Heart Wants Books

Gods & Monsters by Shelby Mahurin

October 28, 2021

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Ready to curl up with an old friend? We’ve loved spending a few days with Lou and Coco and we are excited to spend a few days with Veronica Speedwell in a few weeks too! These cooky heroines are a joy and we hope you’ll spend some time with Veronica too and then join us to chat about her antics in book two of the Veronica Speedwell mysteries series, A Perilous Undertaking by Deanna Raybourn. Sign up here to join us on Friday, December 10th, 2021 at 7:30pm Central Time for Virtual Book Club!

We love a good theme here at Heart.Wants.Books. and in addition to a good theme we love a good follow up. What could be better than a theme with a follow up book?! Pretty much nuthin. Last year in September we discussed Shelby Mahurin’s debut novel Serpent and Dove with Virtual Book Club in preparation to bring you all the spoilers for that title in our review post for Blood and Honey, number two in the trilogy. That came in October for our inaugural Witchy Reads themed month. And here we are, a year later, bringing you the final installment in the trilogy, Gods and Monsters, about Lou and Reid and all their friends and framily…and I just want more. Yeah, you thought it was Nikki saying that didn’t you?! But, it’s NOT, it’s Ashley, and I am on board with Nikki’s usual assessment for this trilogy and I want it to be a series with more more more more more more!

Shelby Mahurin from Goodreads

We introduced Shelby Mahurin to you in our Blood and Honey post, and in something that is probably pandemic related, her website hasn’t changed since then. It still states she’s written two books, not the three we obviously know she’s published, and it says nothing of the teaser she gave on Facebook a couple of weeks ago about the story she’s working on. It’s Greek mythology based (I drool), and when Nikki shared the update with me I guessed WRONGLY at first. I’m excited to get more info in early 2022 about her book featuring Greek monsters! We can assume she’s diligently working away on her family farm in Indiana with her menagerie of humans and animals in her historic house that I also drool over, you can find more photos of that on her Instagram, which is more updated about her books than her website.

Now, for my real opinions, I had a little bit of a struggle getting into Gods and Monsters. Did I forget what happened at the end of Blood and Honey? Yes, yes I did. Did I open the book and get about a chapter in when Nikki shared with me the gloriousness that is this recap video? Also yes, and I so appreciate this existing. THERE. ARE. SPOILERS. IN. THE. VIDEO. That’s the point. It helped us not need to re-read Blood and Honey for major plot happenings and exactly how we left our crew. Additionally, I struggled with some of the names and relationships to our ensemble cast with the peripheral characters we had met in Blood and Honey when they showed up again, seemingly randomly, in Gods and Monsters. There seemed to be a lack of solid context clues about them, even though I had slightly more than vague ideas of who was whom. (The struggle when you read the last book a year prior.) The pacing seemed off from the previous two books, there was much less character development and much more external trials and tribulations until some major thing goes down at about 50%, and then we see a shift to the inner life for a little bit. That’s when I really got into these characters again, and I’m sad it took me that long to truly settle in.

You know we don’t like to give plot spoilers, but it’s important to know that the crew is still chasing Morgane, Lou’s mother, in order to save both the witches and the kingdom from utter ruin at her hands. They have collected friends and allies along their journey, and gather a few more weapons for their arsenal during their trek back to where everything began, the city of Cesarine. The epilogue was good, but I want more, especially the stories of Coco and Beau and what happens to Belleterre and Cesarine after the final action sequence. I’m giving Gods and Monsters a 4 star rating and unless Mahurin decides to give us more in the world of Belleterre, I will not be re-reading these titles. Though, I highly recommend them to anyone who is looking for a fantastical, snarky, witchy read in which to get lost.

~Ashley

I’m relieved to have company in wanting more this time. While the epilogue was glorious, I’d love a good A Court of Frost and Starlight -esque epilogue letting us glimpse at the life after the drama settles, because let’s be real, Lou, Coco, Reid, and Beau are going to have drama still, just hopefully less intense drama, and more related to unfiltered snark.

Dear readers, it’s hard to review the third book in a trilogy without spoilers, but I’m going to do my best to minimize. In Serpent and Dove, Shelby Mahurin sets up a magical world based on feudal France, and it’s glorious. It’s like the Catholics versus the Protestants only it’s the Church versus the occult. In Gods and Monsters, we get to go a layer deeper in that world, and learn even more about the history of the witches, meet other people groups who are considered occult [but what Ashley would consider to be paranormal], and deep dive into our beloved characters’ past with them. It’s a wild, dramatic, fun ride, and it’s almost everything I wanted it to be, however, I do genuinely believe it’s everything it should be. What I wanted more of was Beau and Coco, but with Reid and Lou telling the story, that wasn’t happening, and that’s ok, but maybe they can lead in that novel-length epilogue that isn’t actually a thing outside of my head? (But readers, if you see that fan-fiction pop up, please slide into our DMs because I needs it.)

