I assumed I would find this one easier going than its predecessor and that was mostly true: the lack of focus on Nell's family and cult upbringing meant that I could just pretend it hadn't happened, mostly. Nell herself and her relationship with her family both make no sense if you think too hard about her described background - she's now a law enforcement official to her fingertips, and we're supposed to believe that happened in a six-month training course? - although Hunter does occasionally remember, which leads to ridiculousness like Nell's using all sorts of complex jargon and terminology and then announcing she doesn't know what "CEO" means.
That said, I know I’m nitpicking, but late in the book we learn that Spoilerthe bad magic is an outgrowth of a WWII-era spell created by witches in Germany working for the Nazis; the side effects were so bad that the witches eventually committed suicide. The family of witches we meet, both in WWII and later in the US? Jewish. Jewish witches working for the Nazis during WWII… and the only “revenge” they want is for what happened to witches during WWII. The Holocaust is mentioned only in the context of affecting witches, not in terms of affecting Jewish people. I’m a mixture of gobsmacked and confused. Like, did Hunter forget that the Nazis were committing genocide against the Jews during WWII? Was the Holocaust not actually committed against Jewish people in her alternate reality and she just never mentioned that? (And if that’s the narrative choice she made I’m not thrilled with it.) Either way, it’s discomfiting, particularly when most of Hunter’s main characters are explicitly practicing religious Christians (and also note the only modern-day Jewish characters we meet in this book are villains).
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