10.16.2014 | Thursday

Audrey’s Guide to Witchcraft

Item: Audrey's Guide to Witchcraft
Rating: 4
Author: Kim

category: Book Reviews
tag(s): young adult
0 Comments

title: Audrey's Guide to Witchcraft
author: Jody Gehrman
series: Audrey's Guides #1
published: 30 June 2012
publisher: Magic Genie Books
genre(s): fantasy, romance
pages: 295
source: bought
format: eBook
buy/shelve it: Amazon | StoryGraph | Goodreads

rating:

| series rating:

the blurb

Falling in love, baking a magical cake, fighting an evil necromancer—it’s all in a day’s work for Audrey Oliver, seventeen-year-old witch-in-training. When her mother goes missing and her mysterious "cousin" shows up out of the blue, Audrey knows something’s gone horribly, dangerously wrong. Now it’s up to her to get her own magical powers up to speed before everyone she loves is destroyed by the sorcerer intricately connected to her mother’s secret past.

my review

Audrey’s Guide to Witchcraft is a quick and fun magical read. I love witchy books and this one had both a sweet romance and a good mystery to keep me engrossed.

Audrey is one of those main characters that is easy to like. She is a smart and thoughtful person, but she has insecurities, too. Her younger sister is everything she is not… outgoing, perky, a budding rock star. Sadie, too, her eccentric and vivid “cousin,” also makes her feel a little tame. It is the realization that she is more than she knew that really makes Audrey grow into her own.

The romance in this story isn’t insta-love, which I liked. In fact, Audrey is so certain that he will fall for her more outgoing sister that she barely entertains the thought of liking Julian for herself. I like that the romance didn’t come easily, but was something that developed over time. complete with some rather unusual obstacles.

I loved Audrey’s journal and I wish there had been a little more of it. It was sort of a blend of recipes and witchy notes and it was a lot of fun. I also wished we had had a bit more of her mother in the book to really understand their relationship, etc.

I do love the mythology of the witchy side of the story. There were bits of realism mixed with the fantastical and it was a great blend.

This is a fun witchy read!

About Jody Gehrman

Jody is the author of eight novels and numerous plays. Audrey’s Guide to Black Magic is her newest YA novel, the sequel to Audrey’s Guide to Witchcraft. Babe in Boyland was published by Penguin’s Dial books and was optioned by Disney. She also writes stage plays and screenplays. Her plays have been produced in Ashland, New York, San Francisco and L.A. She and her partner David Wolf won the New Generation Playwrights Award for their one-act, Jake Savage, Jungle P.I. She’s a professor of English at Mendocino College.