A C is a weird grade for a book that I read compulsively, especially since I remain very curious about the next one, but while the set up, the action, and the ensemble were a lot of fun to read, the more I thought about it, the more I found myself thinking, “But, wait…” I have a stack of “But, waits” regarding the character development and emotional pivots, and they began to accumulate from about the first third of the story.

Molly is getting ready for Yet Another Dinner Party for her husband, Austin, an ambitious attorney at an Atlanta firm, when she discovers purple panties that aren’t hers wedged behind the bed. The discovery cracks Molly’s ability to maintain her facade that all is well in her marriage and in her life, and she thinks about all the things she has yet to do for this party, like prepare all the food, dress, and ensure the drinks are plentiful, all so Austin can level up at his firm while she does her work as a society wife supporting his professional efforts.

Meanwhile, he’s been cheating on her. In their bed.

Molly has Had It.

She confronts Austin downstairs while he’s talking to two men, one a partner at the firm and the other a man she doesn’t know, and her rage overflows into telekinetic assault, which she directs at a vase nearby instead of at Austin’s head, which was disappointing. The guests leave (or stay to watch the carnage) and Molly packs a bag, empties the safe (nice!), walks out of the party, and drives away.

The telekinetic vase-splosion indicates that her latent powers have awakened, but she has no idea what’s going on, and she’s understandably freaked out about it. The third man who witnessed her vase rage contacts her, then lures her with magic into the hotel bar where she’s staying so he can explain that she’s a witch, she’s whoa-ly powerful, and she needs training. He comes across as a creep, so she tells him to fuck off in so many words. Then, Molly notices later that amid the papers from the safe are documents from a foreign bank detailing a big pile of money offshore somewhere, a stash she had no knowledge of, and knows Austin was up to something terrible.

This is maybe the first three chapters. You know those toy cars that you swipe backwards to wind up, and then when you put them down they shoot across the room, bounce off a chair leg and go flying, then zoom forward some more? That’s the plot of this book, complete with multiple instances of bouncing or exploding cars. Once it gets going, it GOES. Molly finds an attorney, files for divorce, and says she wants the house, the retirement funds, and some other things, but will not take the “foreign investments,” which sets off a chain of events. Austin sneaks up on Molly and beats her severely when she goes back to her home to find he left all the party food out to spoil. While he’s mid-swing, she realizes that he has gas cans and rope in his trunk (she can “see” them) and knows instinctively that despite what he says, he intends to kill her. She unleashes her powers to toss his car across the road and throw him into the air, and reaches out to the creepy hotel bar dude, Josiah, for help, because she doesn’t know whom else to call and she’s badly hurt.

Josiah takes her to a protected safe house and heals her with magic and terrible coffee while he tortures himself that she’s a distraction, he doesn’t have time or space for her in his life, but their connection is also too powerful. You see where this is going. Josiah has Deep Man Pain and is Really Very Old, and has a multi-lifetime revenge mission that he’s been working on for centuries with his coven.

That night, Austin is killed, as is Molly’s divorce attorney (poor woman) and evidence is found in Austin’s office to indicate he was researching how to kill Molly (really obvious evidence that Josiah, who is also the District Attorney, realizes was planted on purpose). Molly’s disappearance leads many people to believe she’s been killed.

So, to recap:

1. Molly is Really Freaking Powerful and her rage woke up her power. She needs training.
2. Josiah is also Really Freaking Powerful but he’s quite busy at the moment plotting mega revenge. He’s naturally the best person to train her, but he doesn’t have time right now.
3. Someone or something is trying to kill Molly, and she’s in Grave Danger, and needs to escape and hide out somewhere else.
4. Molly and Josiah have Substantial Horny Pants for one another, which is inconvenient all around.

No joking, this is probably just the first quarter, maybe. Like I said, this plot just GOES. And I really enjoyed the nonstop action, and especially the fact that Molly is accessing and owning so much self awareness, both real and magical. She is fresh out of fucks, and she will toss your car to make her point.

Alas, the speed of the plot is not balanced by any depth of emotion. For example, Josiah and Molly are Heckin’ Attracted to each other, but, as is the standard convention, hooking up to get them out of one another’s systems doesn’t work. It never works. Why do characters even try? Have they never read any books ever?

