The novel Witch and Wizard: The Kiss is very thrilling and James Patterson and Jill Dembowski deliver another exciting story in the fourth-book of the series, and continue the saga of Witch and Wizard. Wisty Allgood, one of the main protagonists in the story, is a rebellious seventeen-year old young lady who is of tall height and luminous red hair. Wisty is Whit’s sister, and they both have breath-taking magical abilities.
Wisty is a witch with vast powers, she is gifted with the abilities of shape shifting (the transformation of one’s self, mentally or physically, into an animal), mind control, pyrokinesis (psychic ability allowing a person to create and control fire with the mind), and electrokinesis (psychic power to manipulate energies, electrical currents, and generate electricity with the mind). Wisty was a truant during her school years and didn’t have the best of grades.
Whit Allgood, Wisty’s brother and second main protagonist of the novel, is an athlete of nineteen-years of age with short dark-blonde hair, and a tall and muscular build. Whit plays football and is famous for his incredible talent on the field. Whit is a wizard with the marvelous abilities of telekinesis (psychic ability allowing a person to influence a physical system without physical interaction), shape shifting, healing, and precognition (foreknowledge of an event, especially foreknowledge of a paranormal kind). Whit cares for Wisty a lot, and is a very affectionate person. The novel takes place in the Overworld.
The Overworld has been previously controlled by the New Order and is a world consisting of magicians and supernatural manifestations. The New Order was a strict, military-type government that rounded up kids who were suspected of having special powers, including Wisty and Whit. The novel starts off after Wisty and Whit defeat The One Who Is The One, the cruel dictator and face of the New Order government. Wisty and Whit were elected for the New Council, a new democracy government. After the defeat of The One Who Is The One, Wisty and Whit face more problems as more challenges must be met.
Children have been getting kidnapped continuously, and the city’s water flow has been shut. There’s a man who is responsible, the powerful Wizard King (or the King of the Mountain). The Wizard King threatens war to the city, and something must be done about him. A negotiation must be made to release the children, and restart the city’s water flow. Many civilians think that there is nobody better than Wisty and Whit with their absurd magical powers for the task. Well, General Bloom, the front-runner of the New Council, disagrees. General Broom wants war.
He decrees that the Book of Truths, a book which prophesies the future, says that “a witch and wizard must not work together”, and Bloom also states that magicians are far too dangerous among regular citizens. General Bloom particularly despises the Allgood siblings, and magicians in general. Throughout the story, Bloom is against them. Early on in the novel, an extremely attractive boy called Heath desires to form a relationship with Wisty. Heath/Pearce is a seventeen-year old male who is of tall height, blue eyes, and jet-black hair. Heath is a wizard, and reveals that to Wisty when they are dancing together.
Wisty is completely in awe after falling in love with Heath and he blocks her view of what’s really important at the time; making the city a better place. Whit, Janine, Ross, and Sasha headed up the mountain where The Wizard King resided on their journey to negotiate with him and free the city’s children. Janine is a strong teenage girl who was a member of the young Resistance team against the New Order, Ross is a good friend of Sasha’s and a member of the Resistance team, and Sasha is a friend of Wisty and Whit Allgood, and is also part of the Resistance cause.
On their hike, Sasha died after being hit by an arrow from one of The Wizard King’s men during an ambush, but the others lived. Janine and Whit’s relationship also grew stronger, and they are extremely in love. Whit, Janine, and Ross see brutal ceremonies of children being punished. Children were bashing their heads over-and-over against a wooden wall, and they were being cheered on by other children in the group. The three remaining members of the group are encountered by the mountain men, which work for The Wizard King.
They are captured by the mountain men after being tricked by an illusion. The illusion was nothing like they’ve ever witnessed; it was an illusion of their lost loved ones stepping towards them and greeting them. Nevertheless, it wasn’t their loved ones that were stepping towards them, it was a group of mountain men that were bloodlust. They were going to be killed, but, a woman named Izbella stopped the men. The group is forcefully brought to the Wizard King’s kingdom, where Izbella asks Whit to heal Njar, a boy who is the grandson of The Wizard King.
Whit brings Njar back to life successfully. When Whit and The Wizard King have a conversation, the king doesn’t negotiate, and is amused by his effort to do compromise. As a result of their interaction, The Wizard King imprisons Whit, Janine, and Ross and traps them in a disgusting room with a glass separating them from snow leopards. The glass raised an inch every 15 seconds, and it was only a matter of time before they were eaten up for dinner. Thankfully, they are rescued by Njar, the boy who Whit healed with magic.
