Parents' Guide to

Spellbound: The Books of Elsewhere, Book 2

By Kate Pavao, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 9+

Second book in popular series is even more spine-tingling.

Spellbound: The Books of Elsewhere, Book 2 Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

Community Reviews

age 9+

Based on 1 parent review

age 9+

One of the best series I've ever read!

This title has:

Great messages
Great role models

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: (1):
Kids say: Not yet rated

As in The Shadows, there are plenty of creepy details about the haunted house, magical ideas, and fun dialogue from the talking cats to please series fans. Readers will appreciate that Books of Elsewhere author Jacqueline West gives this volume a distinct story. Here, Olive becomes obsessed with doing magic herself and starts becoming like the evil McMartins. This plays well with themes raised in the first book: Misfit Olive wants a place to belong, and often forgets her loved ones and makes bad choices in the process. These are themes that even non-magical tweens can certainly relate to.

Also, readers might be too caught up in the adventure leading up to a tense final faceoff to notice the lyrical language, but author West is a an award-winning poet, and her writing is often quite beautiful. ("She floated like milkweed. Dewy breezes played with the ends of her hair.") Hopefully, readers will spend more time appreciating her prose when they reread this one. This is a volume they surely will want to read again and again.

Book Details

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