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purplepenning's review
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.5
Imagine Sabrina the teenage witch grows up to be Leslie Knope but with a witchy, Buffy-style Scooby-gang friend group who fights a growing evil in a Midwestern river town. And Sabrina/Leslie/Buffy is an indie bookstore owner. And there's a friends-to-lover romance with a grumpy farmer.
If only the execution had been as good as that plot. But let me say that I feel like this book is going to get dinged because of its very confident, type-A protagonist who is a proud, loud, somewhat insufferable feminist in a small Midwestern town. And, I mean, I get it, because I can't say I thoroughly enjoyed spending this entire narrative journey in her head, but I also reject it, because, yes, she's a little intense but she's not wrong. I do think she could've been written and rounded out a little more skillfully so her whole personality wasn't a string of stereotypes and mini-lectures. But even more than that, I think a ruthlessly good edit to the first few chapters would've helped this whole book tremendously. And I'm still confused about the town's timeline. Is this contemporary fantasy based on alt history or is the timeline supposed to make sense in actual history? It was supposedly settled by witches after the Salem Witch trial in the late 1600s, when really the earliest "towns" in the area were little more than French and Spanish trading posts set up in the mid-to-late 1700s.
So yeah — a great idea, an enjoyable read, that could've been much more so with a tighter edit.
If only the execution had been as good as that plot. But let me say that I feel like this book is going to get dinged because of its very confident, type-A protagonist who is a proud, loud, somewhat insufferable feminist in a small Midwestern town. And, I mean, I get it, because I can't say I thoroughly enjoyed spending this entire narrative journey in her head, but I also reject it, because, yes, she's a little intense but she's not wrong. I do think she could've been written and rounded out a little more skillfully so her whole personality wasn't a string of stereotypes and mini-lectures. But even more than that, I think a ruthlessly good edit to the first few chapters would've helped this whole book tremendously. And I'm still confused about the town's timeline. Is this contemporary fantasy based on alt history or is the timeline supposed to make sense in actual history? It was supposedly settled by witches after the Salem Witch trial in the late 1600s, when really the earliest "towns" in the area were little more than French and Spanish trading posts set up in the mid-to-late 1700s.
So yeah — a great idea, an enjoyable read, that could've been much more so with a tighter edit.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Abandonment, Blood, Body horror, and Grief
Minor: Medical content and Sexual content
Magic includes the following non-consensual applications
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