Book 119, 2024

Sarah's Inheritance by Katherine Kim

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


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I stayed up a bit late to finish reading Sarah's Inheritance by Katherine Kim last night. This is book one in the author's "Spirits of Los Gatos" series of urban fantasies. The main character is Sarah Richards.

Sarah is devastated to learn that her beloved grandmother, Rosemary, has passed away. She always meant to travel across the country to visit her, but Sarah was reluctant to face the wrath of her overbearing mother, who was determined to keep Sarah as far away from Rosemary as possible. However, when Sarah finds out she inherited her grandmother's house, she travels to California. There, she encounters some of Rosemary's friends and neighbors and also finds herself caught up in a battle between supernatural creatures and her grandmother's friends, who aren't fully human. Sarah also learns she's a witch, and she begins to read her gran's journals, hoping to learn more about her grandmother and her own abilities.

This was fast-paced and exciting. I liked seeing Sarah come out of her shell and make new friends on her own. I would have appreciated more world-building, but the reader gained information as Sarah did--in bits and pieces. Her mother was a loathsome human being. She didn't just deserve a bitch-slap. No, she deserved to be bitch-slapped to death. What a despicable piece of work. There were some formatting issues, most notably the fact that some words were split between one line and the next. That's fine. What isn't fine is when they were split in no sensible manner. Even worse, sometimes it was only one letter that carried over to the next line. I mean, if you have space to put the dash/hyphen, you have space for one more letter! Annoying. I also noted several editing issues. The worst was Sarah's name. Is she Sarah Elizabeth Richards, or Sarah Rose Richards?

Favorite line: So far it had been the most bizarre and exciting day she'd ever had, and it wasn't even noon yet.

Wishing I could give this 3.5 stars. It was enjoyable enough that I'll bump it up to four.