Perhaps my favorite part of Gods and Monsters is the messages that come in the story, the underlying lessons the characters learn and exemplify about listening to your soul, pursuing what’s right and good, loving people through their struggles, and about grief, hope, and strength. My least favorite part, the spiders, always the spiders even though this is probably more New Adult than Young Adult (hear: there is language, violence, and a couple of steamy scenes).

I’m delighted for Gods and Monsters to be my 100th book of 2021, and I give it 4 stars. The action was solid, if a bit rushed, the drama was high, as expected, and the ending was pretty great actually. The writing was gorgeous and snark-filled and I realized how much I’ve missed that in my life with the past few titles we’ve read (this isn’t a dig on them, they have just been more serious in tone, and thus less snarky, except maybe for Juniper). I’m not sure I’ll reread this trilogy, but these characters are a delight, and I’ll be thinking about them and the ways they grew and developed for weeks (at least) to come. I’ll definitely be following Mahurin for more lipstick inspiration, historic house images, and updates on her current mythology-inspired project.

~Nikki

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Reading Life Review

Reading Life Review: October 2021

October 25, 2021

Those of you who’ve been around Heart.Wants.Books a while, might recall that Veronica Speedwell might be called witchy in some circles, but I’m not sure that came up in our June 2020 Virtual Book Club conversation. We didn’t choose her second book, A Perilous Undertaking by Deanna Raybourn, for that reason, we chose it because it’s comfortable, and December 10 at 7:30 CST feels like a time for discussing a comfortable book, a blankie read if you will. If you haven’t read A Curious Beginning, we strongly feel you should before digging into the follow up, so you know Veronica’s history and how this cast comes together to solve mysteries. We hope you’ll find this / these books calm, yet engaging, and interesting, but not stressful, and that you’ll sign up here to chat about it / them with us!

Ashley IN MEDIAS RES

Nikki IN MEDIAS RES

Ashley FIN

Nikki FIN

Oh readers, October is for witches and we still have six days left! Sadly, I won’t be reading witchy words all of them, but likely for a few more at least (read: at least until the book for Thursday’s post is done). I also didn’t read witchy words all month, just most of the month. I started with a book that B requested, because his fourth grade class was reading it and he thought I’d like it. Love That Dog is a novel told through poems, which was interesting. I did find my rule not to read books about animals (which I clearly broke) was validated in this book. We had some good conversations about it, and I’m mostly not sad I broke my own rule. Ugh.

While Carefree Black Girls by Zeba Blay wasn’t witchy, it does feel like #blackgirlmagic. Zeba Blay is now on my list of favorite writers, and I feel like I was given a true window into the lives of Black women from the depths of her soul. This title has the potential to be a favorite of the year for me, and is definitely near the top of the list for most important books for all the ways Blay calls out the work that is still needed to address the inequities, specifically those of intersectionality experienced by Black women in her insightful essays. Part pop culture critique, part memoir, 100% experiences and reflections of being a Black woman, and moving through both Black and majority society. It’s brutal, but also not a new concept. I got an e- ARC, and my pre-ordered copy is waiting for me to pick it up, so if you’re local and want to borrow it, let me know!

There’s one book I’m mostly refusing to talk about it (although Ashley might convince me otherwise as I did already draft half a post). The potential was there for so much awesome, it just wasn’t realized. Perhaps in a later book in the series it’ll come around, but I just can’t overlook editorial and proofing mistakes in a 15th anniversary release to continue. Instead of talking more, I want to ask you – what is your response when you read a book that is just underwhelming?

~Nikki

When Nikki reminded me at Virtual Book Club on Friday that we had our Reading Life Review post to do for today I had so many feelings! Mostly that I can’t believe October is almost over and I won’t have the most glorious reason to read witchy books everyday – can you tell that we love October and we don’t want it to end? Celebration of Witches does need to end at some point because then our blog would get very boring for you and us. (You know, I say that, and then I realize if every book I read were about witches I might not get bored as fast as I am saying I would…food for thought.)

