the trials of becoming a witch

Belladonna Blackthorn is almost 30. She works in Lunar Books, and she truly loves it there. Or she did. Violet, who owns the store, has decided to retire, and she’s letting her son Christopher take it over. And all the things that Belle had done over the years to make it cozy and inviting, he is tearing apart. Belle wishes she could buy the bookstore herself, but she just doesn’t feel ready.

Belle lives with her best friend Ariadne and her cat Jinx. And it’s only if you look closely that you’ll see the small incantations around her. A wave of her hand to tidy up the children’s books section at the store, a flick of the wrist to sort the mail, a tiny finger movement to add a tea bag to her mug. Most people don’t expect anything magic to happen in everyday life, so they miss it. And Belle is careful. She doesn’t want anyone to know that she’s a witch. Aside from her mother, who is also a witch, obviously.

Then one busy evening, after a sudden thunderstorm catches all the customers off guard, a man appears at the bookstore to talk to her. He is tall, with a dark coat, looking a little like someone in a movie about vampires. He asks Belle for a book, the title setting her on alert, as it’s a notorious book to a her, the witch-hunter’s guide to finding witches. She tells him that they don’t carry it and expect him to leave. However, he follows her to the back of the store instead.

Once they’re speaking privately, he tells her that the coven doesn’t appreciate how she’s been avoiding their correspondence. She insists she hasn’t gotten any. He assures her that she had, a black envelope with gilt edges that he put a spell on so that it would be certain to get her attention Again, she insists that she never received anything from the coven and his spell must not be very good. He is offended by that, but he gives her another envelope and tells her not to ignore that one. When she finally gets home from the bookstore, Belle opens it to find out that she will be called before the coven on her 30th birthday so they can decide if she’s used her magic sufficiently for it to be bestowed upon her permanently. If she hasn’t, it will be taken from her.

Belle had been given her book of witchcraft when she was 15, and she was supposed to be using it and learning from it all that time. But she didn’t know about this trial on her 30th birthday, and she hadn’t been going out of her way to do much magic, aside from the few incantations she used to make her life a little easier. But will that be enough?

It turns out, it’s not enough for the coven, and Belle is given until Halloween, just a little over a month away, to work with a mentor to get her magic up to speed. But her mentor turns out to be an older gentleman who was removed from the coven when he was a teenager. And the guy who dropped off her invitation keeps popping up at inopportune times to check on her. She can’t tell anyone in her non-witch world what is going on, so she has to spend less time protecting the bookstore from Christopher’s bad choices, and she snaps at Ariadne because she is just exhausted. But worst of all, she struggles with even the simplest incantations. It’s like there is some dark force that is working against her spells, and if she can’t figure out what that is in time and fix it, she’ll lose her witch powers forever.

Rewitched is a charming story about finding your place in the world and doing the work to be ready. It’s a coming of age story about witches and magic, familiars and family. Author Lucy Jane Wood has packed a lot into her debut novel, from the love story to the bookstore shenanigans to Belle learning her craft. But the ending is so rewarding, and the characters are easy to fall in love with (except Christopher, obviously, who doesn’t understand how to respect a bookstore).

I really enjoyed Rewitched. I will be honest here and say that I thought the opening was a little slow. I thought some of that could have been cut and maybe told in flashbacks, but I still enjoyed the story. I liked Belle a lot and wanted her to succeed, and the people she drew to her were impressive as well. And once I got past that beginning and things were happening for Belle, I was drawn in and really wanted to find out what had happened with the coven. Rewitched is really a very satisfying magical story, and I think magic-seeking readers will enjoy it.

Egalleys for Rewitched were provided by Berkley through NetGalley with many thanks.