by Aoë Lauren (link)
Genre drama, supernatural
Pairings none
Length 15 chapters and epilogue
Status Completed
I had high hopes for this story, because the timeline Aoe Lauren gives suggested that it would be a pre-fame story. There’s something about stories that follow the boys through the years leading up to their entrance into the mainstream that just gets to me. I ended up being pretty wrong about A Touch of Magic, as it quickly veered off into territory that I should have liked but which still managed to be disappointing.
The first few, short chapters follow Julianne as she runs away from home, ending up on a train to Tulsa with Hanson’s grandmother. I won’t get into all the problems I see with that setup; suffice it to say, the stilted dialogue is the least of the story’s problems. When it isn’t just awkward, the dialogue sounds far too mature for the characters who are speaking, and the narration is equally exaggerated in a clear–and failed–attempt at maturity.
The title isn’t just a cute phrase, though. What I thought were just silly dream sequences are eventually revealed as being the product of the boys’ Nona experimenting with magic. That plotline isn’t handled with much grace, especially when Julianne’s description of a dream is obviously meant to be the inspiration for the song Weird. The rest of the magic plot is just as awkward and poorly handled, and the story abruptly ends after Julianne discovers that she too is a witch. In the end, the Hansons are barely even side characters for Julianne’s strange journey, and the story of their early fame that I was hoping for doesn’t happen at all.
Review by Bethany (website)