Do you wish you had any special powers?

That would be so fun! I really think that certain herbs and spices are great at healing ailments and I think that is such an interesting thing to know. While I know that isn’t exactly witchcraft it used to be right up there with it.

One day you will find a silver spoon. Shortly thereafter you will be found by VenCo and brought into the coven. It will happy when you don’t expect it, and it will feel random when you find it. VenCo needs all seven spoons to be found for their coven to be complete. When Lucky is found with spoon number six, they all rush to find the seventh spoon and on the way Lucky learns more about her family than she ever thought possible.

This was an interesting read. I went into it expecting a witch who came into her powers when she found her coven and I expected an exploration into that. That is not what happened here. This book ultimately did fall flat for me but there are parts and things I enjoyed, making it a solid middle of the road read. My biggest complaint is that I wish there was more magic, this is focused on the witches and their journey, not so much the magic that I was hoping for. I found this book to be very atmospheric and descriptive, which aren’t inherently bad, its just something that I struggle holding my attention. Because of this, I did find this one boring. However, this one is recommended to those who enjoyed Alice Hoffmans Practical Magic.


Thank you to @netgalley, and the publisher, @williammorrowbooks and @customhousebooks for my e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. Out February 7th!

Adding all things Cherie Dimaline to my 2023 TBR. I loved reading this book!

Witches are really having their moment right now (and it feels like I’ve read all of the witchy books of 2021 and beyond), but this was a really unique and interesting story about a young witch who comes into her own. Lucky St. James hasn’t been very lucky at all. That all changes when she discovers what is seemingly a piece of junk in her building’s basement - a small souvenir spoon with a witch and the word SALEM on it. Lucky is recruited by the women of VenCo and tasked with finding the next witch, the one who will complete their coven and help save the world. But time isn’t on Lucky’s side and she only has nine days to find the witch, all while the murderous Benandanti hunts her down.

VenCo is very much a story about family, both given and found. It is character driven, so if you’re looking for something with lots of action and high magic this may not be the book for you. I loved the found family of the VenCo witches and how we got to see each flashbacks of each witch finding their spoon. Their stories were all unique and at the same time they share trauma at the hands of the men in their lives. Hex the patriarchy indeed.

The road trip Lucky and her grandmother embark on is lots of fun and included even more memorable characters along the way. My only kind of complaint is that the pacing was a bit off at times and because of that the ending seemed a bit rushed.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and William Morrow for an advance copy.

Witchy fantasy from Cherie Dimaline? Yes please!
I loved the bringing together of 7 witches and their back stories and the interwoven connections.
But overall Lucky and her grandmother’s relationship was the star.
I’m so grateful I got to read an eARC of this.
Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins.

"For fans of The Once and Future Witches and Practical Magic, comes an incredibly imaginative, highly anticipated new novel featuring witches, magic, and a road trip across America - from Cherie Dimaline, the critically acclaimed author of Empire of Wild.

Métis millennial Lucky St. James is barely hanging on when she learns she'll be evicted from the tiny Toronto apartment she shares with her cantankerous but loving grandmother Stella. But then one night, something strange and irresistible calls out to Lucky. She burrows through a wall to find a tarnished silver spoon, humming with otherworldly energy, etched with a crooked-nosed witch and the word SALEM.

Lucky is familiar with the magic of her indigenous ancestors, but she has no idea that the spoon connects her to a teeming network of witches across North America who have anxiously awaited her discovery.

Enter VenCo, a front company fueled by vast resources of dark money (its name is an anagram of "coven.") VenCo's witches hide in plain sight wherever women gather: Tupperware parties, Mommy and Me classes, suburban book clubs. Since colonial times, they have awaited the moment the seven spoons will come together and ignite a new era, returning women to their rightful power.

But as reckoning approaches, a very powerful adversary is stalking their every move. He's Jay Christos, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter as old as witchcraft itself.

To find the last spoon, Lucky and Stella embark on a rollicking and dangerous road trip to the darkly magical city of New Orleans, where the final showdown will determine whether VenCo will usher in a new beginning…or remain underground forever.

A wildly imaginative and compulsively readable fantasia of adventure, history, Americana, feminism, and magic, VenCo is a novel only the supremely gifted Cherie Dimaline could write."

Dammit, I knew my book club could be something more!

This novel follows a young Métis woman, struggling to make ends meet while caring for her grandmother. She finds a spoon in the basement of her building, which leads her to a forming coven of witches—but first they must find the seventh witch. The plotting and pace of this was a bit off for me, with a lot of threads dropped, but I liked the characters and ideas. It was more like a 3.5 for me.

I didn't think I would like this after reading the first few pages. Not my reading taste at all, Not even sure how I obtained it. At first I found the language of the main character grating. I decided to keep at it anyway and so glad I did. Cherie Dimaline writing is magical. The writing is what kept me...the plot is what had me up until 2am to finish. Despite my very first trepidation, ended up being a 4star. Well worth your time!
Book due to come out February 7, 2023

I finished this today, and I enjoyed the book. Everything I've read by this author has been great. I'm holding off on posting the full review until the strike is over.

