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Small Town, Big Magic
Small Town, Big Magic by Hazel Beck is $1.99! I believe Sarah mentioned this one in a previous Hide Your Wallet. Are you on the witchy book trend?
For fans of THE EX HEX and PAYBACK’S A WITCH, a fun, witchy rom-com in which a bookstore owner who is fighting to revitalize a small midwestern town clashes with her rival, the mayor, and uncovers not only a clandestine group that wields a dark magic to control the idyllic river hamlet, but hidden powers she never knew she possessed.
Witches aren’t real. Right?
No one has civic pride quite like Emerson Wilde. As a local indie bookstore owner and youngest-ever Chamber of Commerce president, she’d do anything for her hometown of St. Cyprian, Missouri. After all, Midwest is best! She may be descended from a witch who was hanged in 1692 during the Salem Witch Trials, but there’s no sorcery in doing your best for the town you love.
Or is there?As she preps Main Street for an annual festival, Emerson notices strange things happening around St. Cyprian. Strange things that culminate in a showdown with her lifelong arch-rival, Mayor Skip Simon. He seems to have sent impossible, paranormal creatures after her. Creatures that Emerson dispatches with ease, though she has no idea how she’s done it. Is Skip Simon…a witch? Is Emerson?
It turns out witches are real, and Emerson is one of them. She failed a coming-of-age test at age eighteen—the only test she’s ever failed!—and now, as an adult, her powers have come roaring back.
But she has little time to explore those powers, or her blossoming relationship with her childhood friend, cranky-yet-gorgeous local farmer Jacob North: an ancient evil has awakened in St. Cyprian, and it’s up to Emerson and her friends—maybe even Emerson herself—to save everything she loves.
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I Dream of Dinner (So You Don’t Have To)
RECOMMENDED: I Dream of Sinner (So You Don’t Have To) by Ali Slagle is $2.99! Sarah reviewed this and gave it a B+:
This cookbook is perfect for folks who cook a lot and would like new, easy, and very tasty recipes in their repertoire, and for those who want to cook more but might be intimidated by the complexity of recipes they encounter elsewhere. It’s friendly, flexible, and everything we’ve tried so far has been a great success.
150 essential recipes for dinner on the fly, from New York Times contributor Ali Slagle
With minimal ingredients and maximum joy in mind, Ali Slagle’s no-nonsense, completely delicious recipes are ideal for dinner tonight–and every single night. Like she does with her instantly beloved recipes in the New York Times, Ali combines readily available, inexpensive ingredients in clever, uncomplicated ways for meals that spark everyday magic. Maybe it’s Fish & Chips Tacos tonight, a bowl of Olive Oil-Braised Chickpeas tomorrow, and Farro Carbonara forever and ever. All come together with fewer than eight ingredients and forty-five minutes, using one or two pots and pans. Half the recipes are plant-based, too.
Organized by main ingredients like eggs, noodles, beans, and chicken, chapters include quick tricks for riffable cooking methods and flavor combinations so that dinner bends to your life, not the other way around (no meal-planning required!). Whether in need of comfort and calm, fire and fun–directions to cling to, or the inspiration to wing it–Dinnertime is the only phone-a-friend you need. That’s because Ali, a home cook turned recipe developer, guides with a reassuring calm, puckish curiosity, and desire for everyone, everywhere, to make great food–and fast. (Phew!)
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All In
RECOMMENDED: All In by Simona Ahrnstedt is $1.99! Redheadedgirl gave the book an A:
I felt like this was full of Shakespearean drama, and scheming families, and hot sex, and gorgeous clothes, but also some important things to say about how the world is functioning. There’s a lot going on, though, and the ending a tad rushed.
In the cutthroat world of Sweden’s financial elite, no one knows that better than corporate raider David Hammar. Ruthless. Notorious. Unstoppable. He’s out to hijack the ultimate prize, Investum. After years of planning, all the players are in place; he needs just one member of the aristocratic owning family on his side–Natalia De la Grip.
