Melissa Erin Jackson

I didn't get to read any Halloweeny books this year, mostly because the little Gremlin J takes priority over reading, but I was able to read one. I really love witchy cozy mysteries! and I am so glad I got to read this one. It has everything I wanted, a witch who actually uses magic and makes potions, a murder mystery, and small town vibes. Amber was great, not overpowered and too confident in her powers where she over uses them, but not some shy kitty cat who has trouble sticking up for herself (some authors try to play this off as being polite but come on).

Of course, it was pretty obvious from the get go who the murderer was, even if they try to misdirect you from it. Although, the way it went about was something I did not guess which caught me a little off guard but that just made me like the book even more. It also left off on a little cliffhanger which does make me excited to read the next book, which I will be doing.

One thing I did notice was that there was a bit of an absence of romance. It looks like they are trying to set something up for Amber, a little sprinkling of romance but nothing that would get in the way. I do like romances in cozy mysteries but of course the mystery should come first, so I like that they set it up but didn't make it take center stage. I guess I should get ready for a slow burn if there is to be one (if there isn't that's completely fine with me!)

Overall, a fun book that I very much enjoyed and a series I will definitely continue.… (more)

It wasn't horrible by any means. It mostly just was unoriginal. Most of the building blocks are derived from popular urban fantasy tropes.
The one thing I have to praise is that even though the MC is black, the book doesn't feel the need to go on a crusade against racist rich white men like 99% of books with a black protagonist do.
Nowadays it's almost like you only write a back protagonist specifically to address racism, and black people don't serve any other purpose in fiction anymore. But most authors don't seem to realize that this is fundamentally just as racist as the racism they try to call out. Especically in an alternative world there really is no need for any of that.
Just for that I kind of want to give the book an extra star but giving a star for not doing something stupid feels wrong.

Back to talking smack. The book is full of reminders and flashbacks of events that sometimes happened literally in the paragraph above. It feels like watching one of those Crime TV series that are designed so that you can tune in at any time into any episode and follow along with the plot because every important detail gets reiterated every time it is brought up. It just feels patronizing to me and causes me to be instantly bored. If the book doesn't expect me to pay attention and spoon-feeds me every detail, I don't really feel like paying attention.
And I enjoy and even prefer easy reads where you don't have to follow multiple POVs, multiple time-lines, or a huge mountain of info-dumped world-building details. But this was way too much even for me.

The world-building, while not being particularly unique, was pretty well-done at least within the scope of this book. I got the impression of a complex and alive city without much clumsy info-dumping or useless and ill-fitting tangents. But then, the pacing is really slow anyway so the book has more than enough time to organically introduce the reader to the world.

I very much appreciate that the book took its time and you can really tell how much better and more natural the world-building can be if a book just takes a bit of time to establish the world. Sadly readers nowadays are way too impatient and therefore authors cut down on this kind of deliberate worldbuilding by employing established tropes a lot.

But for a book with over 400 pages prequel, the plot would easily fit in your typical 270-page UF.
It's very straightforward and at no point was I surprised by anything at all. The little plot there is couldn't be more predictable. There is not even an attempt at a twist as far as I can tell.

While this book fits into NA in terms of tone, the characters behave much more like in a YA novel. The kind of naive take of the book on the world in terms of government and society feels very much like YA too.
I want to give a few examples of this but they all require some spoilers.
The first one is very minor and never really becomes relevant.
First off is the whole government tracking thing. If the government has surveillance on every major teleport pad then why the hell would you go through the trouble of using a fake identity? They can just correlate your face with the use of the identity and the entire history of your identity is instantly deanonymized. You would need a new identity every 1-2 teleports for this to work at all.
There are lots of plotholes like this one where there just didn't go enough brain power into reasoning about these things.

The second example is a pretty major spoiler. You have been warned.
At some point the MC is part of the rescue of a bunch of young women (late teens, early twenties). These women have worked as bartenders. They have been trapped, drugged, and abused for many months up to this point. And most of them want to join the organization that freed them to fight evil.
At its core, the vibe here is this naive idea of the oppressed rising up to overthrow the evil overlord led by the MC and fight for a better future together bla bla bla.
This clashes badly with the grittier and darker atmosphere the book tries to instill and pretty much perfectly exemplifies what I mean by a naive YA take on the world and the characters. It's not that it was written for a YA audience, but that it comes across like it was written by a naive young adult. Maybe the first is the reason for the second I guess.

There is quite a bit of plot-driven stupidity too but it's generally only used to add spice to interpersonal drama and not to justify major plot beats so while it annoyed me, it wasn't really a big deal.

Maybe I am just desperately projecting my need for gritter (urban) fantasy and am just disappointed by yet another YA audience UF. It doesn't have to be an Abercrombie but just a bit grittier than the typical YA soup.… (more)

Out of character stupidity for the sake of the plot is the main problem in this one.
These stupid decisions usually work out perfectly against all odds because the author made it so tho.
So you can take comfort in that I guess.
Beyond that, this story just feels a bit unoriginal. I have just read too many samey cozy mysteries I guess.
The magic and its parameters are very poorly defined and seems way too powerful which leads to lots of "why couldn't you have used this spell this other way". I am almost certain this will only get worse with the sequels and I expect lots of "why don't you use this spell you used in a previous book in this situation. It fits the task perfectly and could save the day".

I guess if you don't care to continue the series, only want a light cozy mystery read and are not supersaturated by the genre you might enjoy this a lot more than I did.… (more)