EDIE IN BETWEEN

A young woman’s magical heritage catches up with her in this novel centered around grief and relationships.

Seventeen-year-old Edie is desperate to get away from her maternal grandmother, GG, with whom she has lived on a houseboat in small-town Maryland ever since her mother’s unexpected death. Though she has always known her mother and grandmother were witches, she has eschewed her own magic after a troubling experience with it years earlier, but in Cedar Branch, she finds she can no longer evade it. Edie’s leisurely paced journey from a place of withdrawn fear to an embrace of her full self unfurls into the telling of a budding friendship with kindhearted Tess and a growing romantic relationship with magically inclined Rhia, who also has not yet spread her wings as a witch. Chapters from Edie’s mother’s perspective are interspersed in the form of an old journal she kept during the time she became pregnant with Edie. The family secrets that are gradually revealed owe as much to contemporary domestic fiction tropes as they do to fantasy. Edie’s first-person narration is earnest, and though an evil magic threatens her throughout, there doesn’t ever seem to be any real doubt about her fate. Edie, her family, and Tess are White; Rhia is Black.

An engaging offering with a light paranormal touch.