Monday 30 January 2012

Review: Tris & Izzie by Mette Ivie Harrison

Tris & Izzie by Mette Ivie Harrison
Published by Egmont 2011


A modern retelling of the German fairytale "Tristan and Isolde", Tris and Izzie is about a young witch named Izzie who is dating Mark King, the captain of the basketball team and thinks her life is going swimmingly well. Until -- she makes a love potion for her best friend Brangane and then ends up taking it herself accidentally, and falling in love with Tristan, the new guy at school.


I bought this while in NY because I'd heard about it from somewhere, and it made its way onto my to-buy list. I bought it, came home to England, and read some reviews. They were very bad to say the least. That made me all the more intrigued: could this book really be that bad? Before reading, I also familiarised myself with the Tristan and Isolde legend and I said, "Yeah, okay, this could be interesting". So here are my thoughts.


Izzie has the perfect boyfriend, Mark. He's the captain of their high school's basketball team and he's perfect for her. However, things aren't going so well in the relationship department for her best friend Branna, and Izzie decides to do something about it using one of her mum's potions - a love philtre. Things instantly go wrong, and Izzie has to deal with it.


I actually labelled this as DNF after reading about 180 pages; I couldn't take it anymore. The main character Izzie was so unlikable; she was self-absorbed and irrational. She meddled with things she had no business sticking her nose in where it wasn't wanted, and she didn't for one second pause to think that what she was doing was wrong. Also, just because her mum was a witch didn't mean it was okay to use magic as she pleased. Stealing one of her mum's potions was a betrayal of trust, and I liked her no better for it. The way she treated the people around her was really negative, and it only got worse once she mixed up the love potion and ended up falling in love with Tristan. That's also another thing that bothered me: why was the love potion called a love philtre? There wasn't really point in that. Tristan was also a very weird character. He spoke like he lived in medieval times, and seemed really out of place in the modern high school setting. Overall, I was really disappointed in this book, and to be honest, I felt a bit cheated. If I have some spare time, I might go back and finish it, although it doesn't seem likely. If you're thinking about reading Tris & Izzie, I suggest you borrow it. 


1 star

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