After being freed, Ross heads down the marked path to get back to the city, and Janine and Whit head to the camp they previously saw to hopefully rescue the children in captivity. However, they do not find the camp, and they find themselves in the same location, over-andover. Eventually, they are being chased by mountain men and leopards who have followed their scent to a forest. Janine gets bit by a swift leopard, and she is unconscious. Wisty has visions and feelings of Whit being in deep trouble, and therefore, she is anxious to get to the mountain and support her brother.
Through a visible portal, she sees her brother running with an unknown look of fear in his eyes. Wisty and Heath together have insane power, because of their love and the fact that Heath is a wizard, and Wisty’s a witch. Heath and Wisty combine their powers, and together, they teleport to the forests. Whit and Janine are being surrounded by mountain men, so Wisty utilizes her profound strength with Heath and sets the forest on fire and sets a boundary between them and the mountain men. She kills some mountain men, horses, a lot of trees in the forest, but the snow leopards are still so close to Janine and Whit.
Whit gains superhuman strength and fights off the cats with his bare fists. His arms got extremely shredded with deep scratches, but he accomplished what he sought to do – he got rid of the leopards. Whit killed the majority of them, and the rest ran off after. However, Whit didn’t celebrate, the love of his life was dying right in front of him. Whit used his sacred poems and magical powers to restore Janine back to life. Whit controlled her wounds and mended them, he regenerated her cells, and now, her skin is covering her bones thanks to him. He revitalized her.
After saving Whit and Janine from the men, Heath and Wisty are confronted by Izbella. Wisty learns a shocking thing about Heath, not only is Izbella his mother, but his father was the notorious “The One Who Is The One”. Heath heads with his mother, and Wisty meets up with Whit and Janine. They escape, and make their way back to the city. Meanwhile, back in the city, things have gotten much worse. Bloom has taken over the council and has imprisoned all practitioners of magic in a ghetto with a force field around it that prevents them from using magic.
Whit and Wisty soon find themselves imprisoned, and discover their old nemesis Pearce is alive and serving as Bloom’s right hand man. Pearce is the son and protege of The One Who Is The One. Pearce is known for being evil and menacing, and Wisty has dark memories of him melting the faces off of people. Bloom has the practitioners of magic chained up and sent to the front lines of the battlefield when he confronts The Wizard King. The Wizard King uses mind control to take over Bloom and his “army”. Wisty tries to use her mind control powers to stop him, but alone she isn’t strong enough, so she combines her powers with Heath.
At first, everything goes just as Wisty wants it; Bloom’s army is freed from their chains and The Wizard King’s army (the kidnapped children) is freed from the mind control he keeps them under. After all, Heath takes over and tries to use mind control to have the armies kill The Wizard King (his grandfather). When Wisty stops Heath, the Wizard King starts taunting Heath and Heath melts his face off revealing to Wisty that he is actually Pearce, she is absolutely traumatized after she connects the details and determines that he’s Pearce.
Wisty and Whit combine their powers to kill him but, on when all they needed was one finishing blow to Pearce, they spare his life when his mother, Izbella, pleads for mercy. James Patterson and Jill Dembowski did a sub-par job with the novel. As usual with James Patterson books, Wisty and Whit, the two main protagonists of the story, have great characteristics that make them unique, and interesting personas. Wisty and Whit face relationship problems that teens face, and they resemble and relate to teenagers of the current epoch. The novel includes a love story which is developed perfectly for a teenager to read & relate to.
The plot had a slightly surprising twist towards the end, but nothing close to the ending that I was anticipating. The story built up so much momentum which lead to a lackluster ending. Nevertheless, the parts of the novel that made it good that were delightfully thrilling, and odd. The authors did amazing with a very few areas of the book, but when the context was exciting, it was better than anything else in the story; the details made my heart rate speed up and worry for the characters, and made me anxious as to what would happen next.
For example, when Wisty took control of the minds of Bloom’s army, and when the mountain men and leopards were chasing after Whit and Janine. The title of the book, and bold text on the book cover “ONE KISS COULD DESTROY THE WORLD. ” is extremely cheesy, and unfortunately, that describes the majority of the book as well. Wisty and Heath are two young adults who are deeply in love, and the book revolves around the two of them – their power together. The book seemed more like a romance novel than a fantasy one.
I’d prefer more “Witch and Wizard” and less “The Kiss”. The authors do not balance the two correctly. Although I am quite disappointed with the book, I’d recommend it to teenagers, because it has the key features that I believe teenagers have interest in: romance (a lot of it), loveable and despicable characters, an emotional rollercoaster, and some twists in the plot. In conclusion, the book is constructed terribly. It goes back and forth and skips around a lot, and uses a lot of cliches.