Elegant, brilliant, driven to succeed in a man’s world, Natalia is curious about David’s unexpected invitation to lunch. Everyone knows that he is rich, dangerous, unethical; she soon discovers he is also deeply scarred.
The attraction between these two is impossible, but the long Swedish nights unfold an affair that will bring to light shocking secrets, forever alter a family, and force both Natalia and David to confront their innermost fears and desires.
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The Lone Wolf’s Rejected Mate
The Lone Wolf’s Rejected Mate by Cate C. Wells is FREE! Thanks to everyone who let us know about this one! Several books in this series have been featured in Hide Your Wallet and positively mentioned in the comments.
After one night, he walked away. He’s going to live to regret it.
Mari
Growing up alone in Quarry Pack, I always dreamed of a mate who’d sweep me off my feet and carry me away to our very own cottage that we’d fill with pups and love and laughter. A real family.What I got?
Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.
The pack sees Darragh Ryan as a tortured hero with a dark past, protecting the pack from afar.
I know better. He’s a jerk who can’t deal with people so he’s chosen to live in the wilderness and—I don’t know—brood. One thing I do know is that he doesn’t get to reject me.
I reject him.
Darragh
Mari doesn’t understand what she doesn’t know. She’s naïve, soft, and way too young and sweet for a life of self-imposed exile.She’s a grown female who sits in trees, reading books, and wears party dresses to garden. Everything she owns is pink. Her wolf is probably pink.
She can’t handle the real world, and she sure can’t handle my wolf. No one can.
One day, she’ll understand why I won’t claim her, and she might not thank me, but she should.
Because my wolf? Given half a chance, he’d tear her apart.
The Lone Wolf’s Rejected Mate is the third novel in The Five Packs series, but it can be read as a standalone. No cheating. HEA guaranteed. Intended for adult readers only.
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Just a tw/cw for THE LONE WOLF’S REJECTED MATE: I liked the book very much, however, about midway through the story, the MCs are abducted and held captive by some really awful bad guys. It ends up being a bonding experience for them, but there’s quite a bit of violence before the situation is resolved.
It’s probably just me, but I struggle with all these books about people descended from Salem witches etc. because the whole point of the atrocity was that none of those people were witches. They were all innocent people falsely accused because they were a bit different in some way. Buying into the myth and making them real witches seems to just perpetuate the slander. I get that it’s not intended that way, but it doesn’t sit right with me. Imagine writing stories where Jews who died because of the blood libel leave descendants who grow up to do (especially cutesy) versions of the things their ancestors were falsely accused of. Idk.
I have similar feelings about traditional rape myths and stories (eg Hades and Persephone) reimagined as romance. Sometimes people talk about “reclaiming” these stories by making them romantic or erotic, but whitewashing just doesn’t feel like empowerment to me.
If someone wrote a romantic/erotic version of traumatic events from my life, I would not feel empowered, I would feel silenced, and if I’d been executed as witch in Salem, I don’t think I’d be flattered by all the Salem stories. No one else seems to feel this way, though.
@Star
Thank you for pointing this out. I had not really considered this point of view before, and it has given me something to think about. I can’t guarantee that my reading habits will change, but it’s good to have a different perspective.
I don’t really understand the appeal of books with rejection. Maybe it’s that I’m autistic and spent much of my childhood and adolescence excluded or bullied, and my parent took off, but being rejected is so hurtful that I can’t see being able to get over it and have a happy relationship.
@Star, I have zero interest in reading the books you described. Your points are so valid, I wonder if my subconscious is recoiling. I clearly recall how horrified I was as a grade school kid learning about the Salem witch trials.