While Nikki read a new release book of essays for her non-fiction title this month, I re-read a classic book on investing and mindset with Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I can not remember if I read it at the end of high school or some time in the middle of college, but I did and my paperback copy is currently in residence at someone else’s house. That’s OK, because Kindle Unlimited came to the rescue. I had been meaning to re-read this book as a means of getting my mind in the right place for making better financial decisions and bigger money moves. I had forgotten that Kiyosaki has chapter summaries at the end of each and every chapter that is almost the entire chapter over again word for word. I 100% skipped through those parts and the study questions at the end of the chapters, too. I still got what I needed out of it, the reminder that money is a tool and it’s up to us to figure out how to make it work for us rather than us working for it. Yup, read that again friends, it’s up to us to figure out a way to stop working for money. My sister read it in high school and that’s a great time of life to read it, to set the youth up with a fabulous mindset about money and work and thinking out of the box. This is one of the twelve business books I set out to read in 2021 and I’m a little behind; I’ve only now completed two from the list, whomp whomp. I guess I’ll have a good start on 2022’s list. HA!

Darling readers, I am sure you can figure out which witchy book Nikki says was underwhelming and did not meet expectations from our list above. I also found it troublesome, but we read it because it had such good reviews AND I had a malfunction in getting another one of our titles on time. Digital library failure on my part so that Nikki and I both scrambled to finish an extra book for this month so that we could have a title to bring you. Thank goodness my local library got the dead-tree version for me in time to read and post! Cause that extra witchy title was…well, not worth the $0 I paid on Kindle or the 4 star average it has garnered in reviews. 10/10 do not recommend.

I do recommend that you join us for Virtual Book Club again, because meeting with other readers who read the same books you do and discussing them can last for several fun hours, lots of giggles and laughs, and possibly some awkward stories about high school. Just us? Well, that should be all the reason you need to join us in December.

Can’t wait to see you then!

~Ashley

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Book Review•Witchy Reads

The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson

October 21, 2021

Ways, words, and will make the witch. It’s true for the Sandersons, the Owenses, and the Eastwoods too. Join us THIS Friday, October 22 at 7:30 p.m. CST to find out more about these pursuits that some label as wicked, but are they really? We have our hats ready and are plotting our brewed beverages so don’t forget to sign up to get the link to discuss Alix E. Harrow’s Once and Future Witches and maybe your circle will grow a bit in the process, too.

There’s something about going on a walk through the woods to bring me back to nature, and having done so (and stayed in a legit cabin a few days prior) while reading this book was great fun! I was caught thinking of what it must have been like for Immanuelle to traipse through the Darkwood, and how Miriam found her way to Daniel Ward, perhaps through that same wood. Although we have all the modern amenities (except for solid internet), it’s still nice to imagine what it was like without them, while overlooking the trees of the valley and nearby mountains. All that said, I’ll still hard pass on a trip to a Bethel-like place, because it feels a bit too much like Gilead for my taste.

However, a trip to Bethel via the pages of Alexis Henderson’s The Year of the Witching I will gladly accept. Henderson paints a vivid image that reminds me of the restrictive, puritanical pieces of The Scarlet Letter with all the underlying darkness of The Handmaid’s Tale and Mexican Gothic and I am SO here for it! Henderson doesn’t stop with the purity culture seeking to “protect” women, she includes issues of race, organized religion, abuse, youth, stigma, and family. While this makes the story seem complicated, it’s really not. Our protagonist Immanuelle is raised by her grandparents. Her father was burned as a witch before she was born and her mother died giving birth to her. She lives on the outside of Bethel’s society, because, although her grandfather was one of the apostles before her mother lost her way, her family was cast from the inner circle, and is now left with no status and little else. Immanuelle is thrust into the prophet’s sphere when her best friend becomes his latest wife, and she begins to see more of his heir, Ezra, too. Immanuelle and Ezra both have secrets, but they help each other because they realize there is more going on than consequences of sin caused by wayward Bethelan women when the plagues begin. While this is the first in a duology (or perhaps series, I’m not sure), I think it stands alone just fine (although I wouldn’t mind more epilogue).

I want to say so many things about the characters and story in The Year of the Witching . In her debut, Henderson takes two young people and gives them stubborn wills, clear eyes, powerful minds, and true hearts. She uses them and the society she’s created to call out SO. MANY. things that are wrong with American society and with the capital “C” Church. Willful ignorance of the past, blatant disregard for entire segments of society, closed minds and borders, white Biblical figures instead of Arabic, and “complacency and complicity” to name a few.

The Year of the Witching is a fantastic fall read, particularly if you like something with a gothic feel and enjoy a push back at a dystopian society where they would most definitely have had a “harvest festival” instead of a trunk or treat. I’m giving this debut 4.5 stars and rounding up to 5. The details of the story are creative, with amazing social commentary, and the writing is so engaging. I’m not sure I’ll reread this, but I’m very likely to pick up The Dawn of the Coven after it comes out later this year!

