While the cover is intriguing as well as the overall premise, I could barely finish this book.

The story begins right away with the discovery of magic, however, then the main plot sort of becomes very muddled. I couldn’t quite keep up with what was happening when. Especially when it came to when Dan and Liss were recounting what happened to Johnny and how they ended up with the book. There was so much teenage drama that really made me dislike a lot of the dialogue as it became a bit repetitive.

The writing was a tad cliche in a lot of spaces and there is a lot of things that should be labeled with trigger warnings. Especially the ones when it comes to themes of suicide. As for Liss and Dan’s friendship, right off from the start you can see that it is not a good relationship. Now while toxic friendships, especially as teenagers, are common, there just never seemed to be a resolution on the horizon. Early on, I could tell that Liss was going to be my least favourite character and that feeling never went away.

The character of Alexa was one I didn’t see as very necessary at the beginning, but I learned to like her story along the way. With books based on witchcraft, I did expect the villain to be much more of a threat and I didn’t get that sense at all.

The way this book is planned out and structured is very messy and I found a lot of the dialogue and descriptive language dismal .I think that this idea could have been executed much better and overall I wouldn’t recommend this book as I struggled to even get past the first few chapters.

Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: A Wicked Magic

Author: Sasha Laurens

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 3/5

Recommended For...: fantasy, ya, magic

Publication Date: July 28, 2020

Genre: YA Fantasy

Recommended Age: 16+ (slight romance, violence, death, slight gore)

Publisher: Razorbill

Pages: 368

Synopsis: Dan and Liss are witches. The Black Book granted them that power. Harnessing that power feels good, especially when everything in their lives makes them feel powerless.

During a spell gone wrong, Liss's boyfriend is snatched away by an evil entity and presumed dead. Dan and Liss's friendship dies that night, too. How can they practice magic after the darkness that they conjured?

Months later, Liss discovers that her boyfriend is alive, trapped underground in the grips of an ancient force. She must save him, and she needs Dan and the power of The Black Book to do so. Dan is quickly sucked back into Liss's orbit and pushes away her best friend, Alexa. But Alexa has some big secrets she's hiding and her own unique magical disaster to deal with.

When another teenager disappears, the girls know it's no coincidence. What greedy magic have they awakened? And what does it want with these teens it has stolen?

Set in the atmospheric wilds of California's northern coast, Sasha Laurens's thrilling debut novel is about the complications of friendship, how to take back power, and how to embrace the darkness that lives within us all.

Review: Overall, this is a good book. The book had a lot of good character development and the world building was well done. The book was also wrote with a good atmosphere. The book had this creepy vibe throughout it and I think it fit well for the story. The book also had a decent plot.

However, I didn’t like the switching POVs and I think the book would have been better with just one. I think the ending battle was weirdly wrote and it bored me a bit. The pacing of this book is super slow. Also, I got super mad at this book because there is a character who is, in my mind, queer but the author doesn’t write them that way. The book felt weird and I didn’t connect with it at all.

Verdict: It was good, just not for me.

I really enjoyed this book. It was magical and fun with some very interesting characters. The beginning pulled me in quickly, but I found that the middle was pretty slow. I felt like the beginning and end were well thought and executed, but the middle was lagging in terms of action. It began to feel repetitive as the same issues rose up for Dan and Liss that they had to work through. 

Alexa's story on the other hand got my attention. I wanted to read more about her and what was going on with Lorelai's investigation. The whole first half of the book was focused on Dan and Liss' situation with occasional sections on Alexa - but in the second half we get to see her a lot more and that's when things get interesting. 

Focusing on the plot, this book was so good. The actual events that go on and what these girls have to face was insane and super creepy. I wish I had read this book for Halloween with the amount of creepy, eerie things that happen. I also was a bit upset about who Alexa ended up with, because I was kind of rooting for someone else. On the other hand, she ends up with a really sweet girl and seems really happy. 

For the characters, we see a lot of growth between the three, especially for Liss in my opinion. Honestly, I didn't like Liss' character at all in the beginning, but after finding out more about her home situation and her motivation for things, I just feel sorry for her. The changes she goes through made her into a much healthier person and I loved seeing her growth. Dan also goes through a much needed change and comes out a healthier, hopefully happier, person. 