But their connection ends up amounting to insta-love because their attraction and desire is required by the plot to further complicate Josiah’s plans. Molly represents his option to Choose Something Other Than Revenge for his life. (Again, sound familiar?) and the part where they develop mature feelings for one another isn’t present in the text. There’s plenty of sexual and physical need, but not a lot of nuance beyond that. Josiah and Molly are paired by circumstance and hornypants dressed in a veneer of emotional connection that isn’t sufficiently explored or supported.

Moreover, Molly ends her marriage and sees her almost-ex husband killed in a matter of days, and really doesn’t do much grieving at all. Like, none. There are a handful of comments about how their marriage had been over for awhile, that Austin had cheated before, and that she wasn’t satisfied sexually. Because of course she wasn’t, since that means one stray swipe of Josiah’s thumb and she orgasms like never before. Molly should not let him anywhere near a swiping app on her phone. It’ll self-destruct.

Austin was shitty, but he was also easily disposed of by the story and by the characters, which made little sense to me the more I thought about it. In order for the plot to develop a relationship between Molly and Josiah, Austin’s emotional impact has to be minimal. At the same time, Molly and Austin had been married for long enough that his death and betrayal should have had more of an impact on Molly. At least some impact, right? They met, they had a romance of some sort, they got married, they grew older together…. That amounts to something. But he dies and she’s like, “Oh, well.” I didn’t buy her lack of grief at all. Again, insufficiently supported by the text and altogether too convenient.

There are also a handful of thinly developed characters I would have loved to learn more about, but they’re spoilery, so proceed below with caution.

This book is connected to the Elder Races novels, and the characters are aware of the different groups in that world, but perhaps because I haven’t read all of them, I was baffled by the magical rules and world building, such as it was. Molly spends considerable time learning about magic, her strengths, and her ability to cause a satisfying level of destruction, but there is no detail about any of it. It’s all summary. She’s a central character for the first third, and her decisions are what drive the story. Then she becomes almost a secondary character, while Josiah’s magic revenge and his dysfunctional coven take over the story. And I didn’t care about Josiah and his mission. I didn’t care about his coven, who show up to do the same exact thing over and over but whom I was told repeatedly were driven to form the revenge coven by their great losses caused by the Big Bad, though those losses are never given any weight or dimension. Meanwhile, Molly ends up in a caretaker/student role with scenes that slowly erase the fierce autonomy she had been grabbing by magical handfuls in the first part of the book.

Here’s what I learned reading this novel: I am entirely here for contemporary paranormal romances where women come into mad amounts of power, flip cars, and burn shit to the ground. But I also want that woman’s journey to be the centerpiece, and in this book, Molly’s growth and education were summarized and skimmed over after her actions drive the plot for the first third of the novel. I wanted more detail about what her magic is, where it manifests, how she identifies her strengths, what her training is like – all of that. She is guided to a coven of extraordinary women, but they’re all background supporting characters even more distant from the main narrative than Molly. I attended a shitload of meetings with Josiah and his awkward, grump coven, but none of those scenes made me care about them beyond, “When are you going to stop talking so I can read more of Molly and the west coast witches?”

One of the most fascinating parts of Molly’s awakening power is that she learns she is both a formidable opponent if attacked, and a very talented healer and caregiver. I know a lot about the first part. She flips cars, tosses her cheating husband around, explodes vases. It’s nifty! But in the latter part of the story, she falls into this caregiver role with very little explanation, and she is of course the very greatest one at helping people heal. It felt as if that role was expected of her, that she didn’t actively choose it, and was therefore at odds with the power and ferocity she demonstrated at the beginning. She took control of her life, and learned she was a powerful witch…and ended up caring for someone else in much the same way she’d been caring for Austin – who barely earns a mention after he dies and she leaves Atlanta.

The first part of the book didn’t match the second or third acts, and I ended up disappointed at how easy it seemed for Molly in the end. Josiah’s Treacherous Man Pain is more developed than all the kickass women, and I wanted more of the latter and less of the former. But like I said, I’m going to keep an eye out for the next book in the hope it contains either more of Molly, or more of a heroine who takes and holds onto center stage.