Small Town, Big Magic: A Witchy Romantic Comedy (Witchlore Book 1)

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I smile even more broadly. If there was an award for best flyer, that one would win it. But then, I’m excellent at flyers. “That flyer was about the new and improved Redbud Festival, Georgie.” What brings you to my lair this early in the morning?” she asks without looking at me. I know this is to give the impression that she divined my presence when it’s more likely she heard the creaky board out in the hallway.

Now I’ve got to get the rest of our little group on board before I open my bookstore. Because my friends are awesome, by definition, and each one of them brings specific skill sets to this kind of meeting. I need them all. Men are applauded for embellishing the truth while women are seen as very confident for telling the truth—and very confident is never a compliment. Not in a paternalistic, condescending Skip Simon way. In a collaborative, it- takes- a- village way.Not that I allow loneliness in my life. I swat it down like an obnoxious fly anytime it pops up. Because loneliness is a betrayal of all the women who came before me and I am not going to be the Wilde who lets them down. I’m the current caretaker of this landmark of a house that’s been in my family some three hundred years, since the first Wilde wisely made the long trek away from the Massachusetts Colony and settled down in this part of Missouri where two great rivers meet, the Mississippi and the Missouri. I like the idea of roots that deep and rivers that tangle together. I like this house that towers above me with its uneven floors and oddly shaped rooms. I like where it sits in town, on one end of Main Street like a punctuation mark. But as much as I loved the premise – or most of the premises – that make up this story, there were a few things that drove me utterly bananas.

The small town of this series is St. Cyprian, Missouri which happens to be a place that holds magic but town Chamber of Commerce president, Emerson Wilde, thinks of her home as normal as could be. If you asked Emerson about magic she would tell you she is descended from a witch that was hanged during the witch trials but her herself didn’t have a magical bone in her body. I need to figure out how to head Skip off at the pass,” I say. “But in a way that does not end with our illustrious mayor embarrassed in front of a hundred people, again, and hating me even more than he already does.” My position, then and now, is that when your always-problematic sister “loses” your favorite science teacher’s chinchilla, you can hardly be concerned about a dance. You initiate search and rescue, in a prom dress, because it’s the poor, lost chinchilla that matters. And given that I was the one who found Mr. Churchilla, you’d think Skip would have forgiven me.On the other hand, as one of Ellowyn’s oldest friends, I feel like it’s my duty not to encourage her I Am the Night thing too much. 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. Even before she had magic, Emerson would have done anything for St. Cyprian, but now she’ll have to risk not just her livelihood…but her life.

But she has little time to explore those powers, or her blossoming relationship with her childhood friend, cranky-yet-gorgeous local farmer Jacob North: an ancient evil has awakened in St. Cyprian, and it’s up to Emerson and her friends—maybe even Emerson herself—to save everything she loves. 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, and deal 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. But the things that did not get resolved, that are still hanging over the series like the proverbial Sword of Damocles – or more like Chekhov’s Gun on the mantel waiting to be fired – are the questions about the true motivations and the depths of the corruption that Joywood has sunk to in their quest for power.Time doesn’t go one way. It isn’t just the now or then. It’s all things, and I am in tune with the weaving, waving nature of it all. Chaos. Diviner. Me”

Ellowyn continues to fuss around with her tea, in and out of bags. She takes different leaves from a selection of jars and pours hot water over them, so a fragrant cloud of steam rises up between us. I breathe it in and feel my shoulders relax. Slightly. Once upon a time (mostly in the 1980s and 1990s) there were a whole lot of books telling stories about people (usually young women) who discovered that the mundane world all around them hid secret places and even more secretive people filled with magic – and danger. And that the protagonist of those stories either belonged in those magical places or discovered them or had to save them. That doesn’t mean they like Skip personally. Yet somehow the blame for any negativity aimed at him or his office or his campaign gets put on my shoulders. When he decides I’m wrong, which is pretty much anytime I get out there and try to change things for the better, he really goes after me.Powerful women, witches, are learning about their strength, what it means, and how to live with and use it without letting it use them. Good feminist themes and a lot of recovery language (as in 12 Step) woven in. I might have put this in the Fantasy genre because, for me, the power and recovery imagery seem the primary focus. But there is a nice little romance in it as well. So stuff happened. In fact, this book in particular was more about the stuff happening, the things being done – or attempting to be done – TO Rebekah and company than anything else. It was, in a peculiar way, more than a bit political. And I was all there for it. Some readers did not like this as much as Small Town, Big Magic because it was more about witchy small-town politics and the mean no-longer-girls in charge of them and less about the romance. Personally, I liked this one better for the shift. Ellowyn Good, on the other hand, is particularly vicious and vindictive—traits I don’t share, but deeply appreciate. Especially because Georgie is very talented at taking Ellowyn’s usually extreme ideas and softening them. Then making Ellowyn think it was her idea all along. Georgie also always supplies the sweets, which helps, because sugar helps everything.