Name: Spellbound
ISBN: 9781635555646

Jackie D

Jean Copeland

When the supernatural worlds of good and evil face off, love might be what saves them all.

Spellbound

Jude Silberfeld

4.5*

The blurb intrigued me, the result was even better than I expected.

Raven Dare is a shadowhunter, bound by a curse on her family to Morgan, the Queen of Witches. Her job is to help Morgan keep the balance between realms, by fighting demons, hellhounds and other nasty creatures. So when Morgan sends her to Salem, Massachusetts, she goes, unaware of how this new mission will change her whole life. In Salem, she meets Hazel Abbot and feels strangely attracted to her. Little does either know that Hazel is a witch, from a long line of witches. Things get even more mysterious when one of her ancestor, Sarah Hutchinson, fleeing the Salem witch trials of 1692, ends up in Hazel’s bookstore.

Spellbound is a very exciting read, fast-paced, thrilling, funny too. Morgan is a fantastic character, self-centred and powerful, she’d make a great villain if she wasn’t fighting for good over evil (or, rather, the balance between the two). As Sarah and the woman she couldn’t love in 1692, Ayotunde, try and adjust to life in the twenty-first century, their discoveries and fascinations bring a sense of ludicrousness to an already gripping story. I also love how Hazel’s optimism and will lead Raven to open herself to the idea of love, despite her conviction that she’s doomed to a life of loneliness because of Morgan’s curse.

The authors mix politics and the fight against patriarchy with time travel and witch fights with brilliant results. I’d love to see more of all these women, so I’m crossing my fingers for a sequel.

I received a copy from the publisher and I am voluntarily leaving a review.

Ariel Duke

This book opens by introducing us to a fierce female protagonist, one of many, named Raven Dare with a family history that has determined her destiny. From that point we are thrown back in time to the Salem Witch Trials where we meet Sarah and then the cast of characters is completed when we meet Hazel in modern day Salem, Massachusetts. This book is full of girl power moments, self discovery, and of course some magic. 

This book was unlike anything that I have read recently. I have been branching out into books that have LGBTQIA+ representation and this book did not disappoint in that aspect. Beyond that, the themes and contextual events in this book were very poignant in relation to the current political climate in the United States. The fashion in which existing prejudices related to race, socioeconomic status, and gender were manipulated to cause discord were staggering, but also a reflection of the current state of things here in the USA. I really enjoyed this aspect of the book and I am so glad that I read it when I did.