Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Take the Harry Potter series, throw it in a blender with some unflavored yogurt, tap water, the ghost/monster mask from a Scooby-Doo mystery, a BRATZ doll, and pour it all into a Hallmark Channel original movie glass, and you've got Harley Merlin. This was touted as being as good or better than the Harry Potter series, but it's got nowhere near the depth of tone or intricacy of JK Rowling’s writing, and it's clearly pulling a lot of the concept directly from there with only surface attempts to rearrange the characters and setup. I found Harley to be a shade too angry/angsty, with other characters and plot-lines not fleshed out enough... yet. Personally I think this book could have done well with another 100 pages of character and scene development, something more to catch the mind and really open up the series for further plotline exploration. That being said, there are some unanswered questions and cliff-hangers that I hope are more fully explored in the next book. It’s an easy read, which is fine for when you’re just looking for something casual that you can read between other stuff going on or to appeal to a younger audience. The book caught my interest enough to warrant going ahead with the next one, but not nearly enough for me to want to seriously recommend it to any friends or family members. I was vacillating between 2 and 3 stars on this one. My hope is that the second book provides more depth and gets me fully hooked into the series, enough to where I’ll happily buy the rest in one shot. But for right now, the best I can say about this is “it’s meh.”