All I want to read in September and October are books with magic in them. Give me all the witches, secret societies, and magical stories and I’m a happy girl. I love throwing in some lighter witchy reads though, especially a good witchy romance. Last year I loved The Ex Hex and Darynda Jones’ Betwixt and Between series. I was already let down by the sequel to The Ex Hex , The Kiss Curse, this year so I was really excited to get to Witcha Gonna Do?. I mean there is romance, a heist, and magic, what more could I want!

The answer is alot. There was so much I needed more of from this book and quite a bit I needed less of. For starters is this Witchingdom set in a Modern US? It sounds like it does, I mean there is a Superbowl, but at the same time it doesn’t. Where are all the ‘normal’ people? I have so many questions on the world itself. What exactly is this place that people can be banished to? More of a flushed-out world would have been nice. The magic system was not very well established either. We were basically just thrown into it without much information, I’m still not sure what Tilda’s actual talent is besides being ‘all powerful’. The physical descriptions felt inconsistent, the romance scenes were ‘meh’, I couldn’t keep The Committee/The Council straight, and the heist aspect felt rushed.

Finally, I really didn’t like the way this was written. Our main characters Tilda and Gil literally tell us allll of their thoughts. They had so many rambles that I honestly would lose track of the actual story. More dialogue and less telling would have at least taken this up a star. I don’t mind the occasional breaking of the fourth wall, but it did not work here.

I really wanted to enjoy this book and the idea behind it is good. But I just cannot recommend this one. I couldn’t get a good handle on this chaotic story and while I know this was a setup for a series, I was left with way more questions than answers. I won’t be picking up the second book and hope this one gets cleaned up a bit more before pub day.

AMAZON | GOODREADS |★★

Witcha Gonna Do? comes out December 6, 2022! Huge thank you to Berkley for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.  If you liked this review please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my instagram @speakingof.books.