Review: This Wicked Game by Michelle Zink

Publisher: Dial
Published: November 14, 2013
Pages: 368
Source: For Review from Penguin Canada
Rating: 2 Stars

Claire Kincaid’s family has been in business for over fifty years.
The voodoo business.
Part of the International Guild of High Priests and Priestesses, a secret society that have practiced voodoo for generations, the Kincaid’s run an underground supply house for authentic voodoo supplies. Claire plays along, filling orders for powders, oils and other bizarre ingredients in the family store, but she has a secret.
She doesn’t believe.
Struggling to reconcile her modern sensibilities with a completely unscientific craft based on suspicion, Claire can’t wait to escape New Orleans – and voodoo – when she goes to college, a desire that creates almost constant conflict in her secret affair with Xander Toussaint, son of the Guild’s powerful founding family.
But when a mysterious customer places an order for a deadly ingredient, Claire begins to realize that there’s more to voodoo – and the families that make up the Guild – than meets the eye.
Including her own.
As she bands together with the other firstborns of the Guild, she comes face to face with a deadly enemy – and the disbelief that may very well kill her.

In short: This Wicked Game by Michelle Zink had the potential to be original and special, but instead was an insipid, whitewashed version of what it could have been.

One mention of voodoo was all it took to have me chomping at the bit for This Wicked Game. The history and culture of voodoo is SO intriguing to me and I was curious to read a YA story revolving around it. To say I was disappointed with This Wicked Game is a bit of an understatement. As far as I can tell, the subject of voodoo is wide open in YA and thus so much can be done with it to create an original and provocative story. This potential was squandered in This Wicked Game.

The protagonist, Claire, somehow managed to be both a Mary Sue and TSTL. She decides to play teen detective without approaching her parents or any of the other higher-ups in the Guild and miraculously and inexplicably makes it through dangerous circumstances she never thinks through. The other characters are similarly two-dimensional and bland. There is nothing in This Wicked Game for romance-lovers either: Claire's relationship with Xander develops before the start of the story and is completely lacking in tension or passion.

But even the flat characters and romance were not as hard to take as the lifeless plot and setting. I was excited to read a book set in New Orleans, but very little effort was put into bringing such a unique and rich cultural centre to life. It could have been any other city. And I'm frankly at a loss as to how the traditional African voodoo culture could have possibly been translated to rich, white families in control of the "voodoo business." Way to take away all the culture and essence out of voodoo! I wanted to see traditional raw and gritty voodoo, not this whitewashed, insipid counterpart.

Though I found fault with much of This Wicked Game, it is to Michelle Zink's credit that she at least wrote a fast-paced plot with easy language that made the reading experience fly by. Without that, the dull story surely would have bored me to tears long before the ending. But even then the plot was far beyond saving. By far the biggest issue I have with This Wicked Game was that it had the potential to be fresh and special, but instead was a dummed-down, whitewashed version of what it could have been. Very disappointed.

Author Links:
Website
Blog
Twitter
Facebook
Goodreads