I don't think this is a bad book at all - what I've read of it, I love - but I have a trigger for abusive mothers and Venus' mother is too hard to read about. Knowing that she and her death are going to be driving forces for the book, I just don't think I can handle it. But I love everything else about this book, and encourage other readers to pick it up!

This book set out to explore a lot and it did it all successfully. The world building was not only sharp and vivid but was just absolutely fascinating. It was somewhere between our world and fantasy, with many social and political tensions that really mirror our reality. The world Baptiste created could absolutely be the setting for more books — and I would happily read them. Though I loved the magic system, complex characters, and tense plot, my favorite part was the exploration of family relationships and how protecting someone you love might cost you closeness, especially between siblings.

WIthin moments of meeting Mr.Mouse I knew that I was going to enjoy this novel. This novel is a roller coaster of magical bonds, friendship, family and how they all intertwine to weave the supportive web that balances against the darkness of the world. I was very happy with the representation in this story- none of it felt forced or 'for the sake of diversity'.

I really wanted to like this one but the writing was so clunky I had a hard time even getting into the story. I loved the idea of it, I loved the blurb, but the writing clearly needed another round of edits. I want books like this with diverse authors and diverse characters to succeed so badly but this one wasn't doing it for me.

Full disclosure: I requested this book after seeing that Cait Corrain had targeted Bethany Baptiste, by posting fake reviews of this book as well as others. It feels very unfair and I wanted to do what I can to tip the scales. And wow, this is such a great book!

Witchers are not human, enemies proclaim. They create potions that mess with your mind. So the police use iron bullets on any witcher parties that they happen to raid, while gentrification pushes out the rest. A new bill may force all witchers to register, which could be a death sentence for Venus and her family. Yet fighting back isn't an option; her father Darius tried to organize civil disobedience and protests, and that got him killed.

Venus has taken over her mother's potion brewing business, while knowing it's a dangerous game. In addition to the fact that brewing potions is technically illegal and could land her in prison, each one takes a bit of her life force, or it won't work. And if she brews a potion outside of her specialty, she could lose exactly what her mother lost. Not helping is that some experimenting with magic has left a deviant inside her that wishes to do violence to the world.

It seems simple enough. Brew potions for thousands of dollars per client, stay under the radar, and keep her sister Janus out of trouble. Janus should be the biggest problem that Venus has because her sister would rather go out and party, while challenging the status quo. She can create portals and use a blood tether to read her sister's mind, but Janus wants to live. Surviving isn't enough.

Then their mother dies, killed by an iron bullet in an act of Anti-Witcher murder. To avenge their mother, and to maybe prevent the registration bill from passing, Venus has to enter the dangerous world of making potions for politicians, hoping to turn the tide. These underhanded deeds may also keep Janus out of jail, since she is itching to avenge their mother as well, and rebel against the systems that keep them labeled as "other". Janus, however, can sense that her sister has gotten in over her head. And she wants to help.

While Venus is no hero, she is certainly not the monster that she thinks she is. She is someone who makes choices to protect her family, a family that has meddled with human minds and hearts. Yes, she knows that most love potions mess with the ability to give consent, but nothing else will pay the rent. Venus has her specialty, and she has to live with it. As her witcher neighbors remind her, trying to brew potions outside her specialty has a price. She has enough trouble keeping her deviant under wraps.

This is such a fun book that keeps me spellbound. I hope it releases to all the love and acclaim that it deserves.

This book is not for the faint of heart, as there is a lot of gore, violence, and difficult topics. However, I feel that, especially in its exploration of themes that it succeeds in portraying something that real teens, especially those in marginalized communities, have and will continue to experience, so I can’t really say it’s inappropriate for a YA audience.

Honestly, the main reason this isn’t 5 stars for me is that I felt like I was missing some understanding of exactly how magic worked and what consequences and conflicts the characters were facing within it. This book tackles magic from a lot of different angles and it was hard to keep up with despite the little informational quotes at the beginning of each chapter. However, I think the ideas were really strong and unique and the way that witches were known to the general public in a way that only deepened their oppression was much more thought provoking than stories where magical people are hidden/secret. The politics were also a little unclear, as I was unsure if I was just supposed to map the idea of our real world American senate onto the senators in this book, suggesting that it was a simple republican/democrat divide and some republicans needed to be flipped. This didn’t quite make sense to me since it seemed that the oppression witches faced was more complete and wouldn’t fall out along party lines.

