I'm hovering between two and three stars for this one. I really wanted to love it, but I struggled at every turn to get really invested. Most of the characters were charming, which helped, but there wasn't a lot of plot, and the flashbacks to the previous year felt really drawn out.

I hate leaving another really short review for an arc, but I don't really have anything to say. I haven't been able to read romances lately and this book just didn't grip me. I don't have any opinions on it.

This book was not at all what I was expecting. While I am always glad to see good LGBTQIA representation in books, this book just fell a little flat for me. I did enjoy learning about tarot cards before each chapter and I thought the setting of Salem, MA was cute.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishing for allowing me to review this book!
Released May 31, 2022

CW//: Sexual assault, alcohol, drug use

LGBT+ rep with a diverse cast

This book was amazing.
We follow a 17 year old stoner named Eleanor who lives in Salem, Massachusetts-- probably the witchiest town in the USA. But Eleanor couldn't care less about witchcraft and thinks the whole idea of it is crap. When a mysterious book about Tarot arrives at the shop where she works, everything changes. Along with new friends (and a coven of witches!), Eleanor goes on the Fool's Journey to self-discovery.

I loved a lot about this book. Eleanor is a very flawed MC (which I love). She foils perfectly with Pix, her love interest (the embodiment of sunshine). Eleanor's story follows the Fool's Journey in tarot, and I loved seeing it reflected throughout the entire book. I thought it was a very unique reading device that brought a lot in to break up the chapters.

This book does deal with some harder topics, so if you are triggered by sexual assault and bullying, this may not be the best pick for you.

However, if you love witchy autumn vibes and a cute romance with emotional depth and self-discovery, this is a good pick for you. I truly felt for the characters and rooted for Eleanor along the way.

I hope to find more books like this to read again in the fall!

Improbable Magic for Cynical Witches by Kate Scelsa is a beautiful coming of age novel filled with magic. Billed as a contemporary lesbian romance, this young adult novel has a lovely message wrapped up in a heart-wrenching story of love and loss. Set in Salem during the month of October, it’s a perfectly witchy backdrop for a book about tarot and a coven of witches.

Eleanor is a seventeen-year-old who finds love again a year after a tragic relationship that left her scarred. Working in a witchy store in Salem during the month of Halloween has left her cynical, but it’s also her only outlet to the real world. After the previous year’s calamity, Eleanor deleted all social media and dropped out of school to get her GED. She avoids everyone she used to know, and struggles to make it through life one day at a time.

When Pix walks into the store, Eleanor is instantly enchanted. The stranger is in town to prepare her coven for Samhain. An invitation to join the coven pulls her into a group of spirited young ladies, one of whom seems equally drawn to Eleanor. This budding romance with Pix brings back all the memories and emotions from the previous year and threatens Eleanor’s carefully built stability. She has to make peace with her past if she has any hope of enjoying the present.

The arrival of a handmade book about tarot coincides with the introduction of Pix, and the book speaks to Eleanor, acting as a guide throughout the book. The tarot card images and descriptions are wonderful, and serve as delightful chapter openers. They also bring levity to what is otherwise an emotional, thought-provoking novel.

I absolutely loved it, so much so that I preordered the audiobook.

I was expecting this to be a fantasy, but it ended up being just as magical and sweet as possible a romance even without anything fantastical. A great, witchy YA love story.

This one was a rough one for me. I enjoyed the story but it had a lot of bumps. I do want to say that I feel this should be marketed as magical realism and not paranormal or fantasy, and I feel like if it was marketed properly it would find its readers. I’m always down for anything LGBTQIA+, which is why I will buy this for the library.

Despite living in Salem, Massachusetts and working in a witch-themed gift shop, Eleanor is super NOT into witches or magic. She just went through a terrible experience - losing her best friend (and first love) and then being ostracized by her high school classmates. When she gets a homemade tarot card guide in the mail and meets a (super cute) girl named Pix, things start turning around for Eleanor, but her past continues to haunt her and might ruin everything.

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I loved this book -- a sweet story about teenage lesbian witches: SIGN ME UP. The story followed a predictable arc, but I was there for it and especially loved all of the tarot card illustrations and interpretations included - so fun!

Recommended for 13+/high school -- mainly because there's a lot of weed smoking in this book (which I personally would not mind my kids reading about earlier, but some people get twitchy about it).

I loved the way this story followed along and felt guided by the journey of the major arcana. Eleanor felt so relatable as a young queer girl who has felt the weight of homophobia from other kids her age. Seeing her relationship with Pix and the other girls in the coven was lovely, and seeing her heal some of her past trauma and start to move past it was nice to see. This is a great read for queer teens who have a hint of witchiness in them.

3.50 Stars. This was a good YA story with some bumps. I was really excited about this one. If someone says the words “sapphic witches” then sign me up. This book happens to be much more in the category of magical realism than paranormal or fantasy. This is not like ‘The Craft', instead it has a very realistic coven of teenage witches. At first a part of me missed the over-the-top magic I expected – that is only because I love anything paranormal- but I soon found myself appreciating that the book took a much more realistic approach since we don’t see that too often. There were a lot of good choices here that I enjoyed, but there were a few issues that stopped this from being a favorite read of mine.