~Nikki

As Nikki mentioned above, The Year of the Witching is Alexis Henderson’s debut novel and the first in the Bethel series (duology?). All of Henderson’s biographies state she has a “penchant for dark fantasy, witchcraft, and cosmic horror.” As a native of Savannah, Georgia, one of the most haunted cities in America, she has an understandable love of ghost stories. She has a feline familiar, Luna, and they currently live in Charleston, South Carolina. I don’t think the vibe in Charleston hinders Henderson’s ability to write a solid spooky story AT ALL. Please let’s keep her writing more deliciously witchy fiction.

First, Confession Time: I don’t know what the heck happened in the two weeks between mine and Nikki’s making sure our Witchy Titles were available from our respective digital libraries and setting our reading order in September, but come the first week of October and all of a sudden I WAS NOT ABLE TO GET THE YEAR OF THE WITCHING digitally. It was a harrowing experience and I’m not a fan of this situation. #enneagram1 So, I go to another digital library, still not available. And then I got on my local library’s waitlist, thank all sacred things I was the only one on the list and the previous borrower returned it on time. (I am terrible at paying fines for my dead tree books, but they only give me two weeks, and I’m not a fan of that!) I checked the book out last Friday. I read the dead tree book – by pushing a little – in three days. I’m not sad I did it. (FYI: we did have a backup post plan and maybe you’ll get to hear about that during our reading life review – or before! But I digress…)

Second: Is The Year of the Witching really a debut novel? It has to be, because it’s the only published work we can find by Henderson on the interwebs, but the world building is so rich and intoxicating that it reads as if Henderson has spent multiple novels honing her craft. And, chances are high that as a writer she has stacks on stacks of unpublished works in which she has been working her word-magic, but I am so GRATEFUL that this was the first one published. I loved every second I spent reading it, and it truly is the perfect tale to read during the spooky season and specifically for our #celebrationofwitches2021. Am I frustrated that we didn’t end up reading it last year for our Witchy Reads when the book was newly birthed into the world? Kinda a little, but that’s the only disappointment I feel surrounding this novel. (Ok, that’s a lie. You all know I’m disappointed I had to read it in dead tree from the library and not be able to highlight on my kindle as is my habit – no lies the first few chapters I put my finger on the words like I could highlight it…digital reading has changed me and I’m not sad about it.)

Finally: Down with the Patriarchy. Henderson’s world of Bethel is a society run by a series of male Prophets and apostles with Gifts given by the Father to ‘protect’ people from the corrupting influence of the Dark Mother and her followers. Yes, some women receive Gifts, too, like Immanuelle’s grandmother Martha who has the gift of knowing the Father’s names of babies at their birth, but these Gifts don’t give women power in the church’s society and political structure. The Prophets have almost dictatorial power over their constituents and in the most recent decades they have abused their power. Women are groomed to be subservient to men and have no power in society or their households, even if they have Gifts. The followers of the Mother, especially the original witches who fought against the first Prophet, are known as witches. They would harness the powers of the Mother, which were considered as evil by the followers of the Father and the Prophets, as the Father’s voice on earth. And so women and women’s needs and desires are silenced by men, their experiences and truths made into something unimportant. Without spoiling something important you need to read about… Even the way women are made into brides is by literally cutting their foreheads with a mark of claiming and ownership by their husbands. There is no reciprocal mark given to the husband and men can have multiple wives. The current Prophet has almost ten wives of differing ages.

I can’t wait for the release of The Dawn of the Coven, but I don’t foresee it actually being published this December, as there’s not a cover posted on either Goodreads or Amazon and the final version of the book would have needed to be sent to the printer already. Doesn’t matter, it’s on my list for next year’s Celebration of Witches. 😀 I’m giving The Year of the Witching 4.5 stars, but I’m going to leave it there because even though I might re-read the title, it will only be because I’ll probably need a reminder on the plot before the next book comes out. (Do I feel a little like Nikki when I say that? Yes, yes I do.)

~Ashley

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Book Review•Witchy Reads

The Vine Witch by Luanne G. Smith

October 14, 2021

What’s better than witches? Witches and wine! But also, throw in some great character development, add in some romance, and plop it down in France, and, well, that’s all my boxes right there! So, it should come to no surprise to anyone (who’s read the marketing copy, which wasn’t me, at least not since I bought it in September of 2019) that I adored The Vine Witch by Luanne G. Smith and ever since I finished, I’ve been itching to click on the next book in the series. Thanks to Kindle Unlimited, I quickly downloaded it for free, but it’s been taunting me ever since, and likely will be until post book club! Speaking of book club, and speaking of witches and wine, Virtual Book Club’s #celebrationofwitches2021 is taking place on Friday, October 22, at 7:30 p.m. to talk about Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow. But, we can only discuss it with you, if you sign up here to get the link. Festive attire and festive beverages highly encouraged.