Regardless, where this book shined was the twisty interpersonal relationships and the juxtaposition of loving your family so much against the fact that trying to help them survive in a harsh world might make them hate you. All the characters had their own personalities and powers and motivations, and I could easily pick them out and had no problem remembering who was who or what their stakes were. The book makes you question who is good, evil, or just complicated, and takes a lot of time to show characters making mistakes and facing consequences for them. There are some big reveals that I found satisfying and especially as I approached the end the pacing really picked up and made you turn pages.

Though this is not a perfect book, I enjoyed it and recommend it. I also liked the non-binary representation, especially as a love interest. I look forward to more work from this author because of her unique ideas and how she isn’t afraid to write about hard topics and complex characters.

This was very enjoyable, I remember reading the description of this an instantly wanting it but I couldn't get it at the time because of the release time. So grateful that I was able to get to read such a interesting book now. I knew I wouldn't be disappointed an sure enough I wasn't.

This was phenomenal. I loved the world-building, the characters, the themes, the damn heart of this book. It is inventive and moving and relevant to our world while still being an intriguing fantasy. I would like a hundred more angry, affecting books just like that. And for now, that's all I'll say because I don't want to give away any spoilers before the book comes out.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me early access to this book in exchange for an honest review. I'm really glad I requested it.

This was a magical and political debut YA/NA fantasy from Bethany Baptise that faltered occasionally only by trying to do too much. I loved Baptiste's overall focus on the juxtaposition of human power v magic and how humans wield their fear as power to even control witchers who are full of immense magic.

Baptiste deftly outlined some of the divides of our current society and politics--divisions between those we see as other--and projected them onto a SFF dystopian DC. This backdrop of DC gentrification and proximity to power illuminates her theme that not all monsters are bad--some act out of love against oppressive forces.

The pacing was a bit off at times - driven by Baptiste taking on too much and not spending more time on flushing out characters. I enjoyed the first part of the book as the worldbuilding unraveled, and Baptiste introduced characters, but then the story spun its wheels for a while. I think Baptiste could have threaded some of the political underpinnings earlier in the story. Then, at about 80%, it's pure action until the end. The pacing made parts of the story confusing. Some of the side characters were flat enough that I couldn't remember who they were or what their motivations were. Even Janus's anger at Venus didn't make sense to me at times because we weren't allowed to sink into it as readers.

But overall, I loved the world building, the special Witcher magic, the attention Baptiste put into the brewing and potions, and the setting of a dystopian ish DC where witchers carve out a place of belonging and resistance much like Black people have in the U.S. for centuries.

I can't wait to see what Bethany puts out next and how she settles into her voice as an author.

I was curious about the books that Cate Corrain dissed, yes, as this was one of them, but I also wanted to read about the pink-haired main character. I know, don’t judge a book by its cover, but this is one amazing cover.


The story is of a country divided, those who are human and those who are witchers. The US government is afraid of them, and yet they and the population use them, because they can give them what they want, with this “magic” potions. Venus is skilled in making love potions. These potions are not just to fall in love with people, but to fall in love with ideas, or things. And each time a witcher brews them, she gives a little of herself. There is fever, there is pain, and there could also be death.


Venus keeps thinking she is going to quit the business, that pays so well, when her mother is killed, and she gets caught up in something she has no control over. The further she goes into trying to find who killed her mother, the more she finds corruption. There are people that are doing things, and she has to work her way through to the very top to find out what is going on.


While I admit that sometimes I had a hard time keeping track of everyone in the story, because people who were allies, become enemies, become friends again, the basic story was good, even if *I* might have gotten confused. If you like to have your Main Character in constant danger, you have come to the right place. From the get-go, Venus is in pain. Brewing love potions is not for the weak at heart, or body.


This debut novel is coming out on the 5th of March, 2024. Thanks to Netgalley for making it available for an honest review.

I enjoyed this book so so much. The first chapters include a lot of world building that slows the pace down, but once it picks up speed it doesn't slow down. There are so many small pieces of this story that tie together masterfully in the end. This novel really gets at the relationships between mother and daughter and older and younger siblings. The book asks us how far is too far to go in pursuit of liberation and what is too much to sacrifice.
I would highly recommend this book.

