ffbc tour // The Antidote by Shelley Sackier

Feb 3, 20193 min read

Release Date: February 5th, 2019

Publisher: HarperTeen

Series: standalone

Format: eARC, 368 pages

Source: Edelweiss+

Genre(s): Young Adult, Fantasy,

Synopsis:

Magic is not allowed, under any circumstances — even if it could save someone’s life. Instead, there are herbal remedies and traditional techniques that have been painstakingly recorded in lieu of using the mystical arts. Fee knows this, so she keeps her magic a secret. Except her best friend, Xavi, is deathly ill. He’s also the crown prince. Saving him is important, not only for her, but for the entire kingdom. Fee’s desperation to save her friend means she can barely contain the magic inside her. And after the tiniest of slips, Fee is thrust into a dark and secretive world that is as alluring as it is dangerous. If she gives in, it could mean she can save Xavi. But it also means that those who wish to snuff out magic might just snuff her out in the process.

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This is a special story. Its specialty lays with the idea that not everyone is going to like the story because not everybody is going to understand it. I would very much describe this story as opera fantasy folklore-like. There is a lot happening in a small space of time with an underdeveloped world and ideas and magic. The friendship between Fee and Xavi was, personally, the highlight of the story. There were no romance innuendos between the two, simple and loveable. I was not really feeling the romance between any of the characters because it felt meh, to me. The secrets and the plot twists is the reason why this book is so engaging. I wanted to know the story was taking me so I followed it until the end even if meant I lost like a few hours of sleep. Who need sleep anyways? There were parts of the story that lagged creating a series of boredom. The lagging occurred frequently which made the story slow and difficult to continue, but when I did, I saw the story beneath the boredom. This is the type of novel that I will not remember or think about for some time, and when I do I will have a hard time picking it up again.

Sometimes the answers are right in front of us, child. For that is the best place to hide secrets.

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Shelley Sackier grew up in a small farming community in Northern Wisconsin continually searching for ways to grow warm. Realizing she would never be able to enjoy ice cream like real people should, she left the state and lived the blissful life of a traveling musician. Discovering her stories needed more space than two verses a bridge and a chorus could provide, she began storytelling in earnest. And then in Virginia. Which is where she lives now and continues to write. Her first novel, DEAR OPL (Sourcebooks 2015), is a tale about a snarky, overweight thirteen-year-old, who suffers from loss everywhere in her life except on her body. Her next novel, The Freemason's Daughter (HarperCollins, 2017) is a story about a 16 yr old Scottish girl living in 1715 who's raised entirely by six burly Scotsman--and they're all smugglers. The Antidote (HarperCollins February 2019) is a YA novel about magic and medicine, and the witches who wield them both. To learn more about Shelley, visit shelleysackier.com where she blogs weekly about living on a small farm atop a mountain in the Blue Ridge and how it’s easiest to handle most of it with homegrown food, a breathless adoration for tractors, and a large dose of single malt scotch.