SYNOPSIS
What would you do if you found your late grandmother’s book of shadows – a witch’s spell book and journal – and learned that you’re a natural born witch? You’d try one of the spells, of course! And that’s exactly what 16-year-old Emma McGlinchey does. To her amazement, the candle lighting spell she picks actually works.
Naturally, Emma has to recruit best friends Lia and Shar into starting a coven.
Soon the girls cast a spell to make everyone like them at the religious high school they’re being forced to attend for the first time. Unfortunately, it fails to make an impression on a group of zealots who set about bullying Lia and Shar for being an openly lesbian couple.
Meanwhile, a love spell they cast for Emma gets the boy of her dreams to ask her out, but the school guidance counselor comes onto her, too. The girls attempt to deal with these problems using other spells, but will they be able to set things right before something catastrophic ensues?
Read Emma’s own Book of Shadows and find out in this suspenseful young adult, urban fantasy today!
Naturally, Emma has to recruit best friends Lia and Shar into starting a coven.
Soon the girls cast a spell to make everyone like them at the religious high school they’re being forced to attend for the first time. Unfortunately, it fails to make an impression on a group of zealots who set about bullying Lia and Shar for being an openly lesbian couple.
Meanwhile, a love spell they cast for Emma gets the boy of her dreams to ask her out, but the school guidance counselor comes onto her, too. The girls attempt to deal with these problems using other spells, but will they be able to set things right before something catastrophic ensues?
Read Emma’s own Book of Shadows and find out in this suspenseful young adult, urban fantasy today!
REVIEW
The main premise of this book was one that I found quite intriguing, as the girls go about learning how to use magic and the repurcussions that result from it. Maybe they were acting as typical teenage girls, but they seemed really irresponsible with the power they were given, even after they acquired some knowledge about it. I would have liked to see them take it a little more seriously.
The author was a bit heavy-handed in describing the characters and how they weren't your typical youth, but they pretty much still were, just in their own off-beat ways. Nonetheless, they were by and large a rather sympathetic group that the readers finds themselves rooting for. January, a new friend that the girls made at school, was probably my favorite person, even though she played a more minor role than the others. She seemed to be harboring secrets; as did Tim, Emma's boyfriend. And, evidently, they both were.
The ending was pretty extreme, rather sudden, and totally fantastical. Not at all what I was expecting! Apparently, there is a lot more going on around the girls that they and the reader are entirely unaware of. Emma's response to everything seemed a little out of whack to me, but then trauma does do weird things to people.
The writing was sometimes awkward and even a bit clunky, but the general premise of the story was intriguing enough that I wanted to continue reading. And given the absurd cliff-hanger at the end of Book 1, I will definitely be reading Book 2 sometime soon!
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"Book of Shadows: Volume One: Casting" by Michael Beaulieu is available FREE
on most major eBook platforms!
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