I read the origins of this story at the beginning of the book, and I was like, I really like where this might take me. I was not disappointed in any way where that was concerned. One thing I will point out is that this leans more towards the young adult, and I really am not a fan; I suppose I’m getting too old. LOL! However, that aside, this is a well-written book about Venus suddenly thrust into taking care of her sister and using her magic to do that. I love morally gray characters, and this delivered. I also enjoyed the subtle inferences about the current political…climate, and I like it wasn’t a hammer to your head. I think that author will go far, and I’ll pick up another book by her in the future if it leans more away from YA. Recommend. I was provided a complimentary copy which I voluntarily reviewed.

I enjoyed this debut fantasy from Bethany Baptiste! I read it in about two days. The ideas of different forms of love for love potions - including the love of an idea - was very interesting and it had some twists I didn't see coming.

But how little the adults in this book did to protect their 16-18 year old kids, and the lack of consent that went with how potions were given to others, made it hard to read in moments.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this review copy!

Beautiful, thoughtful writing paired with am incredible world. TPWD is a rare YA gem. I did think it would've been even better with an expanded story in a duology but I'll take this as well.

I loved that thenFMC didn’t seem weak and was sticking it to the man. Loved the magic system in the book and can’t wait to read more.

I thought that this was a pretty decent debut. There were a lot of good moments and aspects that I really enjoyed but unfortunately, it didn’t really all come together for me.

First off, the pacing was all over the place. The beginning of the book is slooow with the first 20% dedicated to set-up, background, and world-building. Then there seem to be extremely important scenes that happen off-page with a single sentence. Conversations happen constantly but are always kept short so emotions go from 0 to 100 and back to 0 quickly.

The world-building was pretty good and I liked the individual components of the magical system. However, I never got the sense that the various magical mechanisms interacted or related to each other to create a single cohesive magical system. Anima, auras, blood oaths, blood tethers, familiars, callings, vow of abnegation, purification baths, Sister Magick/Sister Nature, potion notes, enchanted items. These are just some of the various magic systems or mechanisms that are introduced. And because they all operate more or less separately from each other, it’s very easy to forget one of these mechanisms exists until it's brought back 150 pages later.

I would also recommend not thinking too deeply about how the potion economics or recoil work because if you do, the entire thing stops making sense. Most of the time, the recoil from a trinary-note potion will literally almost kill you and you have to drink a mending potion to not die. But when Venus is required to brew two trinary-note potions back to back, she can withstand the recoil if Patches and Leap fight (??) the potion? Shouldn’t brewers have developed a better system for dealing with recoil than literally lying on the floor with shattered bones, bleeding out, slowly dying until someone else pours the mending potion into your mouth? Why would Leslie offer Venus a *free* Ironskin potion when we’re told it costs seven figures for a single bottle because it’s extremely dangerous to brew? And why the hell would Venus say no without a second thought, especially since it would help her later on?

I loved the premise of this book and I think it mostly managed to live up to my expectations. However, one issue that I had with the main plot was how little of it is explained to Venus (and by extension, the reader). Since Venus is only roped into the enslave-Senators-with-potions plan at the very end after all of the details have been figured out, the reader never gets a clear sense of the stakes or consequences. The reader is not given a baseline understanding of this fantasy-Congress (how many Senators are pro-witcher, which regions of the US are more witcher friendly, what’s the status of the House of Representatives, etc). It’s explained that Venus doesn’t know these details because she doesn’t follow politics but then how is the reader expected to care about the Registration Act passing if the main character literally doesn’t? I mean, all we’re told is that these 5 Senators are “swing votes” but if you’re going to give them a love potion anyway, why does that even matter? You could literally just love potion 5 “no” votes and it would have an equal if not greater effect. I think part of this is that I work in DC politics so these unexplained details stand out to me more but it’s pretty frustrating when the main character is basically clueless about the secret plot she’s participating in for the entire book.

Another related issue is how smaller story elements are introduced in one chapter, leading you to believe that it will have long-ranging implications for the rest of the book but it just… doesn’t? Something that would seem extremely important or life-changing to Venus is basically never mentioned again. For example, Venus is given a letter from her deceased father in Chapter 5 and for reasons that are not explained, tosses it aside without opening it. It’s only until Chapter 32 that this letter is suddenly rediscovered and we’re told that Venus has avoided opening it because she didn’t feel ready but that was never mentioned in Chapter 5. Another example is the inheritance syndrome which basically gives a resurrected person (in this case, Venus) the magical abilities of the person sacrificed. This concept is introduced in Chapter 26 and wouldn’t you know it, Venus very conveniently discovers that she has inheritance syndrome in the same chapter. The fact that Venus can now brew healing potions is never mentioned after Chapter 26 even though there are so many potential uses for it in the story.

