Book 56, 2023

[chez_jae]

Witch Upon a Star by Angela M. Sanders

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I finished reading Witch Upon a Star by Angela M Sanders last night. This is the 4th part of the "Witch Way Librarian" series featuring small-town librarian and novice witch, Josie Way.

Josie is excited that her youngest sister, Jean, will be visiting Wilfred OR to attend a workshop at the newly opened retreat center. While she's happy to spend time with Jean, Josie can't help but worry about her. She is certain that Jean spent a huge amount of money to become a certified life coach, and Josie is afraid that the woman at the center of the trendy Ready-Set-Go lifestyle is nothing but a charlatan. Josie's anxiety is multiplied when two people connected to the workshop wind up dead: one stabbed in the back and the other poisoned. The sheriff, Sam Wilfred, wants Josie to stay out of the investigation, but the books in the library keep warning Josie. When Jean begins to receive threatening notes, Josie refuses to wait around for local law to run a by-the-book investigation. Jean refuses to be treated like fine china and insists on assisting. Together, the sisters must sift through clues and motives to identify a murderer.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story, and I powered through it, but several things did not sit well with me.
- Who ultimately was threatening Jean?
- Why? It's not as if she was investigating initially.
- How did Josie figure out the murderer got the first two victims to kill one another?
- What was up with that odd verbal exchange between Cookie and Sylvia?
- Why would Cookie keep Desmond in her orbit? One would think he'd be an embarrassment at the least and a liability at the most.
- And, I wonder...is the author crafting a bromance between Duke and Desmond? Heh.

While these points left me with a face full of 'WTF?', I remained engrossed in the book to the point that I was aggravated to set it aside to clean house on Sunday. Hah!

Favorite lines:
♦ His teeth were so white and skin so tan I felt I was talking to a ginger snap with buttercream icing.
♦ She had magic she took for granted. Lots of people did, really. Darla's hospitality, Roz's imagination, Lalena's insight, Duke's native understanding of machinery--all of these were glimmerings of magic.
♦ "Killers don't always wear black and cackle like fiends, you know."
♦ "How much Scooby-Doo do you watch, anyway?"

I would have awarded this a solid five, but I'm deducting a star for the things left hanging or never fully explained. Four stars.