Witchful Thinking by Celestine Martin
Publication Date: 27th Sep 2022
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Paranormal (?)
3 Stars
One Liner: Okayish; got its moments
*****
Freya Grove has been a place of magic forever. It’s where magic is out in the open and acknowledged by all. Lucinda Caraway (Lucy) loves her little mystic seaside town and works as a high school history teacher. She is a witch and reads tea leaves in her spare time. She is happy but can’t help but hope for more. Who doesn’t want a soul mate to love?
Alex is back in town after ten years but knows it’s a temporary visit. Belonging to the mer family makes him crave adventures and the ocean more than regular domestic life. Alex and Lucy have been friends as school kids and could have been more if he stayed back.
His return to the town coincides with Lucy’s wish-spell disaster. It appears that she hexed herself and needs his help to undo the spell. Alex, in turn, needs Lucy’s help with a few things he has to sort out. Is this their chance to find love and each other, or will they end up going in opposite directions?
The story comes in the limited third-person POV of Lucy and Alex.
What I Like:
• It is a good choice when you want something light and familiar. The overall pacing is decent, even if it drags in the middle.
• The concept of a magical town with witches, mers, faes, vampires, gnomes, etc., was intriguing.
• The bonding between the Caraway sisters (excluding Ursula) was lovely to read. I’m sure they’ll have their own books next. This one set the stage for it.
• A few interactions between Lucy and Alex were fun.
What Didn’t Work for Me:
• When you have a town with magical and paranormal folk, you want that level of atmosphere and world-building. The book falls terribly flat here. We are told about the beings and magic but hardly anything to ‘see’. There’s just one scene with the gnomes (which is super convenient for the plot).
• Apart from Lucy and another character, there isn’t much magic, spells, or witchcraft in the book. The book could’ve been a regular small-town romance (and maybe I’d have rated it a teeny bit higher).
• The chapters are marked with months (which made it easy to track the story). However, the story would jump a week or two, and with alternate POVs, it was a little tough to stay in the loop.
• The narration isn’t smooth. Scenes that needed showing are told, and some scenes have more buildup with less impact. It needed better fleshing out.
• I don’t know what to say about Ursula. It’s hard not to dislike her, but there might be a book for her that explains her POV, backstory, missing info, and the rest. (Also, methinks Ursula is the name of 2022. This is my 3rd or 4th book that has this name).
To summarize, Witchful Thinking had the potential to become a fab read with atmospheric world-building and layered characters but ends up more like a light read that skims the surface.
Thank you, NetGalley and Forever (Grand Central Publishing), for the eARC.
#WitchfulThinking #NetGalley
*****
Note: It has steam level 2+ scenes. A few words were missing throughout. Since this is an ARC, I’m hoping it will be fixed by publication.
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