A Curse Awakened by Cecy Robson

A CURSE AWAKENED is a prequel to Cecy Robson's Weird Girls series so you need to go in expecting the girls to be less mature and much more inexperienced. The differences between the sisters in this novel and where we left them at the end of CURSED BY DESTINY are dramatic, particularly when it comes to Celia, so it took me a moment to adjust to the way the girls behave in A CURSE AWAKENED. Don't get me wrong, they're still essentially the same but the differences in maturity are quite noticeable and this is a prequel but I still needed to actually pause and recalibrate my expectations.

A CURSE AWAKENED takes us to the girls' pre-Tahoe days, shortly after Celia and Danny broke up. It's a lot of fun to see Danny and Celia being less harmonious than they are in the series proper, and it's interesting to see how Danny's relationships with the sisters has evolved. Celia being Celia is kindness personified and she agrees to help Danny with his vampire problem even though her sisters are against it. What we get is a tidy adventure that shows us the sisters at a much rawer stage of their personal and magical developments, and see just what leads them into the matters at the start of the first novel (if I remember correctly).

The novella takes place at a time when the girls didn't have as much control over their powers, because they're still under the curse. It was a lot of fun to see all of their abilities backfire, or misfire, as it were, and it added an extra comic level to the story. Robson always does a great job of injecting humour into her writing but A CURSE AWAKENED has more of a slapstick feel to it at times because of the girls' messed up gifts.

You don't need to read A CURSE AWAKENED to follow the series but it's definitely a must-read for fans of the series. Skipping A CURSE AWAKENED won't hurt your enjoyment of the Weird Girls but it's worth checking it out if you like the girls and want to see what they were like when they were a bit younger.