An entertaining, engaging blend of millennial romance, occult fantasy, and witch-chick lit.
A young woman’s initiation as a witch brings her past back to haunt her in this contemporary fantasy novel.
Though she once dreamed of becoming an artist, Sela Glaser now ekes out a living in the gig economy. Rushing to her next hustle, Sela almost hits an animal she thinks is a raccoon. Or a cat? It’s neither, the creature—named Sable—indignantly informs her. His form is sometimes feline, sometimes human; he’s full-time snarky; and he has astonishing news. With her 28th birthday approaching, Sela is coming into her power as a witch. Sable is her familiar, and they must bond in Sela’s Nascent Eve ceremony or she’ll lose her abilities (and betray Sable). It’s true that as a teenager, Sela cast spells with her three-girl coven, but that was just fooling around...wasn’t it? Several otherwise-unexplainable magical events convince her of the truth, but the path of true witchery isn’t smooth. Complications include a mysterious stalker, a new romance, serious consequences arising from that teenage spellcasting, and an unexpected wrinkle in Sela’s powers. With help from Sable and a local group of witches and familiars, Sela may find her true purpose. Bobe conjures up an appealingly relatable heroine in her second novel. Many readers will understand Sela’s frustrations with setting her dreams aside while trying to patch together enough temp jobs to pay the rent, for example, and her developing relationship with dentist Peter Cheng captures the sweetness and self-doubt of new romance. Humor lightens the novel as well. Meanwhile, the magical elements are all the more thrillingly strange and wonderful, sometimes deeply unsettling. The satisfying ending will leave readers hooked and hoping for more of Sela’s story.
An entertaining, engaging blend of millennial romance, occult fantasy, and witch-chick lit.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-69-496562-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
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