One thing that I think the author was trying to make cannon was Dan's sexuality. We know Liss is straight (or at least very interested in her boyfriend Johnny) and Alexa is gay, but we never learn about Dan. Not that it's important, but I can't help but wonder where the author was going for her. See, in the book, Dan comes across as ace (asexual) or somewhere along the ace spectrum. But it's never confirmed, denied, or really discussed. Part of me wants an answer, but it doesn't really affect the story much whether or not she is. I'm just curious, I guess. 

Overall, this book was written beautifully and it dives into things like self harm, depression, abusive home life, and other important conversations like that. These issues are discussed and handled carefully and I appreciate the work the author put in to represent these topics well. Though the middle was really slow for my taste, I think this book was still awesome. I loved learning about how magic worked in this world and pairing it with real teenage problems. 

I think a lot of people will not only enjoy this book, but learn that things aren't always what they seem. This was a solid 4 // 5 stars for me.

Thank you Penguin Teen for providing an ARC for this book through Netgalley!

This book is about three teenage girls who get involved with witchcraft, and discover that the power they are dealing with are not as simple or as benevolent as they imagined it would be. However, it is also about so much more than that.

In fact, the magic plotline was more of a vehicle for the characters internal struggles. The characters are all dealing with some heavy things, such as depression, anxiety, and family issues and pressures, and the story unfolds as they confront those things, as well as their own coping mechanisms they've developed. I would definitely give trigger warnings for things like self harm, parental abuse, and some inappropriate adult/minor interactions and relationships.

While the magic plotline seemed to sometimes drag, or fold over, and ended in a somewhat anticlimactic way, in my opinion, the real plotline was the other things the girls were dealing with. Watching them face their struggles and develop as people, while also watching the friendships between them shift and evolve, was really fulfilling, and it kept me hooked until the end. I was extremely impressed by the way they felt like real teenagers. The things that made me annoyed with them at the beginning of the book grew on me, and I realized I was annoyed because I was reading teenage characters that acted and thought like teenagers. That type of writing is rare, and I appreciated how real it made the characters feel.

Overall I really enjoyed watching this adventure unfold, both in the girls themselves and in the magical mess they found themselves entangled in.

So I was really intrigued by the synopsis Of this book. Especially with a comparison of Sabrina The Teenage Witch & The Craft . For me I felt like the story had too many storylines. And I didn’t start getting interested until about 67% and then it decreased may be at 72%. I really did enjoyed Alexa’s story with her aunt. Other than that it just felt long and drawn out.

This was a good adventure witches read. It definitely gave me Sabrina vibes. There’s a familiar cat. Three different characters who have different lives and they come together to save a friend who’s been missing for months and they unravel the truth of why he’s missing. There is trigger warnings about self harm. Thank you penguin teen for a arc.

2.5/5 Stars

Dan and Liss discover a magical black book that makes them witches. They try to cast a spell to change their lives, but it goes wrong, causing Johnny, Liss's boyfriend to go missing. The girls friendship falls apart until they realize they need to work together, with the help of Dan's new friend Alexa, in order to bring Johnny back.

I was initially drawn to this book because of the cover and the promise of witches, but ultimately, I was disappointed with this one. This book definitely needs trigger warnings for A LOT of things such as: cutting, suicide ideation, depression, underage relationships between multiple younger girls and an older male and physical and mental abuse. I enjoyed the story in the beginning, but after awhile it became very repetitive and it felt like the story was just going in circles without actually moving forward in anyway. I also was a bit disappointed in the ending, it was extremely anticlimactic for the amount of build up there was for it. It seemed like the characters just kind of stumbled upon how to defeat the "bad guy" rather than actually having a definitive plan. I also was not a fan of the friendship between Dan and Liss, it was extremely toxic and I just wanted to keep them away from one another through out the entire story. The only character I actually liked was Alexa, she grew a lot as the story progressed and I wish there had been more of a focus on her and her story, rather than the other two.

Overall, it was alright, but nothing special in anyway.

My Question was; What inspired this story? (Below you will find Sasha’s answer).

A Wicked Magic is a story about friendship, where there’s also magic. The inspiration for it wasn’t witches or spells or anything fantasy. It was an idea about two girls who were best friends and didn’t realize that friendship was toxic.

