Book #82 of 2024: Keeper of Enchanted Rooms
Continuing reading current project: A book with a word in the title for each letter of the alphabet, checking my Kindle from oldest towards newer.
E: Keeper of Enchanted Rooms.
Keeper of Enchanted Rooms (Whimbrel House Book 1) by Charlie N. Holmberg.
Quick synopsis: Set in an alternate Earth (in the year 1846, magic exists), can two people find love while dodging a serial killer and a magical house that seems to want to break their ankles?
Brief opinion: Like I said about the only other book I've read by this author: I loved the first part of the book, but I very much did not like the second part.
Plot: Set in the 1846, in an Earth where magic exists but is slowly dying out, Merritt inherits a "magical" (haunted, sort of, but not really) house.
Hulda works for a group that protects magical houses, so she joins Merritt at his house to try to "tame" it.
The house (which has the soul of a magician in it, sort of) has sat empty for decades and the wizard had had chaos magic, so the house is hard to deal with. Things fly around, stairs become slides, holes open up in floors...
Slowly Merritt and Hulda figure whose soul is in the house, then a wizard/serial killer arrives on the scene to cause trouble.
Writing/editing: Both were good, no errors spotted. One of the characters spoke in archaic/poetic language, so I had to use my Kindle's feature to look up lots of words -- big bonus! I love encountering new words.
I was tickled at a couple of passages, like this one when the author described something I do as well. The character is reading the end of a story:
She turned the next page, covering the second half with her hand, terrified she would read ahead and ruin it all.
What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: When I read The Paper Magician by this same author (though the story is unrelated to this one), I said "If I had read only the first third of this book, I would have rated it top marks. I LOVED the magic system. Loved the main character. Loved the minor characters.". I feel the same about this book. I loved all those things, which was about the first two-thirds of the book, but the last third didn't work for me at all.
I'm not much of a romance reader, and this book is about 50% romance. "I love him but he won't want me because..." "I love her, but she won't want me because..." then of course there was a stupid misunderstanding which lead to one character leaving... Sigh. Just not for me.
Unfortunately the ending of the non-romance story did not work for me either. I did not even for a moment believe the twist or the reason behind one character's actions (which was the only thing that enabled the bad guy to be the bad guy beyond the first half of the book).
Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: First two-thirds of the book would get 5 stars, last third of the book would get 1 star. I guess that will round to ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½ - 3.5/okay.