Hey all, Sam here.
Two posts in one day. I have just been feeling motivated to get things done. I’m reading a good amount, and with that comes the desire to talk about books more, which of course means more posts on the blog.
By the time this post goes up, my mom will be here for the weekend. She’s been here to visit a few times, and we keep looking at properties, daydreaming about her coming to join us here in Iowa. Every time she comes we try out a few restaurants or parks or attractions. So she has a few of our local places she wants to eat at this time around, and then we’ll probably go bowling and hit up a couple different bars. And I think she wants to check out a couple museums and possibly a couple parks. It should be a really nice time.
But don’t worry. I’ve planned up a few posts, so our blog streak will continue. That is one of the benefits of having that big reading weekend last weekend. I have plenty to talk about.
Speaking of, let’s go ahead and dive into today’s review.
In the aftermath of World War I, a naive woman is swept into a glittering world filled with dark magic, romance, and murder in this lush and decadent debut.
On Crow Island, people whisper, real magic lurks just below the surface.
Neither real magic nor faux magic interests Annie Mason. Not after it stole her future. She’s only on the island to settle her late father’s estate and, hopefully, reconnect with her long-absent best friend, Beatrice, who fled their dreary lives for a more glamorous one.
Yet Crow Island is brimming with temptation, and the biggest one may be her enigmatic new neighbor.
Mysterious and alluring, Emmeline Delacroix is a figure shadowed by rumors of witchcraft. And when Annie witnesses a confrontation between Bea and Emmeline at one of the island’s extravagant parties, she is drawn into a glittering, haunted world. A world where the boundaries of wickedness are tested, and the cost of illicit magic might be death.
My Thoughts
Rating: 4 stars
I would describe this book as The Great Gatsby meets Practical Magic, or at least that’s how it felt to me.
I was definitely captivated by this story, and drawn into the glamorous world of parties and witchcraft, but I kind of wish that we had been able to delve even deeper into the magic of it all. I guess I wanted to be transported away into it all more, to have the magic be more descriptive and alluring.
I could definitely see the parallels to The Great Gatsby, although to be clear, this story stands on its own. It doesn’t just follow the Gatsby story beat by beat and character by character. You can recognize characters in this as being similar to Nick and Gatsby and Daisy and Tom, but it’s not like they are just plucked from Fitzgerald’s pages and placed into a similar world but with a prohibition on magic rather than booze.
This book is also told with different perspectives as well, and in a couple different timelines, and as each chapter unfolds we add more pieces to our puzzle of understanding these characters and Crow Island’s history.
The reason I draw parallels to Practical Magic is because of the bonds of family and also how sometimes someone you’re close to can get drawn into a relationship that isn’t the best for them…but the best way to get out of it just might be to rely on the family, both blood and found, to save yourself.
All in all, I enjoyed reading this book, and honestly I’d be interested in reading more books set on Crow Island, whether in present, past, or future, because I feel like there could be more stories to tell for this region.
Well, that is all from me for today. Thank you so much for stopping by, and I’ll be back soon with more geeky content.
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