I really enjoyed how each chapter introduced a new tarot card, and how it was described and also used to explain events in the main character’s life. I have always been interested in tarot cards but I don’t know anything about them. I remember when I was teenager and my dad came home with this gorgeous tarot set –he is one of those guys that always finds unique things or great deals- and I could not take my eyes off them. However, my mother –raised Roman Catholic- was so superstitious that she thought I was going to accidentally summon a demon to my bedroom or something so she made my father get rid of the deck. I still have regrets not getting to keep them so this book at least gave me a little taste to what I have been missing:) But in all seriousness, the tarot part was really well done and one of my favorite parts of the book.

When it comes to the bumps, I had two that stood out with this first one being the smaller bump. I’ve noticed other reviewers also had similar issues like I did. The first issue I had was that the main character is a pot head. To be clear, I’m not anti-marijuana and the character did live in a state where it was legal –just not for people under 21 (which she was) - but the character smoked a lot and seemed to do it to self-medicate. While it is apples to oranges, I think if you are going to have a character that drinks a lot, or smoke a lot, or whatevers a lot, and when you mention it often in the book, there should be a reason it is included. Here it was such a part of the story, but it just fizzled away with no real explanation. Pages and pages or talking about smoking and buying, and being friends with her dealer, but then nothing happened. All this build-up and I was left wondering why bother at all?

The bigger issue I had, and I’m going to be a little vague in parts due to possible spoiler reasons, had to deal with the main character’s past trauma. This book took place in present time and also flashed-back to the year before. If you have followed my reviews you will know I can’t stand flashbacks. Surprisingly, I thought they were done well so my issue wasn’t the flashbacks themselves, but the content in them. As a reader, you already know something bad happened since the main character is getting over a traumatic year. So of course in the flashbacks something bad happens, and then something bad again, and again. At this point I thought that to myself, okay that is enough bad and hopefully it will be wrapped up and finished with the expected big main conflict. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen and instead the author chose to throw even more in which then turned a character into the stereotype of the “predatory lesbian”. This is YA, and we need to do better than to slide into harmful stereotypes. It was unpleasant to read, but I still thought to myself, take out your personal feelings and see if the book had to have this part in it for the plot to work… well, the answer was no. There were so many other conflict parts that it was not needed and it just should have been edited out.

When it comes to the main YA sapphic romance, I thought it was sweet. It has a little angst to keep things interesting, but not too much to overdo it. I did wish we had a little more time to get to know the main character’s love interest. She was a really cool character but we only got to scratch the surface of who she is and really who the other secondary characters are too. I liked all the characters who were a part of the coven, but I wished they were built up more as I could really only tell you who two other character were, not including the two main characters. I think a little less time spent in the past, and more time spent in the present, would have made this a solid 4 stars read.

TLDR: A book that was good, but with too many bumps to be great. It was a nice change to read about witches in a realistic way instead of such a fantasy driven way and there were parts of the book that were really well written. The book is a fast read that easily hooks you in, but it is not without some issues. I think the author just went a little too far in some cases, but not far enough in others. I still enjoyed this enough that I would read another book by this author. There is a lot of really good potential here.

Set in Salem, Eleanor works in a shop selling witch themed merchandise while caring for a sick parent. The tarot cards used to break up the chapters was a unique way to structure the book and I was excited to see the queer representation. I was surprised that this book seemed kind of heavier in places than I was expecting from a young adult book, but I thought it made Eleanor a more compelling and complex character. Though the story was slow to start for me, I thought it was a quick read and enjoyed the characters. Thanks to @NetGalley for the review copy!

This book was put on my radar from a list of LGBTQ+ must reads of 2022 and let me tell you, this is THE read of 2022.

This is an amazing book. Not only are we getting a ton of information about Salem and the tarot itself but also the in and outs of navigating the world as someone who is into witchcraft and members of the LGBTQ community. Pixie is the greatest character every moment and I want so badly to live my life in her positive manner. This also offers a great insight into living with a chronic illness which I thought was a really realistic depiction. It's also a wonderful story of found family and opening up after a major disappointment. I will be speaking with Kate for an upcoming episode of my podcast and I can't wait to sing her praises for this book.

This book is definitely in the running for my favorite book of 2022!!

Update: Thanks to HarperCollins Children's Books, Balzer + Bray for the e-book. It actually enhanced the reading experience for me! I was able to see the cute details between each chapter, which helped make more sense of what I heard on the audio. I can wait for the print copy I ordered to come in next week!