An interesting book to review. There were parts that really landed, and parts that felt just kind of there. Loved the women and the witches and all the interesting little ways that magic infuses this book, but I was less interested by the otherall plot. Perhaps it was a wrong book, wrong time situation, but I just cou'dn't concentrate on it. I may give it a reread later in the year and see if my opinions change.

DNF@ 56%
I liked the premise of this book,.but that's about it. Nothing was happening and it was boring. I didn't like the writing either.

Thank you again to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for an ARC of VenCo.

Lucky hasn’t felt she lives up to her name- after losing her mother years ago and on the verge of losing her apartment, she’s feeling lost and worried for what will come next for her and her grandmother. Then her whole world is turned upside down and she’s on a drive across the country for some answers.

Truth be told, I didn’t dislike this book. There was casual representation of marginalised groups that didn’t feel forced and was natural. But I don’t know if this eventual series will be for me. I sense some leanings toward sexual content and while I know that’s some people’s cup of tea, it’s unfortunately not really mine. I ended up just skimming through parts with some characters because of it.

Call me a prude, it’s fine, but my partner will disagree with you.

Lucky St. James is just trying to keep herself and her grandmother (who has dementia) fed, sheltered, and safe in Toronto when she is pulled into a centuries-old conflict between witches and the men who hunt them down in Cherie Dimaline’s tense novel, VenCo. We never really learn a lot about this world’s explanation for witch-hunting, which is a little frustrating, nor do we get much more than a series of backstories about the members of the coven Lucky is fated to join. The best parts of this book are the sections focused on Lucky herself, who stands out in an otherwise thin story.

Lucky has lived on the thin boundary between poverty and absolute penury for most of her life. Her mother, who had a knack for making magic out of nothing, taught Lucky everything she knew about survival before dying of cancer when Lucky was very young. When we meet her, Lucky makes ends meet with temp work and struggles to make sure that her grandmother is safe. Unfortunately for the duo, Lucky has just received word that she and her grandmother are going to be evicted. The sudden offer of a job in Salem, Massachusetts, delivered by a woman who is clearly not telling Lucky everything, is the kind of offer Lucky can’t turn down.

Once Lucky is introduced to the world of the Salem coven and its guiding organization, VenCo, things get a lot more interesting. Lucky and her new cohorts have to find the last member of their coven, to fulfill the hope that they will somehow (?) make the world a better place. The only thing standing their way is an immortal witch hunter, whose chapters absolutely made my skin crawl as this creature describes using everyone around him for his own advantage or pleasure.

The climax of VenCo is outstanding and may be worth the price of admission for fans of original witchy fiction. My biggest problem with VenCo is that, in spite of some really good characterization and magical combat, it races along so fast that we never get to settle into the other characters or how magic works or what VenCo and the Maiden, Mother, and Crone and its helm are really for. I feel like the plot and cast list should’ve been scaled back or expanded greatly so that all of the characters have more development and so that we can see further behind the scenes.

A witchy book that is intersectional, intergenerational and meant for marginalized people? Sign me up. It tackles feminism and social issues and trauma all while drawing you into the world of them with the raw and suspenseful writing of the author. So in love.

“Mothers are the witches we know best but never acknowledge.” ❤️
VenCo is about the power women have when we join forces. Lucky St. James is living with her elderly grandmother but they’re about to be evicted when she finds an old, mysterious spoon. The spoon is one of 7 and it connects Lucky with a group of witches that have been waiting for the 7 spoons to finally come together and restore witches to their rightful power. There’s a race against time to locate the final spoon and it’s witch, a dangerous road trip and an immortal witch hunter determined to stop them. Suspenseful and funny, I laughed out loud at parts and fell completely in love with these fierce witches. Highly recommend!

A hidden power unlike any other rests at the soul of this novel. The storytelling is engaging, the characters easy to like. The plot wavers as if it is one of the characters, a little lost and trying to finds its way. Overall a good read but I don't know that it makes me want to read more if this indeed a series as the ending makes it seem. 3.5

This wasn't what I expected at all from the blurb, which spoke of adventure and mystery and thrills - none of which I found as far as I read... What I found was a Millennial who was down on her luck (yes, a pun - I couldn't help it) and once again the whole world seems to be against the poor beleaguered youngster- which is a theme I seem to be encountering more and more lately, and which I must confess to find wearying.

The setup was all right, but paired with the blurb it led me to imagine a much more complex amount of world building than I found. Admittedly I did not finish this one (I found myself turning pages just to increase the percentage read, at which point I knew this just wasn't a good fit for me and decided to give up) but it felt more like a journey of self discovery novel than a thrilling adventure, and the latter is what I was expecting - and looking for.

There wasn't anything wrong with it. I did find the characters a little bit flat, and in a book with such a clever construct I would have expected a lot more world building (or at least stage-setting) up front, but I think my biggest issue was that I went in expecting one thing and received another. I really think the blurb did this one a disservice as far as I'm concerned, and it just wasn't a good fit for me.

