Small Town, Big Magic: A Witchy Romantic Comedy (Witchlore Book 1)

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I received an ARC copy in exchange for an honest review and thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity. Emerson’s “unbusheling” as it’s called in A Marvelous Light isn’t like that at all. Because she did know about magic until she was 18 – and that’s where the Harry Potter fanfiction reference comes in. Emerson’s memory of magic was wiped because she failed a test of power – and that whole scenario is suspicious in a way that does not get resolved at the end of this first book in the series. My biggest issue with this book is the main character because omg I've never been so irritated by a MC in my entire life. She's built on the lady boss, feminist, don't need no man ideal but it was so overdone that she just seemed incredibly arrogant, childish, narcissistic and annoying. Her arrogance was honestly next level - she had known about magic for one day and was already ignoring all her friends warnings and thinking she knows best. She makes several comments about how of course she'll be able to save everyone because its obvious she would be the best at it and it was grating as hell. She really did get on every last one of my nerves.

Then there’d been prom. Our parents had urged us to go together despite the many years of discord. They thought our two old St. Cyprian families should be friendlier, and obviously my rebellious sister wasn’t the one to approach for cordiality of any kind. And when they’d had a few drinks, our parents tended to wax rhapsodic about how they’d always had hopes for Skip and me. Not in a paternalistic, condescending Skip Simon way. In a collaborative, it- takes- a- village way. And that’s fine, because Wilde House is big enough for the both of us. In fact, bigger than we need. With my parents gone living the high life in Europe and my sister’s defection to who knows where after our high school graduation, the house had seemed too big. I had been thrown for a loop when both my sister and parents left St. Cyprian within a year of each other—though I’d rallied the way I always do. My sister, Rebekah, had always been a free spirit. My parents had always been socially ambitious—so why not take that as far as it could go on the Continent? I had the town. I had my friends. I got to live in this piece of history with my grandmother. Yet when my grandmother died a few years later and left me here alone, the old house felt like an ominous, rattling thing that might swallow me whole. Winter had seemed to seep in, cruel and unforgiving. The halls had seemed too long, the lights too dim.

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You're not allowed to forget for a second that the MC is a feminist. But in the most ra-ra! way imaginable. She's insufferable, and apparently notorious for going on mini feminism rants to her friends on a regular basis. It's entirely surface-level and triggered at the oddest moments, as if a child just learned about something and they're eager to talk about it and see it in everything. Georgie’s family also has roots in Puritan Massachusetts witch trials but unlike me, she loves getting lost in all that witchcraft nonsense. She pretends she has various supernatural powers to annoy me, but mostly she likes the trappings. What she solemnly calls crystal lore and sage burning. She likes to talk to her cat as if he can understand her and claims his meows are detailed replies that she, naturally, can comprehend perfectly. And she steadfastly claims to believe that Ellowyn, one of our other closest friends, can brew teas that cure colds, repair broken hearts, and curse weak-willed men. No one has civic pride quite like Emerson Wilde. As a local indie bookstore owner and youngest-ever Chamber of Commerce president, she’d do anything for her hometown of St. Cyprian, Missouri. After all, Midwest is best! She may be descended from a witch who was hanged in 1692 during the Salem Witch Trials, but there’s no sorcery in doing your best for the town you love.

Making mistakes doesn’t make you worthless, Rebekah,’ my grandmother tells me, her voice as steady as her gaze. As her grip. As her love, across all these years and death besides. ‘It makes you alive.’” And I don’t,” I announce brightly to the quiet of the early-morning kitchen of my family’s historic house. If you google my name—something I only do every other Tuesday because ego surfing is an indulgence and I keep my indulgences on a strict schedule—the first twenty hits are about the hanging of Sarah Emerson Wilde in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. This is why I need my friends to help me brainstorm ways to deal with Skip’s eventual, inevitable response to my new ideas for the Redbud Festival. Because I’m certainly not going to stop trying to improve St. Cyprian and its tourist-attracting, revenue-producing festivals to appease Mayor Stinky Simon. Witches aren’t excitable humans,” Ellowyn says. “We don’t ban books. We do put curses on them and smite our enemies out of existence, along with their books, but banning? That’s for the magicless. And dull.”

Because the only thing I’ve ever been able to do when it came to Skip Simon, from another old and well-to-do local family here in St. Cyprian like mine, was embarrass him.

Emerson thinks of St. Cyprian as a magical little town, one she’s proud to be a part of as a small business owner and president of its Chamber of Commerce. She doesn’t know the half of it. This was a great continuation of Small Town, Big Magic. As much as I liked Emerson in that book, I MUCH prefer Rebekah. I love a good redemption arc in a book. The romance in this made little to no sense and could have saved a lot of time by being removed. It had next to nothing to do with the story, at all. Very closed door for those into that, but not written sweetly either. It just happens (also Emerson's first time) and it's simply just whatever. No connection felt between the characters in that moment to the reader. The only perk I saw in this scene was the fact that she was 28 and it was her first time, the TINY bit of rep for those in a similar situation, but it was ruined by the dialogue from Emerson! For all the women who came before me who weren’t allowed. Or those who carved out their way and were shunned for it.

About this book

There was the unfortunate field trip to Mark Twain’s Boyhood Home in Hannibal. The riverboat incident a year later. The ninth-grade intercom thing that even my own friends didn’t entirely believe was an accident, but how was I supposed to know that it could be so easily turned on? Or that Skip and his freshman year girlfriend would choose to use that room to make out in? Maybe I should be appalled, but I understand too well the mistakes we make and sins we commit. When we haven’t healed what’s broken within us. When the dark is too tempting.” It’s a Tuesday in March and I have plans. I always have plans. It’s what I do, but these are particularly epic, even for me. I might have been born too late to speak feminist truth to Puritan patriarchal power, but I have my own calling. But the things that did not get resolved, that are still hanging over the series like the proverbial Sword of Damocles – or more like Chekhov’s Gun on the mantel waiting to be fired – are the questions about the true motivations and the depths of the corruption that Joywood has sunk to in their quest for power. I sigh. “Yes, he will. He can’t resist. But I don’t want to fight him.” This time is implied. “I want to find a way to get through to him. Preferably without embarrassing him in front of the whole town.”