Book 40, 2022

[chez_jae]

A Curse, A Key, & A Corkscrew by Anna McCluskey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I finished reading A Curse, a Key, & a Corkscrew by Anna McCluskey on Wednesday night. It's the first part of the "Rhymes with Witch" series.

As a young child, Joan and the rest of her first-grade classmates were cursed by their teacher, Mrs Olsen. Most of the students were struck blind and dumb, some worse than others. Officials chalked it up to a mass hallucination, but Joan and her friends know the truth: Mrs Olsen cursed them, and the curse is scheduled to re-set the year they turn 30. All of this gives the classmates approximately five months to prevent it. Several of them have devoted their lives to breaking the curse. Joan became a physicist, Ed a ghost-hunter, Derek a doctor, and Veronica a yogi. When Joan happens upon an odd key in an antique store and gets the same jolt from it that she remembers getting from the curse, she believes the key may hold the key to breaking the curse. Summoning the others, Joan and her friends launch a desperate attempt to thwart the curse before they are all rendered blind and deaf for life...or worse.

Despite how dire the synopsis sounds, this book was lighthearted and amazingly funny. I enjoyed Joan's interactions with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Brandon, as well as the antics of Veronica (naked yoga, anyone?) and Ed, the stoner. There was some friction between the classmates, but they ultimately pulled together in an effort to break the curse.

Favorite lines:
♦ "I feel like we've done this experiment before," he said, accepting the drink. "If memory serves correctly, and I'm sure it doesn't, it takes about three to get me into bed."
♦ "What was that?" // "What?" // "That hesitation. You dithered." // "I did not." // "You absolutely did."
♦ "Are you planning to come in? Or are you a vampire and need an invitation?"
♦ Really just a caper and not a shenanigan at all. Barely more than an antic.
♦ They were ready for it this time, though, and she hardly died at all.
♦ "We already know how this is going to go. Let's spare the poor bastard his death."
♦ "This is like an episode of Scooby-Doo. Fine. You, you, and you go rescue Brandon from the witch, who will undoubtedly turn out to be a fat man in a witch costume."
♦ "You can do quantum physics, but not cheerleading? You're blonde and have big tits. This is what you were designed for."

Lots of funny lines/quotes! Sort of waffling here between a four and a five. Affecting the score are two points: One, there was casual drug use in the story, which I didn't care for. I'm an old prude, sue me. However, it was Joan who rescued Brandon, which is a big 'Woot Woot!" in my book. That delighted me more than the drug use dismayed me. Five stars!