Once Every Never by Lesley Livingston

Once Every Never
Lesley Livingston
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Release Date: July 14, 2011
Pages: 312

Rating: 3.5 stars

Clarinet Reid is a pretty typical teenager. On the surface. She’s smart, but a bit of slacker; outgoing, but just a little insecure; not exactly a mischief-maker… but trouble tends to find her wherever she goes. Also? She unwittingly carries a centuries-old Druid Blood Curse running through her veins.

Now, with a single thoughtless act, what started off as the Summer Vacation in Dullsville suddenly spirals into a deadly race to find a stolen artifact, avert an explosive catastrophe, save a Celtic warrior princess, right a dreadful wrong that happened centuries before Clare was even born, and if there’s still time—literally—maybe even get a date.

This is the kind of adventure that happens to a girl once every… never.

I have been looking forward to Once Every Never, since the day I found out about that. Since then I sat counting the days until it was out. Once Every Never was definitely not what I thought it was, but was still a decent read.

I thought Once Every Never would be a quest-ish sort of book, and everything described in the summary would be parts of a quest. That was not the case, instead there was time-traveling, kidnapping, and magic. I also had a hard time reading it all at once, I could only read so many pages before I found I had to put it down. This is balanced withh the fact that there were sections of the books where I couldn't put it down.

I liked the plot, but I felt like a lot of things could've been explained a bit more. I thought the time period was really cool - with the Roman's and the Iceni. The whole kidnapping thing was kind of lame, I sat there thinking that the entire time.

I liked most of the characters. I thought Clare was an absolutely marvelous character. I loved Milo and Allie's geekines, Milo had quite the charm. I thought Stu was kind of a lame character. I wanted him to be more, do more. He was all talk, and even his talk was a bit lame.

I loved the whole magic aspect of the plot. There was so many cool things about that - it took me a bit to completely get a grasp on it, but once I did it was awesome. The whole blood magic concept was awesome.

This was a pretty decent read. It wasn't what I was expecting, and that definitely through me for a loop. I am curious to see where the next 2 books will go*. I am continually a fan of Livingston's works.

Cover Rating: A+++ I love this cover SO much. It is absolutely gorgeous, plus the actually book has sparkly star type things on the front.

*I definitely feel like this one would be a marvelous stand alone. There aren't enough stand alones the days and I felt like the story was nicely tied up.