@ Michelle rejection sensitivity plus asexuality is why I have never liked the enemies to lovers, or the childhood bully redeems themselves/2nd chance after they broke your heart the first go-around type tropes either. If I had a bad or traumatic first experience with someone, and lust does not exist to overcome it (which I don’t think should excuse it, but seems to be a driving factor in those kinds of books), then there would have to be VERY good reasons why, and obscene amounts of groveling and proof of change… and even then I don’t know about finding trust or love. That is one of the things I so appreciate about some description blurbs these days, when they add stuff like “low-angst” and “Friends to lovers” – yes please!
@Star, as another descendant of a Salem victim, I have the same reaction whenever the trials are used as background filler. Thank you for pointing that out.
“I Dream of Sinner (So You Don’t Have To) by Ali Slagle” — I like this typo!
@Star
I do want to push back some against your Hades and Persephone ‘whitewashing’ comment. You’re obvs allowed to not like anything, and if you don’t like my comment, you can ignore it too.
But to me H/P isn’t about sexual assault in the same way some other Greek myths are (and you have to remember that Rape meant theft back in the day, and that sexual assault gained that term because ones virginity was being ‘stolen’ from them). It’s an allegory for a lot of things, and like all allegories/myths it changes with time. To the Ancient Greeks it would’ve warned against ignoring your bride’s mother, and about why the seasons changed, and how how seeds (Kore) ‘die’ and descend to the earth/underworld only to return in the spring.
I think pushing back against modern ideas (that aren’t really modern) of Hades being a villain/devil equivalent and stealing Persephone away a la some melodrama isn’t bad. And I would argue that there is indeed some reclaiming going on here. If you look at what little art there is of Hades and Persephone from the Greeks, they’re depicted as equals, surrounded by symbols that represented a happy marriage. (Minthe doesn’t figure into the story until Roman times)
Like I said, what I like and what you like doesn’t have to be the same. And that most people don’t care/need the context of a thing to want to see it differently, or attempt to ‘reclaim’ it in some way. But I do wish in some cases that the context of things were taught in mythology classes too (and I’d like to thank my own college mythology teacher for going above and beyond in that regard)
Anyways, there’s my mini-rant/ramble.
For me, the rejected mate trope is part of a larger theme in heteronormative romance which can only be described as “men f*cking up.” I cherrypick my way through these books because — as in all things — there’s more than one slant to their appeal. A number of them are simply angstfests, a kind of Wattpadesque battleground where writers put their female characters through the most horrible situations imaginable only to have them stagger out the other side with the “prize” that is the hero (those *are* scarequoates, btw).
I don’t understand the positive appeal of an angstfest, but I’m pretty sure someone who does could take a psychological deep dive on them and show me what’s going on. Kind of like the appeal of horror films.
But there is another appeal, which @drewbird alluded to: the extended grovel. And this is the niche Cate C Wells operates in. For me, the extended grovel has twofold appeal. The first is simply the challenge the author has set for herself: can she effectively redeem the relationship the “hero” just screwed up? I thought Wells nailed this in the first book in her Five Packs series, THE TYRANT ALPHA’S REJECTED MATE. Wells not only provided the hero with an ironclad excuse for having rejected the heroine, the author and the characters then refused to accept that excuse as reasonable and still held the hero accountable for his actions.
The second appeal of the grovelmance for me is that I’m a 50-year-old woman who has never recovered from the Anita Hill hearings. Watching a dude spend an entire novel digging himself out from his own patriarchal assholery is a source of endless joy to me. I used to feel embarrassed by this when other, more progressive readers would disdain the “men f*cking up” theme because they were so over the reality of it all and women deserve better. But then I accepted that I just cope in different ways.
Huge caveat: a good grovel and an effectively redeemed relationship is a rare thing in these books. It feels like there are 100 misses for every hit.
Thanks for articulating that so well, @Deborah!
Free:
– Erin Nicholas’s Gotta Be Bayou (Badges of the Bayou 1)
$.99:
– Nancy Herkness’s Gabriel (Royal Caleva 1)
I dnf small town big magic.