I love modern-day witches. I love queer romance. I love mysteries. I’m not typically a huge YA reader, but I like the first three things enough to give queer YA witch romance mystery These Witches Don’t Burn a try.

While this book was not without its flaws, there was something quite fresh-feeling about These Witches Don’t Burn that I appreciated. It took a lot of common YA tropes, such as “I’m trying to be a normal teenager but I have Powers I must hide” and “I’m emotionally torn between my first love and the new person in town,” and queered them, which did give this book some extra life even when it went down some well-trodden paths.

The book follows Hannah, a young Elemental witch living in Salem, Massachusetts. In the beginning of the book she is navigating her relationship with her ex-girlfriend and fellow Elemental witch Veronica after a recent publicly messy breakup. They are both concerned that a Blood Witch, a witch who can manipulate bodies using blood, that they got mixed up with after a recent trip to New York might be after them for revenge.

The book shines in the early chapters as an examination of human relationships between people who happen to be supernatural, coupled with what feels like a relatively low-stakes mystery (as in, the scope is limited to Hannah and Veronica’s personal safety and not all of witchkind).

There’s an incredible amount of emotional heft to these initial chapters. Hannah still has profound feelings for Veronica, but has come to believe that their relationship is not healthy for her. The intensity of first love gone sour, along with the feeling of wanting your ex and wanting to escape them at the same time, is well-rendered. One major moment:

“Why?” Veronica reaches for my wrist and holds firm. “Why can’t we go back?”

She’ll never understand. The realization washes all the fight out of me, leaving behind only heartache. I gently pull my wrist from her grip. “Because,” I say, my voice so soft it’s nearly swallowed up by the trees, “I’m standing here, telling you how much you hurt me, and you can’t hear it.”

OOF. I thought the book did a great job showing why Veronica and Hannah did not work together without demonizing either of them. It showed them to be two flawed teenagers whose flaws enable each other in a mega-bad way. While some of their interactions got kind of dark, the lens this books takes feels compassionate towards both of them.

Veronica and Hannah’s dynamic is further complicated by the fact that they are both afraid the Blood Witch from New York is coming for revenge. This shared secret fear keeps them tied together in magical ex-girlfriend toxic teenage hell.

The emotional implications of two teen exes having magical powers (and of misusing them) feels well-explored. Hannah’s volatile emotional state makes her more likely to impulsively use magic, and magic helps distract her from her upset feelings. For example, at a bonfire party, she thinks:

I step closer to the flames, until I feel the lick of heat against my face. The energy cascades over me, through me, driving out the lingering hurt from seeing Veronica. Numbing bad memories like a magical novocaine.

I don’t have magical powers, but it’s probably not a good sign for your overall well-being when you are comparing your magic to a numbing agent!!

Suffice it to say I legitimately loved the first part of These Witches Don’t Burn, because I’m interested in supernatural YA stories with lower stakes. Figuring out how to just be in the world when you have a special power that can hurt or help people and that must be hidden is often more interesting to me than saving the world. Furthermore, I really enjoyed the mix of “regular” everyday queer-girl problems (like Hannah’s best friend’s parents suddenly acting all weird and suspicious after Hannah comes out) with magical ones (like Hannah’s parents binding her magical powers because she’s been reckless with them).

Unfortunately, there’s a pretty significant shift in the book’s focus about ⅔ of the way through that did not work for me.

The introduction of the actual antagonists means the scope of the mystery/conflict becomes a lot broader and the book moves away from its close examination of emotion, relationships, and the implications of being an everyday magical teenager, to turn into something much more action-y. One of the things I liked about the first 200 or so pages was that it felt like there was some room for exploring Hannah’s emotional world. But the last third of the book felt like a breakneck ride from plot point to plot point without any space for the characters to unfurl. For example, without giving specific spoilers, there’s a house fire, a major character reveal, and a significant death within 30 pages, and the entire last 100 pages are all that jam-packed with plot points that would feel major…if there was any time to dwell on them.

The shift from what’s mostly a story about Veronica and Hannah to an action tale that involves the entire Salem supernatural community exacerbates some issues with the characterization. Particularly in the latter part of the book, some of the secondary characters feel like cardboard dummies moved around by the plot instead of people driving the action.

This may be because there are too many characters for all of them to get sufficient exploration. We are introduced to what seems like about 10 million teenagers early in the book: In addition to Veronica, Hannah, Hannah’s best friend Gemma, and new love interest Morgan, there’s aggro soccer player Nolan, friend-from-school Benton, Veronica’s friend Savannah, goth kid Evan, and Hannah’s new coworker, Cal. Easily half of these characters end up being superfluous to the main plot, but they still stick around in some capacity through significant portions of the book. Same thing with the 10 million adults somehow involved in supernatural life in Salem. With so many different people flitting in and out of the pages, it was hard to get a feel for many of the secondary characters.

And some of the characters we do spend more time with don’t really have fully rendered personalities, but instead seem to be inhabiting a rote role. For example, Gemma is a “Sassy Best Friend of the Main Character” type who does not seem to have independent wishes and motivations that don’t center on Hannah. Almost all of her dialogue is centered on badgering Hannah to do something, say something, or wear something. She felt like a function and not a character. Veronica was by far the most compelling character, but is mostly absent from the final third of the book.

To this end, the best thing I can say about the romance between new-girl dancer Morgan and Hannah is that I didn’t hate it. There were some sweet moments between them, but I found that Morgan did not start to coalesce as a complete character until quite late in the book. I also kind of thought until about midway through that Veronica and Hannah might get back together, as they had way more on-the-page chemistry than Morgan and Hannah (Veronica’s toxic traits notwithstanding). This made me hesitant to get invested in what was supposed to be the central romance.

In spite of my qualms with the big tonal shift, I do think the bones of a really great book are here. The smaller, emotional moments shine. Some of the characters were quite mesmerizing, particularly Veronica and Hannah’s stern-but-loving coven leader grandmother, Lady Ariana. There was also deft layering of metaphor about witches, prejudice, and staying hidden that paralleled some of Hannah’s experiences as a queer teenager which I really appreciated. (We stan a multidimensional metaphor!!)

While some craft issues did cause me to ding the grade for this book somewhat, I think this is a good book for a teen looking for queer content who is ready to deal with some slightly heavier themes. When I review YA literature one thing remains top of mind for me, and that is whether or not I think it’s talking down to its intended audience. Teens are capable of navigating considerable moral and emotional complexity and this book honors that.