What a pleasant surprise!  I've had this book in my TBR for a long while and kept avoiding it, probably because it was a novella and I'm not big on novellas.  It's too bad, because I started it late last night and finished it this evening.  It was really good! 

The story is set in a small town in contemporary England that just happens to be the boundary between our mundane world and a world filled with many wild and dangerous and evil things.  A bigbox store wants to set up business in the town and that would bring down the barriers and well... you can imagine. 

Three women stand between the evil, the town cranky lady, the vicar and the skeptical owner of the magic store.  All three of them are terrific characters, filled with flaws and emotions and authenticity that I just loved and was quite frankly surprised to see in the shortened framework of a novella. 

But I'm not gonna lie, I wanted it to be longer!  I wanted to spend more time with these women and learn even more about them - and that bit of a twisty ending!  Surprised the hell out of me, it did!

And Book Two is now on my wishlist!

This is a fun novella that claims to be 144 pages long but feels much shorter due to the story ending at the 86% mark on my Kindle edition. And the fact that I devoured it between breakfast and lunch. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a story about a crotchety village witch taking on a supermarket chain to stop all hell from literally breaking loose, but I needn’t have worried. The former Doctor Who writers are knocking it out of the park lately.

There is a lot going on for such a short novella. The themes explored aren’t the ones I expected, and that’s a good thing. There’s a nicely balanced blend of humor and seriousness, and while the characters seem like clichés on the surface, they actually get fleshed out pretty well. Overall, it’s a good lead-in to a series (but also works as a stand-alone), and I’d love to see it adapted for television.

I read this for the Halloween Bingo 2018 Spellbound square.

Series: Lychford #2

I debated between 3.5 and 4 stars for this one, but the weird opening with ranting about Greg Lake Christmas songs was just confusing because I'd never heard of him before. That aside, I had a lot more fun with this installment of the Lychford series.

It kicks off with Lizzie the vicar being haunted by a little boy in her church. It turns out that the boy isn't dead though, so the ghost is a weird kind of magical apparition that I'd have to explain using spoilers.

Eventually the ghost decides (or gains enough energy) to not just haunt Lizzie in the church but follow her around, and the three witches start trying to figure out what he is exactly and what is going on with him, but then outside influences start messing with the witches' heads and things get a little crazy. The scenes where Lizzie, partially under their influence, tries to break out of it by damaging her hands are both disturbing and funny.

We also get to see more of the haunting in Judith's home and the other witches finally find out she's been cursed with the ghost of her dead husband, so I think I'm safe in counting this for "Haunted Houses" for the Halloween Bingo, even if the haunting with the little boy is a non-traditional haunting. This book could also count for the "In the dark, dark woods", the "Witches", the "Supernatural", and the "Ghost" squares. I'm not sure if it could count for "Chilling Children" because although the ghost of the little boy gets significant page time, he doesn't say much and I don't know if he'd count as a main character. He is in danger though.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the next Lychford installment since they seem to be getting better as they go along.

Previous update:

26 of 133 pages

I was going to try to read this for the "Haunted Houses" square in the hopes that it would elaborate on Judith's situation at home (it sounds like it would fit a haunting). This novella kicks off with the ghost of a small boy (or some kind of manifestation anyway) appearing to Lizzie (the vicar) in her church, so this is promising.

Here's hoping there's more haunted church stuff!

Series: Lychford #1

A supermarket chain is trying to build a new store in Lychford that promises to reroute traffic in the area in such a way as to break down the barriers between the worlds and bring about the end of the world. Of course, they're not selling it that way. They're going for the much needed jobs and subsequent boost to the local economy angle.

Who's to stand in their way? An elderly hedge witch, a non-believer who owns a magic shop, and the vicar, apparently. It took me about a third of the way through this novella before I started liking it and I found the ending to be a bit anti-climatic, but it was an interesting read that left enough threads dangling that I'll probably pick up the next one. This is fortunate, because I went to the trouble of requesting the second book from the library at the same time as I requested the first.

I read this for the "Witches" square for the Halloween Bingo. It could also be used for "In the dark, dark woods", "Supernatural", "Monsters", and maybe "Haunted Houses".