After reading (and not particularly enjoying) the first three books in Juliet Blackwell’s ongoing Witchcraft Mystery series, I had decided to give them up. By the third one, I was mostly hate-reading anyway, curious to see how crummy these stories would get. But…well, I’d already put the fourth volume, In a Witch’s Wardrobe, on hold at the library, and when it was automatically delivered to my Kindle, I read it anyway. And then something surprising happened–it was actually pretty good. Some of the more annoying […]
Why Do I Keep Reading These?
Despite my lukewarm feelings about the first book, I read the next two volumes in Juliet Blackwell’s Witchcraft Mystery series, A Cast-Off Coven and Hexes and Hemlines. I know that people hate-watch TV shows, but do they hate-read? It takes a fair amount of time and energy to read a full-length novel (even if you sort of skim parts of it), so why do I keep coming back these books when they aren’t particularly good? Is it because I realized that Lily Ivory (why not […]
Basic Witch
The first in Juliet Blackwell’s Witchcraft Mystery series, Secondhand Spirits reminded me a lot of a cluttered antique shop–appropriate since the main character runs a vintage clothing store in San Francisco. There were a few quality pieces, a couple of unexpected treasures, and a whole lot of random crap that it made it difficult to find what I was looking for. What’s it about? Lily Ivory (I just can’t with that name) is a powerful witch with a troubled and lonely past. After years of […]