If you’re a fan of love and romance, bad decisions, and second chances, you should read Improbable Magic for Cynical Witches. Though magic is in the air, the witchiness of the story is an aside from its heart. (Though the witchiness is great, no doubt!) It’s a perfect example of teenage angst and that feeling that everyone is watching you and everything is about you—but in reality? You’ll have to read to find out!
When we meet Eleanor, she’s cynical, not just about magic, but about everything else. After being labeled an outcast by her classmates because of the fallout from her relationship with her best friend Chloe, Eleanor drowns out life in a puff of smoke and living her best hermit-like life as she can. She receives a handmade tarot guide in the mail at the Salam witch-themed store where she works for her mom’s best friend, and her life starts to change in magical ways. She meets Pix, who invites her to a coven meeting. From there, Eleanor begins her journey to find herself while keeping what haunts her from her new friends. Eleanor must take a leap of faith in all things friendship and love.
I listened to an audiobook with a synthesized voice recording through NetGalley, so it took me a bit to get into the book. (The Harper Collins whispermark scared the life out of me until I figured out what it was.) This is not a reflection on the book but how it was delivered. However, by Chapter seven, I was hooked. Eleanor had secrets, but she wasn’t divulging them to us. I kept trying to figure out how to rework my life to finish sooner. When I came to the end, I wasn’t disappointed.
The story is told using the Smith-Rider-Waite Tarot and is broken up into two timelines: pre-Chloe and post-Chloe. Eleanor is a flawed character and sometimes unlikeable, but aren’t we all sometimes? Especially when we were/are teens. I think that made her more interesting. In fact, most of the characters in the book have their flaws, for good and bad. I enjoyed this book, and I plan to purchase it when it’s released.

Content warnings: Drug use/abuse, sexual assault, bullying, toxic relationships, and chronic illness. There is discussion of marijuana use and sexual situations, so younger YA readers should be aware of that. They may have questions for parents.

This book was okay. I liked the idea of it, but I wasn't in love with the execution. The info about it very much gave off Salem Witches rom-com vibes, and while that was a part of it, I was expecting more fantasy and less realism when it came to the witches. I did like how the author included bits and pieces of Elenor's past throughout, but felt like the exposition of the present when it came to that trauma wasn't handled as well. All in all enjoyed the book, but was a little too cringy high school for me.

I wanted to read this book for a witchy, sapphic romance, but this delivered so much more. If you need a story about finding true friends, healing after tragedy, and a sweet sapphic romance as a bonus, this book is for you.

Eleanor has felt ostracized from the community in Salem since a tragedy last Halloween, but when she receives a book detailing the Major Arcana of Smith Rider Waite tarot deck and meets Pix and Ofira, she begins a journey of healing and growth. She doesn’t believe in magic, but Pixie believes in everything and as she welcomes Eleanor into their coven, Eleanor starts to see the everyday magic around her, as well as falling in love with the way Pix trusts her intuition and listens to her feelings.

This in some ways reminds me of <u>Who I Was With Her</u> by Nita Tyndall with the flashbacks to Eleanor’s history with Chloe and the past she’s trying to run from, doesn’t want Pix or the rest of the coven to know about, but this is also a very different story. I loved the way moving through the Major Arcana was used to show Eleanor’s journey and progress through her pain and trauma, and a way to start healing. The casual, everyday magic feel of it hit so perfectly and does a fantastic balancing of what can be magic if you believe it is.

This is a book that gave me so many feelings, in the best way, and absolutely had me crying at points. This is so gentle and careful, but doesn’t shy away from processing painful emotions or experiences. And I just really adored the romance between Eleanor and Pix, their communication and navigation of sore spots when they came up. The romance is such a highlight, and the care between the two of them is evident from very early on, even when Eleanor is still at her most skeptical and raised walls.

Overall, this book hit some perfect notes for me between the Tarot, the friendships, and the romance. It is such a delightful, sweet, emotional story full of the ways finding a community and believing in something can help you process and heal from past trauma. I highly recommend this if you like witchy stories, sapphic romances, and friendships between teen girls.

I have heard so many good things about this book and being the sucker for witch YA stories that I am I was excited to read it. I walked away after reading it being extremely happy that I did. It was a fun read and the storyline held my interest throughout. The story is about a queer girl named Elenor whose life recently has been a major struggle. The love story is adorable and isn’t the whole focus. It’s centered around the tarot and the major arcana. Extremely witchy and just a super cute read. Throughout the book we deal with learning to trust again, love, community and loss. I will be highly recommending it for my YA readers.

I'm in-between a 3 and 4 star for this book. I was drawn to the title! Eleanor is dealing with some baggage from her past that has a hold on her present. With the help of some new friends she is able to learn a lot about herself.

Some things I loved: intermixing the tarot cards in-between chapters, Eleanor and Pix's relationship, the Salem setting

Some things I didn't love: the extensive marijuana use, how quickly things wrapped up.

Very sweet. Very witchy (in case that wasn't clear from the title). I wouldn't call it fantasy, even though there's the word magic in the title. The love story is pretty mellow and low-angst, which is good because the main character's got a lot of life angst.
This is structured around tarot and the major arcana, which is fun.
There's teen love, loss, learning to trust again, good friends, community.
Fun read overall.

I adored this book! I loved that each chapter began with a tarot card description and that the chapter went with the tarot card. It was predictable as many books are these days, but it was a quick read! It was cringy at times with Elenor’s behavior, like secondhand embarrassment cringy, but I loved her character development.

Improbable Magic for Cynical Witches is a sweet story about love, friendship, and of course, witchcraft. I found it enjoyable and will recommend it to my students.