I really, really liked this one, A fun read. Magic, a good villain, female relationships, Canadian content (I lived in Toronto so I loved seeing the city through Lucky’s eyes!) Would 100% read a spin off about the mysterious maiden, mother and crone of VenCo…

I will, unfortunately, be withholding my review until a fair contract agreement is reached with the HarperCollins Union.

This is a strange book. It is vignette like, jumps around and is slow to get going. I started to skim some until about half way when it picked up. I enjoy the strong female relationships but find the males to be characters.. It is uneven but is interesting enough that I didn't DNF it. There is a audience for this but It's not me.

Cherie Dimaline’s upcoming novel VenCo promises plenty of hidden urban magic, and I’m excited to have accessed an advance copy for this review. (Many thanks to William Morrow and NetGalley for the gift!) VenCo follows Lucky St. Jones, a down-on-her-luck Métis woman living in Toronto, who discovers she’s a witch, part of a promised coven. Not only that, but she’s on a deadline to find the last member of the coven. All the while, there’s a dangerous immortal witch-hunter on her tracks.

There’s a lot to take in here, and I found my expectations subverted constantly. Not just in terms of the plot, or the character tropes, but also the worldbuilding and the genre itself.

A very soft fantasy…

Based on the blurb for VenCo, I was expecting a Very Specific kind of worldbuilding. Specifically, I was hoping to see a world like that The Rook or Her Majesty’s Royal Coven or Rivers of London. I love thinking about how a magical world could work, the infrastructure and the organization of it. VenCo seemed to fit neatly into this, with its secret witchy corporation and continental recruiting. Even the first chapter seemed to play this out, with a frankly badass intro to what seemed to be three executive witches.

But Dimaline took a different (equally fun) approach to her world building, opting for softer fantasy rules in service of the theme. In the world of VenCo, there’s no one “right” way to do magic. Instead, witches draw on local traditions, leading to an intriguing diversity of powers and approaches. The witches are similarly un-organized, resembling a loosely connected network rather than a tight-knit organization. Everything is run on intuition, vibes, and connections.

This softer magic system and world building isn’t bad, just unexpected. One element of the “soft rules” is a little trickier to judge, though. The protagonists are working against a magical deadline to find their last coven-mate. This is treated as a very real deadline, and the cast takes it seriously - but it’s never really explained why. There’s no sense of the stakes - of what could happen if the final witch remains lost - which can deflate some of the urgency.

Fortunately, Dimaline is an engaging writer, and these inconsistencies didn't stick out that much as I read. Instead, I found myself swept up with the plot and the magic and the characters. Dimaline’s more flexible approach seems optimized to deliver her themes in the most enjoyable way possible - even if it means handwaving the rules.

…with a female-centric message

VenCo is definitely a story with a perspective. Anti-corporate and anti-capitalist, the plot highlights female power and stories. Each of the members of the VenCo coven represents a different failing of our status quo, and Dimaline vividly illustrates each backstory. Each of the characters is unique and fleshed out, and I enjoyed learning about each of them.

VenCo, like many other witchy stories, emphasizes the importance and power of family - especially female family. Mothers and grandmothers have particular importance in the novel, along with both maternal and platonic love. Dimaline does this by writing compelling connections between mothers and daughters - but also by making the major villain the only male character of note.

He’s a good villain too - extremely creepy. I found myself wincing at some of the passages that included him - like a more muted version of Kilgrave. But at some point it started to feel hyperbolic - are there no good men? No good markets? No good organizations? In light of recent events with crypto, it feels like “tear down ALL old institutions” might be a bridge too far.

Still, it’s a fun read, and it’s hard not to cheer for the protagonists at the end. On the last page, I found myself satisfied and excited to read another installment. I’d be really excited to meet new witches and explore more magical traditions, and to see what a coven could really do.

Reader's notes and rating (⭐⭐⭐✨)

VenCo was nothing like I expected, but I enjoyed it all the same. It was a great journey of self-discovery and a beautiful affirmation of female support. That said, I was expecting a bit more about underground organizations (can you tell I loved Hench?). Instead, this read a little more like a great scavenger hunt adventure.

I’d definitely recommend it to feminist friends who enjoy adventure novels. It’s nice to see a road-trip novel that is so focused on feminine greatness, and it’s a fun read if you can keep your analysis at a more surface level. For me, this is 3.5 stars.

Read this if...

You’re excited by the concept of a “witchy road trip”

You’re looking for a fun feminist adventure

You enjoy stories about travel and local tradition

Skip this if...

You’re most excited about the “secret society” elements of the blurb

You want more mystery, less adventure - there’s no “solving” this one

You’re looking for hard fantasy or deep world building

AN enthusiastic pick for this book! I loved Dimaline's first book, Empire of Wild, and I loved VenCo even more. Lucky is scrabbling to get by. working temp jobs to stay afloat and take care of her grandmother with increasing dementia when they get notice they are being evicted. She finds an old "witch spoon" that leads her to a group of indigenous women, all witches (backed by a corporate entity VenCo) trying to find the sixth and seventh members to form a North American coven to fight the patriarchy and right the wrongs ttaking over the world before time runs out/and or a witch hunter finds them.

Darkly humorous and empowering, I enjoyed the folklore and the strong female characters and their various stories.