Genre: Fantasy
Format: 📖
Pub Date: 9.27.2022
Star Rating: ☆☆☆☆

Summary:

“Emery Blackwood’s life changed forever the night her best friend was found dead and the love of her life, August Salt, was accused of murdering her. Years later, she is doing what her teenage self swore she never would: living a quiet existence on the misty, remote shores of Saoirse Island and running the family’s business, Blackwood’s Tea Shoppe Herbal Tonics & Tea Leaf Readings.

But when the island, rooted in folklore and magic, begins to show signs of strange happenings, Emery knows that something is coming. The morning she wakes to find that every single tree on Saoirse has turned color in a single night, August returns for the first time in fourteen years and unearths the past that the town has tried desperately to forget.

August knows he is not welcome on Saiorse, not after the night everything changed. As a fire raged on at the Salt family orchard, Lily Morgan was found dead in the dark woods, shaking the bedrock of their tight-knit community and branding August a murderer. When he returns to bury his mother’s ashes, he must confront the people who turned their backs on him and face the one wound from his past that has never healed—Emery.

The town has more than one reason to want August gone, and the emergence of deep betrayals and hidden promises spanning generations threaten to reveal the truth behind Lily’s mysterious death once and for all.”

Review:

“It was the time of year when the veil between worlds was thin, and in that moment, I could feel the tingle of the Otherworld tiptoeing lightly up my spine.”

This quote 👆🏼is the perfect example of the atmospheric setting that Adrienne Young laid out for the readers in Spells for Forgetting; it was exquisitely descriptive.

My only criticism is that I wish the story had more of a magical element. I thought from how the first chapter was written that magic would play a prominent role in the story, but it seemed to fizzle out and only reappear towards the end. I love witchy books full of spells during the fall season, and I was hoping this would be that book. But, again, the atmospheric writing style of Young helped to make up for the magical lacking in the book.

While Spells for Forgetting may have been a slow burn, it felt like the pacing was ideal for the story itself. Then there was the lead-up to the end of the book (that I sort of saw coming), and it felt a bit anticlimactic, BUT it did seem to have an open ending which might mean there would be another book (which I would sign up to read that one).

🏘️ All the small coastal town vibes
🙃 Not enough magic
🤷🏽‍♀️ Anticlimactic yet open ending
👌🏼 Slow-burn romantic suspense & mystery

Spells for Forgetting felt like the perfect mixture of The Wicked Deep, Love & Other Words, Beartown and Practical Magic. ✨

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BOOK INFO
Format: 352 pages, hardback
Published: September 2022
ISBN 0593358511 (ISBN13: 9780593358511)