The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina meets The Craft when modern witches must save teens stolen by an ancient demon in this YA fantasy-thriller debut.Dan and Liss are witches. The Black Book granted them that power. Harnessing that power feels good, especially when everything in their lives makes them feel powerless.During a spell gone wrong, Liss’s boyfriend is snatched away by an evil entity and … boyfriend is snatched away by an evil entity and presumed dead. Dan and Liss’s friendship dies that night, too. How can they practice magic after the darkness that they conjured?
Months later, Liss discovers that her boyfriend is alive, trapped underground in the grips of an ancient force. She must save him, and she needs Dan and the power of The Black Book to do so. Dan is quickly sucked back into Liss’s orbit and pushes away her best friend, Alexa. But Alexa has some big secrets she’s hiding and her own unique magical disaster to deal with.
When another teenager disappears, the girls know it’s no coincidence. What greedy magic have they awakened? And what does it want with these teens it has stolen?
Set in the atmospheric wilds of California’s northern coast, Sasha Laurens’s thrilling debut novel is about the complications of friendship, how to take back power, and how to embrace the darkness that lives within us all.
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A Wicked Magic
By Sasha Laurens
A Wicked Magic by debut author Sasha Laurens is a great and fun Young Adult Novel that focuses on friendships and a little bit of spooky magic. Set in beautiful Northern California, this story about teenage drama and issues were written with fun to read characters I really enjoyed. This is the perfect read for the season and I did enjoy this a lot.
Oh where to start. First of all, if you are going to read A Wicked Magic by Sasha Laurens, I would highly recommend going with the actual physical copy and not the audio. Although I loved the audiobook as far as the narrator went (Amy Dannenmueller), for some reason I found myself incredibly confused about who everyone was. I had an eGalley as well, but unfortunately I don’t think it helped me as much as looking at a copy of the book would have. Maybe if I would have made a list of the characters in a notepad it wouldn’t have been so confusing for me. That being said, if you wanted to try the audio I thought Dannenmueller did a great job and she was perfect for voicing this young adult novel. She was both easy to listen to, and very talented with her inflection.
A Wicked Magic had somewhat of a slow start, but once I started getting closer to the 50% mark it picked up and I was hooked all the way to the end. I loved the witchy aspects and the creepiness, and I would have loved to see more of both. I don’t think this one lived up to the potential it could have had, but I would still call it a great October/fall read. I would also recommend this to the younger crowd as they might enjoy it a bit more having probably not read as many books as older readers have. I just really recommend having a physical copy and think that could be the thing that tips it over the edge from a like into a love.
Overall this was a very intriguing debut, and I really did love the subject matter. I have watched Sabrina but not The Craft so I can’t speak to that, but I thought it was unique, a little gross, and very fun. I will definitely be keeping my eyes open for future books from Laurens!
Thank you to the publisher for my advance review copy via NetGalley. All opinions and thoughts are my own.
I did not finish this book, and it didn’t take me long to drop it. For that reason, I’m not giving it a rating but am expressing my opinion.
This novel is about two girls who turns themselves into witches when they find this old book in a Free Box nearby. One of the girl’s boyfriend disappears, and they drift apart over time. But when one of the girls says she has found a way to communicate with him, the hunt is back on.
I had a severe disconnect with this book from the beginning.
Based on the blurb describing this book as Sabrina meets the Craft, I expected this novel to center more strongly on the witchcraft aspect and magic. While I can’t completely verify that it’s not about that, I wasn’t very impressed with what I did read.
The beginning scene was good, probably the strongest passage I read, but that was where the fun ended for me.
Each chapter potentially jumps around in time, which gets extremely confusing and annoying at the same time. Why put the reader through that? I guess some people like that, but it makes it extremely difficult to follow along with what’s going on, and I would’ve rather read everything in a linear fashion. After the first passage, why not just focus on them beginning to learn the craft and enjoy it in all its glory, leading up to the incident with the boyfriend? That would’ve been more fun to read about.
Instead, after the first passage we skip around in time where things are very different. The girls aren’t really friends anymore and they don’t really use magic anymore. Okay, so you promise magic in the first passage just to veer away from it in the next chapter? Not cool.
What’s worse is that there is a lot of teen drama that takes precedence over the magic aspect. Great, just what we need. Not! I got very tired of the bickering back and forth and decided not to continue on.
Friends practicing magic together can get very dramatic I’m sure, but the disjointed flow of the story and lack of magic just killed it for me.
This may be the book for you, but if you don’t like it, don’t say I didn’t warn you!