SPELLFIRE

A reunion between two alumni from a magical academy brings up old feelings.

Bryn Delmar is a witch born into a siren family, with one published book on her résumé and the hopes of writing another. In the meantime, she’s returned to her alma mater, Grimoire Academy, because a former mentor has left her a collection of books. She’s braced to meet the new headmistress, Amelia Hexford, her one-time schoolmate and crush, and worried about how Amelia will react to her return. To Bryn’s confusion and pleasure, Amelia confesses to having harbored romantic feelings for her, too. As the two start to fall in love, however, professional pressures loom for both. Bryn has agreed to stay on to teach some of her late mentor’s classes but is worried about not being a good teacher. Meanwhile, Amelia suspects that the school’s governors are plotting to have her fired and replaced with someone who doesn’t subscribe to newfangled educational principles. The other instructors include long-serving teachers and nervous newbies, and students span a range of teen stereotypes meant to evoke different levels of affect and cognitive ability. Bryn and Amelia verbalize their feelings as if well trained in interpersonal communication, and we are told how well they get along and are shown instances of explicit, enthusiastic romance-related consent. Thanks to these choices, and to early declarations of love, the romance plot feels fairly low-stakes until there is a perfunctory third-act breakup, when Bryn must decide whether she’s a writer or a teacher who wants to stay at the academy full time. The fight for control of the school’s direction and for a less conservative pedagogy is equally low in tension. The sex scenes between Bryn and Amelia show some sparkle but are somewhat misplaced in what seems like a middle-grade boarding-school novel written from a teacher’s perspective.

A Sapphic reimagining of many magical school novels that makes no demands on the reader.