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Book Review: Hex After Forty, by M.J. Caan

I picked up a copy of M.J. Caan‘s Hex After Forty on Amazon…Well, technically my husband did. Whenever he gets digital credits he lets the add up and then gives them to me to buy ebooks with, since we share libraries.

Torie Bliss thought that being over forty and having your husband dump you over your favorite meal would be rock bottom. Then she learned that the perfect life he had created for them was built on a foundation of lies.

A very public fall from grace leaves her penniless and homeless. Thinking she had nothing else to lose, she decides to move in with her estranged mother in a picturesque town in the mountains of North Carolina. Only to discover that her mother is quite the witch. Literally.

And so is Torie. They are from a line of witches who develop their magic after the age of forty. As if hot flashes and night sweats weren’t enough, she now has to contend with wild magic that she has no idea how to control.

But she must learn to tap into her strange new powers to help her new friends solve a terrifying mystery.

Someone is killing off shifters in the sleepy town of Singing Falls, and if Torie can’t get her act together, she just may be next on the supernatural serial killer’s list.

Can Torie let go of her past in order to embrace her new future?

I wouldn’t call this all out bad, just shallow and scattered. I liked Torie and all the friends she made in her new town. But I could barely tell all the ladies apart. Plus, the plot and mystery doesn’t really develop so much as just kind of stutter along until the villain decides to reveal themselves.

The writing is perfectly readable, though the editing has a few (though not an overwhelming number) hiccups. I raised a particular eyebrow at this one, “They knew her mother in this life, new her in a way that Torie did not.” <.<

But I do have to make a half-joking objection to calling a book Hex After Forty, which is obviously a play on Sex After Forty, which Torie even says at one point, and then not having any sex in the book, barely even the beginning of a maybe future romance. That’s just mean.

All in all, I wouldn’t warn anyone off the book but I’m not in any hurry to continue the series either.

Book Review: Eastside Hedge Witch, by T.J. Deschamps

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I received a copy of T.J. Deschamps’ Eastside Hedge Witch through Netgalley. And in a completely unrelated turn of events, it was on Sadie’s Spotlight very shortly there after.

Miriam Diaz has lived as a suburban mom on Seattle’s Eastside for the past seventeen years. She serves on the parent teacher association, bakes for her daughter’s cheer squad, and is an all-around champion stay-at-home mom. Pretty average and totally boring, and Miriam likes it that way. All the better to hide her sordid past.

When a hellhound shows up in her neighbor’s begonias, and Miriam banishes the stinky mutt back to where it came from, she let her evil ex know she’s still alive and kicking…and likely in possession of something she stole from him.

Miriam doesn’t only have trouble brewing from below. The banishment also alerts the supernatural cops. When a gorgeous alpha of the shifter pack starts sniffing around her hedges, Miriam fears the news might go all the way to the archangel that she isn’t a latent but a full-blown witch. Miriam isn’t a registered supernatural and for a good reason, she’s hiding something big from the authorities above and below.

All of the commotion threatens the veil hiding the separating the mundanes and the supes. Miriam might just have to come out of the supernatural closet to save the world. Again.

I enjoyed this, even if I wasn’t totally wowed by it. I really liked Miriam, Jada, Roxy, Rhiannon, and Phry. I was OK on everyone else, including Gabriel. And since he’s the most likely romantic pairing for most of the book, that left me a little cold. But the writing rolls along at a good clip, there’s some humor, an interesting world, and the characters have moral codes I appreciate.

I did think Miriam was just a little too central, too powerful, too wanted by all the powerful men around her. And while I liked the ending, I did have to wonder if anyone (other than Lucifer) bothered to consider how it would effect the whole rest of the world.

All in all, I’ll happily read the next book in the series, when it comes out. But I’m not gnashing my teeth that I can’t have it now.

Book Review: Tomes, Scones & Crones, by Colleen Gleason

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I received a copy of Colleen Gleason‘s Tomes, Scones and Crones through Netgalley.

At forty-eight, Jacqueline Finch has a nice, easy life with few responsibilities: she’s been a librarian in Chicago for twenty-five years, she doesn’t have a husband, children, or pets, and she’s just coasting along, enjoying her books and a small flower garden now that she’s over the hill.

That is, until the Universe (helped by three old crones) has other ideas.

All at once, Jacqueline’s staid (and boring) life is upended, and the next thing she knows, she’s heading off to Button Cove to start a new life as the owner of Three Tomes Bookshop.

The bookstore is a darling place, and Jacqueline is almost ready to be excited about this new opportunity…until Mrs. Hudson and Mrs. Danvers show up. Somehow, the literary characters of Sherlock Holmes’s landlady and Rebecca deWinter’s creepy and sardonic housekeeper are living persons who work at the bookshop (when they aren’t bickering with each other). Not only does Jacqueline have to contend with them—and the idea that people regularly eat pastries while reading books in her store!—but the morning after she arrives, the body of a dead man is found on her property.

Things start to get even more strange after that: Jacqueline is befriended by three old women who bear a startling resemblance to the Witches Three from Macbeth, an actual witch shows up at her bookshop and accuses Jacqueline of killing her brother, and the two women who own businesses across the street seem determined to befriend Jacqueline.

And then there’s the police detective with the very definite hot-Viking vibe who shows up to investigate the dead body…

The next thing Jacqueline knows, her staid and simple life is no longer quiet and unassuming, and she’s got crones, curses, and crocodiles to deal with.

And when a new literary character appears on the scene…things start to get even more hairy and Jacqueline is suddenly faced with a horrible life and death situation that will totally push her out of her comfort zone…if she’s brave enough to let it.

After all, isn’t forty-eight too late for an old dog to learn new tricks?

Writing a review for a book that you can objectively say isn’t bad, but that you didn’t particularly enjoy is difficult. The writing and editing in Tomes, Scones and Crones is fine. The pacing seems fine. The character development seems fine, etc. I even really appreciated a 48-year-old heroine and the ‘claim the power of your later life’ moral of the story.

I just didn’t especially enjoy the book. I didn’t care for Jacqueline, found her largely unpleasant. I thought the literary device of having the crones discuss everything as a means of relaying it to the reader was annoying. Plus, their meddling would be infuriating. The romance is only hinted at. The villains were so villainous as to be caricatures, even down to evil = ugly simplicity.

And I found something vaguely ick- inducing about Danvers and Hudson being literally reduced to their jobs. It goes a long way towards undermining the theme of women (even/especially older women) are full, empowered individuals to then have two female characters pulled from literature to function as housekeepers and housekeepers only, they disappear when not keeping house. Thereby erasing any further importance or potential they, as individuals, might hold.

This was structurally sound and will probably shine for a lot of people. It was a flop for me.