The relationship at the center of most young adult novels is a romantic one—which can be totally great! But it usually means that the romantic relationship is the source of all the drama, the emotional growth, the heartbreak. The main character’s friendships end up second fiddle, with the best friend encouraging the main character to go after what they want. The best friend isn’t the source of friction and tension; they’re there for loving support.

The reality is often a lot messier. When I was in high school, whatever tepid drama boyfriends and girlfriends created absolutely paled in comparison to the emotional wreckage that the friendships of teenage girls could cause. That’s what I wanted to explore with Dan and Liss.

The particular incident that brings their friendship crashing down is actually ripped from the headlines of my own life. That incident is the girls’ disagreement over Johnny, who Liss begins dating after Dan has her first kiss with him. When I was in high school, my best friend really did start dating the boy who had been my first kiss a few weeks before. For some reason, that didn’t particularly bother me that much—certainly not in the way that teen dramas would have represented it as a friendship-ending betrayal. But months later, when our friendship fell apart, it stood out to me as a textbook Bad Friend thing to do. Why hadn’t I seen that at the time?

That’s a dynamic that A Wicked Magic explores with Dan and Liss. Cowed by undiagnosed depression, Dan is listless and afraid to speak her mind, but she loves being friends with Liss, who’s charismatic, insistent, and full of ideas. But Dan finds Liss is impossible to say no to, which increasingly leads her to resent Liss, and that gets them both into big trouble.

The magical elements of the story evolved from there. The Black Book, which gives the girls their witchy powers, often operates as a symbol of their messed-up friendship, the closeness that they once shared that led them to hurt each other, and the past that they haven’t dealt with.

I realized that instead of having Johnny play the role of a romantic interest causing the girls strife, I needed him out of the action entirely while the girls figured out their problems. In fact, he spends most of the book imprisoned by a demon, while the girls struggle to rescue him—turning the fairy tale trope on its head, he’s the prince in a tower who needs saving. That gave me the overall arc of the plot: Estranged friends Dan and Liss must overcome their issues to save Johnny from the clutches of a demon.

I hope A Wicked Magic has enough creepy, witchy twists and turns to satisfy contemporary fantasy fans, but for me, the heart of the story has always been the connection between Dan and Liss, and a friendship that had the power to delight and destroy them.

Not only was the cover absolutely stunning, but the story was everything and more. The characters and their different dilemma's they endured truly left me intrigued even after I had finished the book. I really liked how the book focuses a lot on the different relationships, mental health, and personality differences between the characters, all while still being able to maintain a great balance of witchy-ness.

At the mention of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina in the synopsis, I was totally hooked! I love the witchy and spooky aspect of the book. This is a story about friendship more than anything else and I really appreciated that focus, the magic was just the icing on top!
My issue with the book is that I just didn't feel too much of a connection to the characters. This novel had all of the right components: witches, magic and mystery, but it was just missing that something special that would make it stand out from other books with similar content.

this book was very... weird. i expected that because it’s supposed to be spooky but it was just weird.

This book has heavy topics such as depression, self harm, and anxiety.
Reading on those topics don't normally bother me. This book missed the mark for me and felt very anticlimactic.
I felt it had a lot of promise but just didn't deliver.

I DNF'd this at around 30% of the way through. I personally struggled with the writing style and the worldbuilding, as I was slightly confused most of the time. In addition, I simply couldn't quite connect with any of the characters. However all of these issues are very subjective, and I believe that many people will enjoy this one! I'm just not the right audience.

A Wicked Magic was one of my most anticipated releases for 2020. The first half of the book didn't do it for me, but the second half was so much better.

I had a hard time connecting to Dan or Liss. Alexa's chapters were my favorite and I'm glad there were more as the story went. This was a pretty strange book, but I loved the focus on friendship. Liss and Dan found a Black Book in the free box and did a spell "A Spell for the Making of Naive Witches". After that, they were able to ask the book for the type of spell they wanted and they would find it. Liss started dating Johnny, even though he and Dan kissed. When Liss brought him along for a spell, things went really bad. A woman showed up and took Johnny with her. Dan assumed he was dead, but Liss wouldn't give up on him. Both girls pretty much stopped talking to each other. Liss went to a private school. Dan met Alexa and they became best friends. Both both girls felt guilty for what happened.