The Vine Witch by Luanne G. Smith is a really fun, engrossing tale. When the book opens, we are plunged into a pond with a toad (no, that’s not a typo), who we follow for the first few pages (albeit in some confusion, for me at least) until the toad becomes a person, which is when we meet our main character, Elena. Before she was cursed, Elena was a vine witch in the Chanceaux Valley, training in one of the oldest and most prestigious vineyards of the area. Elena has a theory about who cursed her and why, and the book is her journey returning home after escaping her curse, seeing all that has changed, and pursuing vengeance from the person who cursed her. Along the way, Elena meets Jean-Paul, who is from the city and doesn’t believe in things he cannot see. This makes accepting the magic the locals openly acknowledge very challenging for him, and causes some strife between him and Elena, until she decides to force the issue, which has some consequences of its own. The individual development of Elena and Jean-Paul is a delight, as is the way they learn to function together, with their decided and stubborn personalities. Each has a backstory that slowly unfolds, and becomes more complex as we read along.

While The Vine Witch by Luanne G. Smith is the first in a trilogy, and it was very hard not to continue straight onto book two, The Glamourist, it is mostly a self contained story, with a piece wrapped up, but a larger arc clearly laid out for the consumption of readers. I’ll be picking up book two after book club, and I am SO excited about revisiting this familiar, yet complex world Smith has created in early 1900s France, where the monks and witches co-exist peacefully. I may not reread book one, but I had a thoroughly enjoyable experience racing through this consuming title. It was light and fun, with good pacing, and transportive language. I’m giving it an emphatic four stars and have high hopes for the rest of the trilogy.

What’s a book that you waited to read and wish you’d experienced it sooner than you did?

~Nikki

What do we want? MORE WITCHES! When do we want them? NOW!

I can not wait to finish up this trilogy because it’s not just a continuation of Elena’s story, but the next two books focus on her witchy friends! Oh, I am so glad that I read this debut novel by Luanne G. Smith, and I am also disappointed that I didn’t read it sooner. The Vine Witch is a Washington Post and Amazon Charts bestseller. I am pretty sure Nikki purchased it when it was a Prime First Reads book in September 2019 because the official release date is October 1, 2019. Do I have any idea why I didn’t also purchase the book (like we usually do…)? No, no I do not. Did I THINK that I had purchased it with Nikki? Yes, yes I did. Thank all that is good and holy about my reading life because I had KU to save my bacon, just like Elena’s knowledge of bufotoxins in toad skin saved her from remaining a cursed toad the rest of her life. I am also looking forward to Smith’s upcoming duology set in Victorian London and Edinburgh with more WITCHES! The Raven Spell is set to be released in February 2022! (I don’t doubt that will be a number one choice for a post next October, so hold tight!) Smith lives in Colorado “where she enjoys reading, gardening, hiking, a glass of wine at the end of the day, and finding the magic in everyday life.”

I loved Smith’s steady prose, her deep characters, and the occasional bits of punnery and sass. For example, a linguistic pun from the first chapter is that Elena bemoans that her toad-toe had been eaten by a fox near the beginning of her seven-year curse, and yet her home is Chateau Renard. Renard, for those readers not up on their French 3 vocabulary, is the word for fox. I LOVE this French word; it’s one of my absolute favorites. And so Elena was always thinking of a fox with both homegoing and vengeance in mind at the same time!

This entire book made me want to go walk another vineyard, and perhaps taste a lot of wine. Ok, not perhaps, it definitely made me want to go taste all the wines. I had some flashbacks to October 2018 where some of my absolute favorite ladies made plans to spend their Fall Break in California and we all went to Napa and Sonoma. It was one of my absolute favorite trips of all time, and I would love to recreate the adventure and the camaraderie. I wonder if the vine witches of France transplanted themselves in California when they were needed.

The Vine Witch was a quick and delicious witchy read, gave me fall-ish vibes because of the timing of my one and only trip to California vineyards, and will definitely be a recommendation for anyone looking to fulfil a Frenchy or Witchy book need in the future. I’m giving it a solid 4 star review because it definitely exceeded expectations and I’m ready to devour the next two books in the trilogy! But, yes, only after book club next week.

~Ashley

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