Emmy Harlow is the scion of the fourth-ranked magical family in Thistle Grove. While she loves the place, she dated the scion of the most prominent family, Gareth Blackmoore, in high school and he ditched her for not being a big enough deal. After that, it was a combination of the breakup and realizing that she'll always be fourth tier that motivates her to leave town for the big city of Chicago--even if it kills off her magic.
However, the Harlow family are the traditional arbiters of the magical competition for the three most prominent families to determine who runs the town, and Emmy has to go home and do that. Her magic comes back again, and she finds out that Gareth has also loved and left her best friend Linden and also Talia Abramov, a mostly-lesbian(?) aloof hottie. The Abramovs and Thorns are pretty well sick of the Blackmoores always winning--as is Emmy, for that matter--and the other two scions decide to try to band together so that one of them wins. While Emmy has to remain impartial in execution, in her heart she is down with this plan.
Emmy and Talia (they're both bi) get into a hot n' sexy relationship pretty quickly, but that's going to be a problem if Emmy wants to go back to Chicago and Talia's not moving out of Thistle Grove.
Overall, I enjoyed the fun, snarky narration of this and the worldbuilding is interesting. It's not as much of a "revenge" book as you would have assumed, but I did like how it was more of a "Let's take down the Blackmoore power structure" in general. There's also a revelation about why the Harlows are forever fourth class that's interesting. Emmy and Talia are nice together (I enjoy that Talia is kind of "dark witch" but also a good person, she's got edge) and I'm down with it, but it felt a bit insta-love, insta-easy right off the bat, with the only conflict being if one of them moves/doesn't move, and that doesn't feel like a big deal.
Overall I give it three and a half stars because I feel like it could have used a little bit more depth for it to be a more memorable book for me. I mean, it's still pretty good, but in the end I think I'm going to regard it on the "fun fluff" side and it may not be that memorable for me in the future.
Comments