Review: "Good Switch, Bad Switch" by David Cody Weiss and Bobbi J.G. Weiss

Good Switch, Bad Switch by David Cody Weiss and Bobbi J.G. Weiss
Published 1997
★★★

A-choo! Our resident ditz-witch, Sabrina, wakes up with a cold...but not just any cold. She has spellfluenza, a witch-specific bug that means that when she sneezes, her powers pop into a mortal, to return only when she next sneezes around them.

How does Sabrina know this, you ask? Well, she asks the witch doctor, of course. And the witch doctor tells her that if she sneezes with no mortals around, her powers will pop back into her, and that she should sensibly stay the fuck away from mortals for twenty-four hours...what does Sabrina do?

She goes to school. Where she is the only witch. And she is surrounded by mortals. Because Sabrina is an idiot.

Predictably, things go pear-shaped almost immediately. Also predictably, mean-girl Libby eventually ends up with Sabrina's powers...but maybe less predictably, Libby's actually a little bit creative with what she does with those powers. I read this because I was hoping it would be the one in which Sabrina and her aunts end up trapped in a mall of Libby's creation, and I was correct—though I hadn't remembered just how little of the book they spend trapped in that mall. It's actually kind of too bad (though more on malls in a moment) that they don't spend longer there, because the Escherian style of the mall and the lengths Libby will go to to make the mall a hotbed of her own power are kind of fascinating.

It does seem to say something about the authors (or creators, or publisher), though, that this is only book three of the series...and it's the second book that takes place in the mall. In fact, I read Showdown at the Mall first because I thought it might be this book. Could they really imagine no more interesting location for teenagers to end up?

Also maybe worth noting that when Sabrina asks Harvey what Libby might do with unlimited power, he says this: "Well, she's sixteen," he said, screwing up his face in thought, "so that rules out the White House for a while. I suppose she would want to be a movie star or Donald Trump's new ex-wife. Something where everybody would look up to her and do what she told them to." (82)

First can we acknowledge the creepiness of pointing out that a sixteen-year-old cannot be president but implying that it would be okay for them to be married to someone who was 51 at the time this book was published? And then can we be horrified at the idea that "Trump's new ex-wife" would be on the same plane as being the president? And then...oh, this whole thing is horrifying. I need to go scrub my brain with bleach.