Finally, some of the phrases felt awkward and clunky to me. Since I read an ARC, I have no idea if the exact wording will remain in the published version (presumably the straight-up typos or grammatical errors will be edited out). Some examples of phrases that I found awkward: “a biblical flood of patrons had flooded the Golden Coin” or “tired screeched to sleep as Venus slammed her foot on the brake” or “a shower washed the crumbles of sleep away” or “Venus needed to gather her strength’s last crumbles to get out of here.”

Anyway, this review ended up way longer than I expected but I should reiterate that I thought this was a pretty good debut and a 3-star rating is not bad at all.

★★★★ • 4

“The illusion was what the world knew best. The crisp white monuments of supposed heroes and hope stood tall. The museums worshipped human victories and mistakes. A downtown brimmed with grand hotels, high-end stores, and trendy joints where the wealthy reigned, the tourist roamed, and the poor never rested. On the battlefield of Capitol Hill, lies and promises were cherished weapons. And the White House was nothing more than a poisonous time capsule of good old American dreams.”

Great debut novel, but goes heavy on details so it makes for a denser read. That said, this book is fantasy but is also very much ‘reality adjacent’ in some ways which can be hard to read.

There’s a certain level of discomfort which increases after every single chapter where the author prefaces with yet another horrible fantasy law or social inequality. This book will make you angry, because it very clearly mirrors real hatred and discrimination that makes today’s world feel like a dystopian society. So, while I’ll say this book is upsetting it is also extremely relevant.

Overall? The book was good, but I do think it leans more towards being New Adult rather than Young Adult… Not because of the themes discussed but more so because of some of the more graphic aspects of the content.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC to review!

It's been awhile since I have read something with a new idea and let me tell you how much I loved it. I really like how the magic system is not given all at once but just when something happens that involves magic it gives you an extra paragraph to explain why. I can't believe this book is the authors depute novel, it is really well written and I can not wait to see what else she comes out with! I will definitely be following this author. Pick it up, you wont be disappointed!

Description
In a country divided between humans and witchers, Venus Stoneheart hustles as a brewer making illegal love potions to support her family.

Love potions is a dangerous business. Brewing has painful, debilitating side effects, and getting caught means death or a prison sentence. But what Venus is most afraid of is the dark, sentient magic within her.

Then an enemy's iron bullet kills her mother, Venus's life implodes. Keeping her reckless little sister Janus safe is now her responsibility. When the powerful Grand Witcher, the ruthless head of her coven, offers Venus the chance to punish her mother's killer, she has to pay a steep price for revenge. The cost? Brew poisonous potions to enslave D.C.'s most influential politicians.

As Venus crawls deeper into the corrupt underbelly of her city, the line between magic and power blurs, and it's hard to tell who to trust…Herself included.

My Take:
Did the cover and the description grab you? It grabbed me and after reading the book, has yet to let me go. I received this book as an ARC through Netgalley (it publishes on March 5, 2024) and enjoyed it immensely. Here are a few reasons why you should pick up this book as soon as you can:
1. The cover is gorgeous and will brighten up any space it's in.
2. Intrigue, Murder, and Agendas: who can you trust? Are you sure?
3. It's all about love-in all of its forms.
4. Family bonds are formed, tested, stretched and broken.
5. The world building is fantastic! I could see lots of stories emerging from this world.
6. With all of the detail, there is much to discuss: this would make a great book club pick or buddy read.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

3.5 stars

After everything has gone down recently, I was super ready to read this book. Unfortunately, it didn’t go as I expected. While the cover is beautiful and the world building is vast and interesting, it took me a very long time to be invested. I wasn’t really into the book till it was almost finished. We are thrown into a world that has a bit TOO much going on and it’s very hard to keep up with the many rules and characters. I wasn’t sure what was going on a lot of the time. Witcher society is very enchanting and I wish that it had been explained a bit more to us.

I love the themes of family and loyalty. Venus is a great MC and we are given a chance to sympathize with her and her struggles. There’s also messages here about love and hope as well as rage and revenge. We see the difficult relationship that families have as well as how families are able to stick together no matter what.

I’m excited to see what Bethany has next. Her writing style is so magical and full of rich characters.