story of a girl that visits a spring with her sister only to see a boy sitting in the water. It catches her off guard but it leaves her intrigued enough to return multiple times. Throughout the process of the story, she falls in love with this boy that no one else can see. 

Okay, so here's my issue with the story: Ohlan, this boy that only a few people see, has fallen in love multiple times and yet seems unchanged by their disappearance or deaths. I have a difficult time accepting Holly's feelings for him because it seems like he wouldn't care whether she came or went. If a character has been in love before, I expect some sort of life-changing alteration to the way they act in this new relationship which makes it different. It was hard for me to agree that he loved her or that he cared for her outside of the moment they were in. Would her death or disappearance effect him more than any of the other loves of his life? I felt like probably not.

Even though I had a hard time with Ohlan as a character with his emotions, I loved the plot of the book. It's a beautiful idea with enchanting (get it?) possibilities for what could unfold. I didn't expect for a lot of it to play out the way it did. In fact if you would've been with me while I read it, you would've seen my surprise and frustration as I realized that my imagination wasn't what drove the book. 

Holly and her family are a great bunch of characters that accurately portray the real problems that each family faces. I think that everyone assumes a sort of fake persona around their parents, especially after they move out and become their own people. I thought that the family as a whole was refreshing.

Overall, it was an alright read. I wished for it to be so much more than it was and it just didn't follow through.