The book at least starts at the right moment in the story and gets right into that storyline, so that was good. And there's a tight-knit group of friends at the center, also good (if fairly 2D and under-developed). They eventually get into some animal familiars, but they're so unimpactful (one of my fav tropes, too!!) that I can't even remember their species.

ebook reservation came in! It's more than 20 times that she talks about herself as a Warrior. Such as this gem: "More evidence that I'm a badass Warrior, I think smugly." A witchy rom-com in which a bookstore owner who is fighting to revitalize a small midwestern town clashes with her rival, the mayor, and uncovers not only a clandestine group that wields a dark magic to control the idyllic river hamlet, but hidden powers she never knew she possessed.

Georgie sighs and looks over her shoulder at me. “Not every get-together needs to be a meeting with a cause.” What I’m about to type shouldn’t be construed to be about the above quote which is one of my favorite paragraphs in the book and, incidentally, not said by the main character (which is telling). 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.’” This book is about family and forgiveness. I really loved seeing all of the characters return from the first book. I also absolutely loved Rebekah’s journey. Her talk of recovery and learning to love herself was very uplifting. I also enjoyed her story with Nicholas. He is a very interesting character, and their interactions were my favorite parts of the book. The ending was everything I hoped it would be - and now I have to wait for book number three. I cannot wait to see where this coven goes. That’s not all, though: evil is lurking in the charming streets of St. Cyprian. Emerson will need to learn to control what’s inside of her, remember her magic, anddeal with old, complicated feelings for her childhood friend–cranky-yet-gorgeous local farmer Jacob North—to defeat an enemy that hides in the rivers and shadows of everything she loves.

I wish I could say we’d left such silly adolescent issues behind, but on the day of Skip’s coronation—I mean, election, if you could call it that when his grand and formidable mother basically forced everyone she knows into voting for her precious spoiled baby—as mayor of St. Cyprian, I led a town cleanup service project. I had no idea the cleaning substance we’d used in the community center would make the floor abnormally slippery. I was wearing shoes with decent treads.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. 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. And we still don’t know what the root cause of that conflict even is. The ending isn’t satisfying. I need to know why the leader seems to have had it in for Emerson and her entire family long before the events of this book. The evil in the water, as much as it needed to be eliminated, wasn’t personal – at least as far as we know. It needed to be resolved but it’s difficult to get invested in. I’m invested in seeing that manipulative witch get exactly what’s coming to her. And I didn’t even get a hint.