This lovely paranormal romance brings asks us the question--what if what you were destined to be meant you had to sacrifice love?

Beautifully layered sensory images dance off the page (there's recipes included), it was easy to picture the places visited and the food eaten. The honest conversations between the characters deals with grief, love, loss, and love and what we all do when we're juggling all those at the same time.

Fair warning: There is a suicide attempt made in this so for anyone who is uncomfortable in reading that, please be aware.

A sweet read (kisses only).

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

This book was just not for me, it had way too much going on. About the only thing I liked was the recipes.

When I read that "The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic" combined Practical Magic and Gilmore Girls, I couldn't resist this witchy read but unfortunately I wasn't completely convinced.

The atmospheres are super cozy, warm and welcoming, and it's true it's very reminiscent of Practical Girls combining the typical autumnal atmospheres of Gilmore Girls but I found the plot rather banal, with characters that I struggled to tolerate.

So much potential but not fully expressed for me, too bad!

This book had me at Practical Magic meets Gilmore Girls. Unfortunately, as much as I love the comp titles I did not love this book. It took me two months to get through because I found it a bit boring. I didn’t care for the drama surrounding the romance. Also, every time they mentioned church I was pulled out of the story. For some reason, Christian witches just seemed bizarre to me. The best thing about this book is the recipes. I’ll definitely be trying some of them out.

I loved this story. Fall witchy reads are my favorite. I enjoyed getting to know everyone in the community and it wouldn’t hurt my feeling to see this as a series. I’d love to know more about Sadie and Jake. The relationship just wasn’t fleshed out enough.

A perfect fall read. Cozy, sweet, and full of heart. A fresh spin on the role of love and magic. This was a delightful, second chance romance which also deals with some heavy topics gracefully.

As an aside, do not read this on an empty stomach, the recipes will have your stomach rumbling.

I wanted this to be cozy and cute and it started that way, but then it got messy and I lost interest. The baking in the first chapter sounds like it smells amazing.. but I’m confused by the rules of the magic, the romance or lack thereof and the family dynamics. Not at all what I had in mind.

This is the witchy book equivalent of a warm hug! It's a perfect autumnal read, especially for fans of Hazel Beck's "Small Town, Big Magic" and Sangu Mandanna's "The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches." The story will pull you in from page one and keep your attention throughout all of its pages. For a debut author, I was genuinely impressed with the seamless storylines and unique magical premise that Breanne Randall was able to create. Sadie is such a relatable and lovable character, so I couldn't help but root for her! As someone who also bakes to calm down, I saw some of myself in Sadie (minus the magical baking abilities darn it!) I love the small town, cozy vibe of this novel too. As someone who reads a lot of high fantasy books, reading a witchy novel with smaller scale implications was a welcome relief.

This is an example of false marketing to the right audience... I dnf'd this book bc it was not at all as marketed and unfortunately fell really flat. It needed another round of editing becuase there were major plot holes.

I like to read witchy/spooky books for the month of October every year, which led me to pick this up. I have heard lots of people discussing this; while it wasn't my favorite, I'm not a huge romance fan. I think romance readers will enjoy this!

While this was a good read, there were a few things I would have loved to be explained and described with more detail, especially the curse. I adore stories with magic, so that was by far my favorite part of the book. Sadie's and Seth's long lost love story made the pages turn more quickly as I was always rooting for them.

Thank you, NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for my review.

was really looking forward to this book, but it ended up being a colossal disappointment. The biggest problem is that the marketing of this book is setting it up for failure. It should be marketed as a Christian-oriented death-in-the-family drama, but instead it’s being sold as a romance where “Practical Magic meets Gilmore Girls.” The story may borrow certain plots wholesale from those titles, but that does not mean that it is anything like them. The story is apparently set in California, but the small town presented hits just about every Southern trope you can imagine. The characters speak primarily in cliche and aphorism. They are on the whole indistinguishable from each other and very flat in their characterization. The world-building and magic system is barely there and anything paranormal in the story could have been cut pretty easily. The story consists primarily of baking, going to a church, and family reunion scenes. It’s incredibly dull. I found myself skimming to the end. The romance is lackluster and the love interest is absent for most of the story. He shows up to have scenes that don’t make much emotional sense with the main character primarily to move along the plot and then disappears. The writing on the whole was repetitive and overwrought. I really thought this was going to be such a good read for early fall, but I feel like I was duped by misleading advertising. I’m sure there is an audience that will enjoy this book, but it is not being marketed very effectively so I doubt it will find its way to them.

