THE GOBLINS OF BELLWATER
MOLLY RINGLE
GENRES/ SUBJECTS: FANTASY, CONTEMPORARY, ROMANCE
★★
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Most people have no idea goblins live in the woods around the small town of Bellwater, Washington. But some are about to find out.
Skye, a young barista and artist, falls victim to a goblin curse in the forest one winter night, rendering her depressed and silenced, unable to speak of what happened. Her older sister, Livy, is at wit’s end trying to understand what’s wrong with her. Local mechanic Kit would know, but he doesn’t talk of such things: he’s the human liaison for the goblin tribe, a job he keeps secret and never wanted, thrust on him by an ancient family contract.
Unaware of what’s happened to Skye, Kit starts dating Livy, trying to keep it casual to protect her from the attention of the goblins. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Kit, Skye draws his cousin Grady into the spell through an enchanted kiss in the woods, dooming Grady and Skye both to become goblins and disappear from humankind forever.
It’s a midwinter night’s enchantment as Livy, the only one untainted by a spell, sets out to save them on a dangerous magical path of her own.
The Goblins of Bellwater is based on Christina Rossetti’s poem, Goblin Market but taken into a modern setting. I’ve not read the poem but I think The Goblins of Bellwater manages to stand on its own — you don’t need to know the poem to read the book.
I was drawn in by the premise and the twisty plot. The idea the goblins have a liaison with impunity to steal for them is a really cool idea, made all the more interesting by how much Kit doesn’t want to be involved. I really liked the goblins — named for the first things they’ve stolen like Redring and Slide (for ‘Slide to Unlock’ on an iPhone) — they were so quirky and inhuman. The scenes in the goblins woods are wonderfully atmospheric and well-written — I could absolutely imagine myself being lured into those dark woods by a trail of shining mushrooms.
Unfortunately, while I definitely enjoyed the setup and earlier sections of the book, I found myself losing interest as we went along. I just didn’t really connect to any of the four main characters — although I did appreciate the effort the author went to give them each their own interests, such as art or cooking. Maybe because I wasn’t sold on the characters, the romance(s) didn’t particularly work for me either — although, again, I appreciate we had older-woman-younger-man relationships that weren’t treated as something funny or unusual (they’re not a big difference though if that concerns you, just a couple of years).
Ultimately, this book just wasn’t for me.
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