“Vivi, if we could actually place curses on people, that bitch who always gives me whole milk when I ask for soy at Coffee Cauldron would be a dead woman by now,” Gwyn said.
― Erin Sterling, The Ex HexGoddess, we beseech you that this man shall never again darken Vivi’s door nor her vagina.
― Erin Sterling, The Ex Hex
CBR17 Bingo: Diaspora
Diaspora as the witches gather and settle all over the world.
It’s a tale as old as time. A young American college student falls in love with a handsome visiting international student over a bottle of wine and a perfect sunset. The woman and man fall into a passionate affair over the course of a golden summer only to be ripped apart when the man is summoned home to Wales to marry the woman to whom he is betrothed. Woman flips out, kicks out handsome Welsh man, and spends the next decade mending her broken heart.
In other stories, the woman might fly to Wales to rip him a new one, blackmail him, or start another passionate affair to get over a broken heart. In this case, both of them are witches and both come from powerful magical families. Therefore, this only leaves one option: a curse. In this case, an accidental, drunken curse. Vodka is drunk, candles are lit, cousins come over. One thing leads to another and the women curse the shit out of the lying dirtbag.
Vivienne (Vivi) is a lecturer at Penhaven college in Graves Glen, Georgia, teaching college freshmen the ins and outs of world history. She is not new to witchcraft, but it is something she performs carefully and sparingly. Her mother never practiced the craft at home, and what Vivi knows is what her aunt Elaine and her cousin Gwynnevere taught her once she moved to Graves Glen to attend college.
Vivi and her family are loosely associated with Penhaven’s other college, the magical one hidden from the regular student population. Elaine and Gwynn own Something Wicked, the local gift shop catering to tourists and hippie aunts learning tarot and beefing up their crystal collection.
Rhys Penhaven remembers his summer with Vivi fondly, and has stayed away from Graves Glen after his disastrous semester there. His ancestor sparked the magic that fuels Graves Glen, and every ten years, a Penhaven must come from Wales to “power up” the ley lines that feed the town. But when he arrives, everything goes to shit. He nearly gets run over by his ex on the way to his family’s Addams Family-esque gothic mansion. He is rebuffed by the witches he was sent to support. Not only do they not need his support, they want him to do his thing and get the hell out of town as soon as possible. It’s October and Halloween is the busiest time of year for the local magical community and for the gift shop. However, when Rhys asks Vivi to help him charge the lines to make the whole ordeal end sooner, something backfires and the magic in the town goes haywire.
This story is pure, silly, fluffy fun with a Halloween twist. Vivi’s arc is interesting, but Rhys, Gwynn, and Gwynn’s rotund talking black cat, Sir Purrcival, stole my heart. I was not impressed with the third-act breakup and resolution, but I’m willing to forgive it because the rest of the story was so cozy and charming.