This book sounded really intriguing but was mildly disappointing. The pacing was off and the characters were frustrating. 3 stars

It was a bit chaotic read for me. I was drawn to the blurb it took me a while to get into the story. Still, I would recommend it to the fans of the witches or ghosts stories.

Thank you NetGalley & publisher for this eARC..

When I saw the word Gilmore Girls, I have expectations but this book, unfortunately, it miss the mark.

There is a lot going on and it was messy. It was supposed to be cozy but there were events where I felt like it was too heavy and the writing? well, it felt flat to me.

anyways, I was expecting a cozy, whimsical, fantasy based on the book title and the cover but this was not it.

*1 stars*

References to Harry Potter and Young Living? Weird Christian witch ideology? Annoying main character and love interest?

This was so disappointing. The plot and pacing was all over the place, and it was honestly just really boring.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this work. All opinions in this review are my own.

Wow, this was so not what I had expected. I thought this was a cosy small town romance with snappy dialogue (Gilmore Girls) and whimsical magical realism (Practical Magic). I got a story that was set in California, but read like small town southern US. The combination of Christian religion with magic didn't make sense to me, neither did Sadie's insistence that she and her grandmother aren't witches, they are just good Christian women doing magic.

The MC Sadie is 28 years old with the emotional maturity of a teenager - was this supposed to be a YA/NA book that was re-written to fit a wider audience? She's self-centred and makes some questionable choices throughout the story (like: using a truth-telling recipe without consent, stealing a dog and refusing to return it). She's also under a curse, which she repeats in a "woe be me"-way over and over. Though the reader doesn't find out what exactly the curse entails until far into the story.

The secondary characters are all so bland, I didn't care for them at all. Jake, the love-interest, doesn't have any kind of backstory. The reader is supposed to root for a second chance relationship because the two of them went out together over ten years ago?

I could go on about the cringe-worthy writing, the secondary characters and strange plot parts (the twin brother, the suddenly returning mother who was absent all the twins' lives, the ailing grandmother, the ominous ghost, the curse, etc).

TW: rape and victim-shaming, attempted suicide, actual murder, fake pregnancy

I wasn't sure about this book when I first started it. But I kept going and ended up liking it.a lot. I loved the various siblings and their relationship with each other. It would be a good book for a book club. So many ideas, subjects, situations to discuss and evaluate. Highly recommend.

This book weaves a captivating tale of familial love and community support, portraying relatable characters grappling with insecurities, dreams, and the weight of their curses. The cozy, homely elements and the message of resilience against curses through love and togetherness truly resonated with me.

In this world, each member of the family has their own magic and their curse. Sadie's curse is that she will go through 4 heartbreaks in her life, each one worse than her last and with these heartbreaks, her magic becomes very erratic and unpredictable. Now, she avoids relationship with any guy to avoid this heartbreak and hence losing her magic. But now, her first ex is back in town while her life is also dealt with family issues and new secrets... and our poor Sadie has to deal with all that and come out better and stronger at the end.

While I found Sadie to be a compelling and relatable character, the predictability of certain plot points slightly diluted the impact of the story's twists. Nonetheless, the irresistible urge to witness the characters' happiness and resolution overrode this familiarity.

The narrative's pacing was also erratic, juggling too many plotlines, causing a lack of coherence and depth. The sudden introduction and rapid resolution of various subplots, like Bethany's arc, the strange involvement of animals, and the abrupt revelation about the mysterious spirit, left the story feeling disjointed and unsatisfactory.

The multitude of intertwined themes—ranging from grief, depression, and family to witchcraft and a complex curse—added depth but at the cost of a harmonious storytelling experience. Furthermore, the uncomfortable lack of deeper exploration into the darker themes, such as the mother's past trauma, left a sense of unease and a feeling of unresolved issues.
The story's conclusion felt rushed, leaving several threads hanging and an unsatisfactory resolution.

By the end, I really enjoyed the charaters and the enchanting familial bonds, but the convoluted and abrupt plot turns, coupled with unresolved themes, made for a reading experience that left me wanting for more clarity and cohesion.

Thank you for sending me this book in exchange for an honest review. This is one of those books I only heard about through bookstagram and I was interested in it because of the author’s description of it as Practical Magic meets Gilmore Girls. Unfortunately, I just didn’t like this book very much and I didn’t end up finishing it. I stopped reading at about 10% of the way in, which is usually earlier than I give up. I felt like I was dropped in the middle of the book from the beginning and I couldn’t really get into it or find my way. I felt like I was missing details or backstory or something and I wasn't sure what was going on. I couldn’t connect with the characters and I didn’t like the writing. Since I have to give a star rating, I will be rating this book at 1 star.