“My mother was magic like all mothers are magic: she loved me unconditionally.” Oh, to be back in a Meg Cabot book. Where I belong. This story follows Jessica and Derrick, dual POVs, who live in this small town where witches exist. They exist everywhere, actually — there’s a World Council of Witches (WCW). Jessica has been banned from it ever since she cast a spell at 15 that went horribly wrong. But now Derrick, who Jessica thinks is a member of the council but is not — shows up and tells Jessica that she’s the Chosen One to save their town of West Harbor from evil. Of course she immediately notices how hot he is because of course he is!! And he is there to protect her and follows her around in his car which I promise sounds creepier than it is. And she finds out he needs a place to stay and she offers her home and well, yeah. Things happen! Which they both enjoy. But there are also spooky things happening in the town, like wolves that haven’t been there for hundreds of years and storms. Derrick tells Jessica that she has to find the Bringer of Light, which is a teenage girl from the high school, and they have to train her to beat back the evil forces that threaten the town. This girl, Esther, is super funny and totally takes on the role that she is destined to be. Everything culminates at the West Harbor Tricentennial Ball. A girl named Rosalie from Jessica’s past — the sort of mean girl whose husband Jessica had done the love spell on but it didn’t work — thinks the Bringer of Light is her daughter and tries to sabotage things a bit, including bringing in a guy from the council. He turns out to be the half brother of Derrick, who is the son of Gaia. Rosalie tells Jessica that Derrick was lying to her but of course she’s the one who is lying but Derrick does share that his mother Gaia sent him because that’s what he does — he goes out to towns to try to help them. At first Jessica is upset that Derrick didn’t tell her the whole truth but Gaia meets with Jessica to explain and the two admit their feelings for each other. Then a storm with the evil forces rolls in and they have to rush off to the ball. They do end up saving the day — or more accurately Esther saves the day by giving a speech about the injustice of the witches that were killed in that town so long ago; what she talks about starts to repair what has happened and the storm begins to move on. We find out that Esther is also a descendant from Rosalie’s family. The story ends with Jessica and Derrick taking a trip to another town to save a different city. Her cat is being watched by her brother Ethan. I saw on goodreads that this was book #1 in “Witches of West Harbor” so is there going to be another book? And is it going to follow Jessica and Derrick in another city or is it going to be a spinoff sort of deal? Either way I’d definitely want to read it. This was such a cute, lighthearted read that had the typical Meg Cabot humor and I loved it. I love a fun witch book. The end did feel like it was resolved really quickly, but I enjoyed the journey so much I didn’t really care.