Saturday, May 6, 2017

Love, Lies, & Hocus Pocus: Beginnings (Lily Singer Adventures #1), by Lydia Sherrer

Chenoweth Press, ISBN 9780997339109, April 2016

Lily Singer is the book-loving wizard who manages the archives of the Agnes Scott Institute, a women's college in Atlanta. She's learned everything she knows about wizardry from her mentor, Madam Barrington

It turns out not to be everything Madam Barrington knows about wizardry, and not just because there hasn't been time to teach her everything yet, but that's another story.

This one is about Lily and Madam Barrington's disreputable nephew, Sebastian Blackwell, discovering they can work together. Sebastian, you see, is a witch. Even though he comes from an old wizard family, he has no magical power of his own. That's why he ventured into witchcraft. Witches work with the fae, bargaining with them for the use of their powers and gifts. Some also bargain with demons, and that's why Madam Barrington, and many other wizards, regard witches as disreputable and sometimes worse. Sebastian, though, uses his professional skills as a witch to provide assistance to those in need of it, for reasonable fees. Their first adventure begins when Sebastian's latest client turns out not to need a ghost banished, but a curse broken.

When they encounter a problem with a time loop in a small town, they find it's going to take the skills of both to recover a treasure Sebastian inherited from his family and save the small town from complete disaster.

It will be no surprise to seasoned readers that Lily and Sebastian like each other, and haven't really admitted it to themselves, never mind each other. They are both likable in their different ways, and it's easy to understand why each regularly wants to clobber the other one.

It's very, very easy to understand why Madam Barrington is so frustrated with her nephew.

This is a fun, light urban fantasy with hints of potential romance in later books. Well worth reading when you need something light and entertaining.

I received a free electronic galley of this book, and am reviewing it voluntarily.

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