This started out really promising, with a strong voice narration of a Tracy Flick-esque character named Emerson Wilde, who absolutely adores her hometown of St. Cyprian. Emerson is a die-hard, try-hard, ambitious worker who's in on every festival and has a perpetual rivalry with the mayor, Skip. Her family abandoned her and the town years ago for reasons she doesn't know, and the town has some witchy stuff Emerson doesn't believe in going on, but this stuff doesn't hugely red-flag her. Even if she sounds like she might be a pain to deal with, she had a great voice and I went with reading it.
Then the mayor sets her up to be attacked one day, and oh, surprise, it turns out Emerson has magic. The town is a witch refuge, and Emerson had grown up with magic, and then as a a teenager she supposedly failed the big magic test (as if this girl would fail any test?!) and had her magic and memories of magic wiped. We're told her sister Rebekah also failed the test, but chose permanent exile from the town/her family over losing her magic. If this sounds fishy to you, it sure is--apparently teen Emerson had the idea of rebelling against the Joywood council and that's what happened.
Emerson falls all too easily into using magic, being a magical warrior, and finding out everything she didn't know was going on for the last ten years. The plot involves Skip (I think) getting in league with dark magic and trying to figure out how to head off some dark magic flood, and I didn't really get what was going on with that other than it requires a coven of people with different skills, and the town immortal Nicholas and Rebekah having to be roped into it.
Emerson's love interest is Jacob, a too stoic farmer/healer who she always wondered why she never got together with--yeah, the magic block would be why--and it's insta-love. However, Jacob was so stoic and boring and had no charm or personality besides being Emerson's sexy guard dog that I had zero interest in the relationship. I'm happy for her, I guess, but he was pretty meh to me.
This had potential but it didn't feel like it baked all the way for me. I found myself in the mental "huh?" place a lot, and while it probably makes sense that after magical mindblocking (which Emerson gets over through the course of the book), she'd already know what to do, it kind of went from 0-99 in "oh, I'm a Warrior"-ness. I wasn't entirely sure what the hell a black magic fog was, or what you do with it--everyone else knew but I, the reader, didn't. It made it less fun to read. Three stars.
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