Ratings5
Average rating3.2
From the creator of RIVERDALE comes the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, a new NETFLIX series based on the classic Archie comic series. This prequel YA novel tells an all-new, original story. It's the summer before her sixteenth birthday, and Sabrina Spellman knows her world is about to change. She's always studied magic and spells with her aunts, Hilda and Zelda. But she's also lived a normal mortal life -- attending Baxter High, hanging out with her friends Susie and Roz, and going to the movies with her boyfriend, Harvey Kinkle. Now time is running out on her every day, normal world, and leaving behind Roz and Susie and Harvey is a lot harder than she thought it would be. Especially because Sabrina isn't sure how Harvey feels about her. Her cousin Ambrose suggests performing a spell to discover Harvey's true feelings. But when a mysterious wood spirit interferes, the spell backfires... in a big way. Sabrina has always been attracted to the power of being a witch. But now she can't help wondering if that power is leading her down the wrong path. Will she choose to forsake the path of light and follow the path of night? Our exclusive prequel novel will reveal a side of Sabrina not seen on the new NETFLIX show. What choice will Sabrina make... and will it be the right one?
Series
3 primary booksThe Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 2019 with contributions by Sara Rees Brennan and Sarah Rees Brennan.
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This book is one of those situations where I think perhaps I set myself up for failure. I wanted something which expanded on the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina canon without being quite as... inducing of second hand embarrassment as season two of the televised version. (The “anti-Pope?” Really...?!) I was hoping for a fun foray into the lives and minds of beloved characters with the atmosphere of season one. Instead, I got what feels a bit more like a Harvey/Sabrina shipper's fanfic. Or, perhaps, it was similar to a later season of either CAOS or Riverdale, both of which have an odd propensity for changing character motives and personalities between seasons and sometimes even episodes as necessary to push the current plot forward.
So, yeah, I set myself up for failure by expecting to capture the bygone horror-whimsy of the first season. It's gone, it's never coming back, and expecting so much greatness made the reading experience more grating than it could have been if I'd gone into this with more realistic expectations.
Then again, the main plot sucks, and lowered expectations can't fix that. It hinges on Sabrina, who allegedly loves herself, being so insecure and pathetically, obsessively jealous of her boyfriend looking at other people that she ignores all concepts of consent and sets out to cast a spell which forces his world to revolve around her. We all know how badly it goes, because this is a YA supernatural plot which has been done a million times by now. There's nothing particularly groundbreaking or engaging, here.
No, it's the glimpses into other characters and the subplot regarding a water spirit which salvage this book for me. When the book is roughly three quarters finished, the author proves she is absolutely amazing at action and horror of both the typical and psychological varieties. Why she didn't utilize these skills before the book was basically over, I will never comprehend. But she didn't. In fact, it's preceded by some highly out of character fighting and cruelty between Sabrina and Ambrose. This is meant to lead to some of the later development, but it feels too forced and out of place to have the intended impact.
In fact, I think this book would have been much better if it were original fiction instead of officially sanctioned fanfiction - I mean, err, an allegedly canonical novel about existing characters. Having characters with well-established motives and personalities behave differently than they usually do feels wrong, and explaining some of them away as reaching turning points in this plotline feels both lazy and illogical. Almost as illogical as Ms. Wardwell speaking as if she's a very old lady and having some of Susie's aunts journals... or Father Blackwood already having the plan to manipulate Ambrose in a way which never even happens in-show until someone else brings Ambrose's situation to his attention. There definitely should have been a continuity editor involved on this project!
That said, the main reason I bumped this book up on my to-be-read list in the first place was the promise of more depth to Tommy Kinkle, a character who deserved so much better in the show. He's a loving and protective older brother who may or may not have secretly been a witch hunter (the show never quite makes it clear) and gave up his entire future to protect his younger brother from an abusive father. That's an epic story laid to the wayside, and unfortunately it doesn't quite get the expansion I hoped for in this book.
Sure, we get a whole chapter from Tommy's perspective and quite a bit of background development, but it's overshadowed by how the author insisted on making him a very... simple person. No imagination, no drive for anything other than protecting his brother, no particular intelligence or skillset other than football - just a dreadfully simple “good ol' boy” archetype, thankfully without the attached racism usually found in the trope. (Though his father was attributed both homophobia and racism, because being an abusive drunk apparently wasn't enough.)
I just don't understand making him this way. It's such a waste of potential that it honestly makes me kind of sad. Even Supernatural, which precedes this by nearly a decade, was able to weave interesting and subtly intelligent traits into Dean Winchester, the man so obsessed with protecting his little brother that he literally went to Hell to keep said brother alive! But nope, here we get it hammered into our heads that the only smart and talented boy in this family is Harvey Kinkle. For me, it weakens a character I wanted so badly to understand better because I loved his loyalty to his brother and wanted to see more of his personality and life beyond just how it relates to Harvey.
Unfortunately, this isn't the only characterization which disappointed me in the book. Ambrose is portrayed as borderline heartless, to the point he alleges that he is exactly that and Sabrina accuses him of the same for some really stupid reasons I didn't even bother to write down or recall after I had a rant about them with a friend. It isn't until the very end (and within some flashbacks) that he actually feels like the Ambrose I love from the show. Zelda also feels rather off-kilter, but in ways I can't quite articulate. It's more subtle than the others.
Then there's Nick. He wanders into a public carnival to harass Harvey, half bullying and half flirting with him in ways which actually feel suited for them... if this took place in a more private location. Nick just casually calls Harvey “mortal” and talks about rituals and hell and such very openly while conversing with Harvey at a face painting booth with many people standing around. What, does he want to be slaughtered by a witch hunter or banished from his coven for putting them all at risk? It doesn't make sense and feels as if it were inspired by Nick and Harvey interacting in season one after Harvey discovered Sabrina's a witch, just without an understanding of why that works.
Hilda is the one shining beacon of amazing characterization - the one character both consistently captured perfectly and wonderfully expanded upon. If I had to guess, I'd assume she's the author's favourite, as she's where the writing truly shines as both in-character and higher quality than the rest. Her spider familiars are often mentioned and shown in creative ways the show neglected, such as spinning webs in her hair. She reaches out to Tommy as the only other non-parent in a sea of parents at the school waiting to discuss their school-aged relatives with staff. She tries her best to explain what love is, unaware she's fueling Sabrina's horrible life choices. She's just... she's amazing and I adore her just as much as I did in the televised version. I would happily read a dozen books about Hilda by this author.
But alas, no such things exist, and as a whole this book is a flop with only a few good elements to keep it afloat in mediocrity until the final quarter, wherein it becomes very entertaining. Can those good bits save it, though? Maybe. It made this book go from the 1 star I anticipated giving to 2.5 stars which I've decided to round upward because things do tie together nicely at the end and some of the character studies are interesting.