Alexa was living with her aunt, Lorelei. Lorelei was investigating what she believed to be a cult run by a man named Keith. When Lorelei makes it home, barely alive, Alexa learns that Lorelei is a Warden, a type of witch. Their powers are gifted from one witch to another. When a girl, Zephyr, goes missing, Dan and Liss wonder if it's related to Johnny's disappearance. Liss had "heard" from Johnny and he mentioned a name, Kasyan. Alexa knew that Kasyan was a demon who granted wishes, a trickster. There are a lot of old stories about Kasyan, but it's impossible to find anything online or in books. Because Alexa mentioned the name, Liss and eventually Dan, think that Alexa may be able to help them. Each of them is keeping secrets and they find out that magic is something dangerous, not something fun.

The first half of the book was maybe a 3 star read. The second half was a solid 4. So I rated this 3 1/2 stars rounded up to 4 on Goodreads. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my review copy.

Warnings for depression, anxiety, cutting, parental abuse, cults, talk of an underage relationship, talk of suicide.

This book has all the witchy, spooky vibes. When Dan and Liss become witches, they try to change their lives with magic. But magic has consequences, and a spell gone wrong takes Liss's boyfriend away. The story is set on the northern Pacific coast, and at its core, the book tells the story of friendship.

I enjoyed learning about the magic, and I particularly liked Alexa, Dan's friend, and her growth through the story. I almost wish the whole book was just about her. I liked the atmospheric setting and the descriptions of magic. But still, this book didn't engage me like I thought it would, and I didn't love the plot with the evil magic guy and kidnappings. But it's witchy and dark and spooky, which lives up to the title.

Writing Aesthetic/Style: 3
Plot/Movement: 3
Character Development: 3
Overall: 3

Thank you, Razorbill and NetGalley, for the review copy!

*Trigger/Content Warnings: f-words, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts

First of all: Trigger Warnings include self harm, depression, and anxiety. There's also a cult, parental abandonment, suicidal thoughts, death of a loved one, and kidnapping. This book also has some pretty heavy stuff going on like a high school girl dating a homeless guy twice her age. So avoid this book if those will bug you.

2.5/5 stars
Thank you to the publisher for the early copy via netgalley.

I read to escape reality as I am a Veterinary Technician and deal with a ton of heavy stuff in my daily life. I was incredibly intrigued by the magic and the fantastical parts to this book. BUT this was a book that's more about the journey so we read a ton about Dan's depression, Liss' compulsive behaviors, Alexa's self doubt, and etc. I had a hard time getting completely into this story and actually dreaded some if these moments. They were very important to the character growth and the ending though, I just wish they were farther apart and not as long. And I wish we got a bit more magic and maybe more tales about Kasyan.

I feel like we had a ton of build up for our "Big Bads" in this book and I was expecting like 20% of the book to be battling them and trying to outsmart them. In the end it felt more like 5% was an anti-climactic battle where our protagonists just accidentally stumbled on the answer. Despite the heavy themes to this book if that final battle were a bit harder and a bit more epic I'd probably have given this book 4 stars. But we learned far more about Dan's obsession with the IronWeaks and the singer of it and her selling pottery the day the final battle went down than we did about the Antagonist.

Thank you to the publisher for this book. It is very atmospheric and extremely prettily written, but I had trouble getting attached to any character and this etachment caused me to lose interest in the story unfortunately.

I love this cover. A Wicked Magic was an interesting read with witches, magic and high school drama. I loved the coastal setting and the idea behind this book. However, I didn't love the characters at all. They felt flat and I felt that way about the storyline too. There was so much crazy stuff going on that it felt a bit messy. I loved the cat and the crazy cult thing was interesting too.

Delightfully wicked magic and believable teens make this book immensely fun. Dan's struggle with depression feels very real, and so does Liss's obliviousness to others' pain, as well as Alexa's fight to find a home and fit in.

I honestly just don't feel like this book was for me. I think that people who like something like Sabrina would be super into this. I figured I'd give it a try, but it just didn't have enough crossover appeal for me.