Previous book here.
Nina Blackmoore is bi and still smarting over the heartless, cold dumping her ex-fiancee did to her before the wedding. Per the suggestion of her bestie, she goes on a date with someone who's highly unlikely to work out with, just as a palate cleanser. Morty Guitierrez is a non-magic person, non-binary but mostly going by he pronouns, he does aerial silks, he wears stylin' makeup. Meanwhile, Nina's just been dumped for being too boring and stodgy. And when their first date goes awry because he finds out she's a Blackmoore and her avaricious family has been trying to buy his family pub, Nana reasonably figures that's the end of that.
Well, except for the part where some kind of witchbond-thing happens after that. This hasn't come up in the books before because the previous pairings have been between others of the four magical families, but apparently if you are Meant To Be with a normie, the normie starts getting magical powers. Imagine Morty's uh, surprise at that one since most people aren't aware of the magical contingent of Thistle Grove. (On a related note, I read an article recently in which someone complained about how the normies always have to hide their powers. Morty totally agrees that this is a thing that needs to be hidden. As a weird person, I'm sure he'd know.) So the relationship actually ends up kicking off pretty quickly and easily without much drama after that. Morty's a nice dude, so no objection there. I note some people may be grumbly over a bi hero and heroine getting together heterosexually, but personally I had no problem with that. Flexible is flexible.
I will note that despite the relationship getting together easily, this one has a bit more plot than the last one. Which is to say that Nina has a super friendly magical encounter with the Lady in the Lake (more or less) of Thistle Grove, and then starts having big ol' magic power surges and acquires a magic coin she can't get rid of. This turns out to be A Bigger Deal than she expected, and Nina ends up doing a fairly big fuckup when she freaks out after the person she goes to get help from, Delilah Harlow, tells her the real truth and wants to report her. However, it resolves...albeit I'm not quite sure how I feel about the ending with that. (I think I have the same quibble as the author of that article does.)
We definitely see that the Blackmoore family is fairly avaricious, especially the leading ladies of the family, which seem to intimidate the younger generation. Gareth and Gawain, Nina's brothers, haven't particularly come off well in previous books, and Nina acknowledges that. However, we're told that Gareth feels bad about what he did and wishes he could have done things differently rather than losing Linden's love. It kind of made me wonder if that will be a future book, but so far doesn't look like it? (Or at least, the next book isn't covering it.) Nina seems like the best of the bunch. I'll do some talking below the spoiler cut on the ending stuff.
Overall, I give this 3.5 stars. It' was a little more interesting than the last two and while the romance was still too easy, it gave me something to think about for a bit.
Spoiler space
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So....Nina doesn't get super busted for accidentally-on-purpose-ish wiping Delilah's memory a whole lot more than she wanted to, she has to lay off magic for a year. Fine, I have no quibbles with that, albeit I hope she helps to improve the situation in the next book. Nina wants to make amends, anyway. However, her mother gets de-powered entirely because she wanted Nina to try to take over? Wow, really? Just for intentions? Dang, Emmy. Also, handing the power off to Gareth, after their previous book... I dunno. This is kinda weird.
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