Spellbound
Book of Elsewhere, Volume 2
Jacqueline West

Dial
July 2011/ ISBN 0803734417
Children Ages 9-12 / Fantasy
Amazon

Reviewed by Jan Fields

In this second book in the series, Olive is frustrated. She can't get the cats to do what she wants. She still hasn't come up with a way to help Morton escape from Elsewhere. And now she has a new neighbor who just won't go away. But when the new neighbor asks her about the McMartin's spellbook, Olive has a new mission -- to find that book. But the spellbook just might be more than Olive can handle.

I loved the first book in this series and this second adventure offers plenty of magic and action from beginning to end. Still, I found it slightly less satisfying. Olive was unkind to her friends and not nearly the positive character that she was in the first book. Even allowing for the outside
influence working on her, she was just not quite the Olive I had come to admire. It's still an interesting story, but I'm hoping book three spends more time fixing the plot than fixing Olive. I still love the idea of people coming out of paintings and not looking quite normal in the real world though -- marvelously creepy.