Book 41, 2024

[chez_jae]

Crazy For Brew by Annabel Chase

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I completed the ebook Crazy For Brew last night. It's the first book in Annabel Chase's Spellbound Ever After" series, starring sorceress Emma Hart.

The curse on Spellbound has been broken, allowing residents to come and go as they please, as well as allowing an influx of new paranormal citizens to visit. In honor of the occasion, and to thank Emma for her part in breaking the curse, the town is holding its first annual Spellbound Day. But not all is rainbows and unicorns; some of the residents of Spellbound are acting wildly out of character. Emma is convinced that they've been hexed or victimized by a potion. The odd behavior is straining friendships and relationships, and Emma is determined to find the root cause and fix it.

To begin with, I did not realize that this is a spin-off of an earlier series by the author. I've read the first book in that series, then read this one, and I've unfortunately spoiled quite a bit of the original. Boo. My bad. Nevertheless, this was enjoyable, and I liked that the mystery didn't involve a murder, but rather a different sort of crime. Characters were fun and relatable (most of them, at any rate!), and the narrative was quick and straight forward. I would have liked to see more of Emma engaged in activities other than her investigating.

Favorite lines:
♦ I was a stickler for routine. It was the only way I could get everything done without descending into madness.
♦ "You drive like a grandmother on her way to a rheumatology appointment."
♦ "That group is ridiculously paranoid about immigrants. I don't get it. We all came here from other places originally." Truth
♦ They made Lord Voldemort look like your jocular uncle.

I'd love to award this 3.5 stars. Since I can't, I'll kindly bump it up to four.

Comments

[einhornmaedchen]

I love the quote about immigrants. Truth, indeed.

[chez_jae]

It was quite relevant and timely.