The Goblins of Bellwater by Molly Ringle Published by Central Avenue Publishing on October 1st 2017
Pages: 288
Goodreads
A contemporary romance inspired by Christina Rossetti's eerie, sensual poem, "Goblin Market." Four neighbors encounter sinister enchantments and a magical path to love in a small, modern-day Puget Sound town, where a fae realm hides in the woods and waters...
Most people have no idea goblins live in the woods around the small town of Bellwater, Washington. But some are about to find out.
Skye, a young barista and artist, falls victim to a goblin curse in the forest one winter night, rendering her depressed and silenced, unable to speak of what happened. Her older sister, Livy, is at wit’s end trying to understand what’s wrong with her. Local mechanic Kit would know, but he doesn’t talk of such things: he’s the human liaison for the goblin tribe, a job he keeps secret and never wanted, thrust on him by an ancient family contract.
Unaware of what’s happened to Skye, Kit starts dating Livy, trying to keep it casual to protect her from the attention of the goblins. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Kit, Skye draws his cousin Grady into the spell through an enchanted kiss in the woods, dooming Grady and Skye both to become goblins and disappear from humankind forever.
It’s a midwinter night’s enchantment as Livy, the only one untainted by a spell, sets out to save them on a dangerous magical path of her own.
2.5 Nuts
What are the things that draw you into picking up a book. For me it’s usually a combination. Usually between cover, plot, genre, and some interesting characters. Here, it was simply that the description mentions Christina Rosetti’s “Goblin Market”, one of my favorite long poems. I remember studying the poem in college in one of the many English classes for my major. It was beautiful and haunting. Sadly the book based on it fails to emulate those qualities.
Goblin’s of Bellwater is Weird. Capital W Weird. Weird in a way that it is the only quality the book has. It’s incredibly distracting when you’re trying to read and all you think about is “man, this is a weird book.” And yet I never thought this way about the poem, which I think shows the author’s complete lack of understanding about what makes the poem so good in the first place.
Admittedly I didn’t realize going in that this book was new adult instead of young adult. I guess I wasn’t paying attention when I requested it, I saw “Goblin Market” and the lovely creepy cover and I was ready to go. Because of this I didn’t expect the book to go so heavy on the romance. New adults always tend to go heavy on romance, I know this. I suppose I should have paid closer attention. But the romance wasn’t that interesting regardless. Nothing about it made me want to invest in it. I didn’t have any reason to care about the love interest. The whole thing came off really bland and I felt like I was chewing on cardboard.
The goblins themselves are really the best part of the novel. They’re the only thing that had the Rossetti feel about them. Though at times I think they might have come off a little bit too cute, they were much more enjoyable than the rest of the characters in the story. They had a sense of fun that was completely needed, though some of the contemporary parts of them were a little jarring. Coffee? Electronics? Ugh.
All in all I was just kind of bored reading this book. It took me forever to get through because my mind kept wandering to other things. I just wanted to be done so I could read something else and ended up skimming through a bunch of the really dull bits.
I don’t really recommend this book, unless you really like new adult and goblins. The magic was pretty at least, though I wanted more of it. I guess this book wasn’t really for me, but maybe someone else would like it.
What do you think of Goblins of Bellwater? Share in the comments.
From my shelf to yours,
Erin
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