A Touch of Magic

Spellbound Paranormal Cozy Mystery Series, Book 7

By: Annabel Chase

Narrated by: Emily Lawrence

Welcome to Spellbound, where paranormal is the new normal.

Changes are afoot for Emma Hart now that her secret is out and her love life has taken a dramatic turn. With a mayoral election looming and a murderer on the loose, will life suddenly be a bed of roses for the plucky heroine or will she get pricked by the thorns?

Contains mature themes.

©2017 Red Palm Press LLC (P)2020 Tantor

last book has less and less sense...

It is a fun book, and i am really grateful audible made it into plus catalog; because i am not a native English speaker, but i listen to most of the books with 2x-2,5x faster than the "normal" reading speed. And I do not want to give a credit for 2 hours fun. I mean there are series (not as good as this), which take me 30 hours and cost also only a credit...
I mean the first book was published on 7 January 2017 the last book 15 February 2018; it is not children book with many pictures, helping the reader to get used to (love) read(ing). Rick Riordan took a year to create a new book for Percy Jackson series, although it was young adult stuff. It is also a bit annoying to be reminded, what have happened in a book i was listening to a few days before and if i were to read as much as i did in high school, it would drive me crazy, "yes Annabel, your last book was only 200 pages, of course i remember, why the f... are you filling n amount of words explaining something, which literally happened 50 pages/a month ago, your readers are not senile".
I like that the Dr. Hall finally does something for Emma, the previous books were more like Emma is Dr. Hall's therapist and i hated, that Emma did not quit. I mean i would be more depressed after the first few sections, and the alcohol bit... My childhood trauma relates to alcoholism. So in Emma's case i would just conclude i am a crybaby and everything is okay with me, Dr. Hall had it worse... Alfea had been a better therapist, than the doc... I hate, that she sees all those stuff being adopted and all, but not talking about it with Gareth or Daniel or class mates... I mean i can understand, sometimes it takes me weeks to be able to speak about something, but it is a book, in which characters die almost every month. Between two murder could be more chapters spent on the therapy and learning sessions, a half sentence "we mastered the new spell in 5 weeks" "oh i have been here for a year and no clue, how to break the curse or at least where to look for a solution". I understand that part of the curse could be that nobody shall look for the spell, which would lift the curse; but still it is like they could have solved the problem in a week, if the whole town was dealing with the problem...
I really hoped, this book would be longer with more stuff about Emma's past and time passing in the story without a death.
The invisibility part was just annoying; why would you break a spell after an hour, when you are among vampires? If they had messed up in the previous book and Daniel had seen her with the potion, it could have been a funny plot twist; but now, being afraid, that too much use of the same spell would mean worse than being invisible a whole day long. She is a sorceress, with more magic, than a witch capable of... Why should have been the third time been the charm killing her? Instead of have an unnecessary knight, whom we'd known already is a nice guy...

But despite all of its flaws, i really like the book: the childish miracle of a lonely looser, who wants friends and love, but isn't able to find matching socks, finding herself as the most desired woman among supernaturals... I wish i was reading this series when i was younger, when i still believed in similar wonders.

Elections, Hypnotherapy, and Murder

Emma is back in volume seven of the series and mayoral elections are in full swing. Again within only a few months of Emma's arrival major political shifts are happening and not terribly long into the story a murder. One has to wonder with such a high rate of deaths in a town where no one can leave what does the population count look like and honestly how terrifying to be forever stuck in a place with this much murder and no way to escape. But this is a cozy so suspension of belief I suppose. The romance between Daniel and Emma has become very secondary thankfully now that they are together, although it is almost comically after that last few volumes and Emma's obsessive focus on Daniel that they are making zero plans to live together and Emma is often leaving Daniel to investigate for her work. In addition to the murder Emma is also working another case of possible animal cruelty involving a teen Nymph, and Emma also does essentially hypnotherapy where her therapist brings in a witch to guide Emma magically through the process of recalling memories from her childhood and more is revealed about Emma's history. I wish more time was taken to dive into the material but I assume this development of her personal history will continue in future volumes. This was another decent entry into the series, I will say listening to these back to back the listener can really feel the repetition and formulaic nature of the stories so they lose a little luster but I still enjoy the concept of the world and the cast of characters. For fans of the series this is in keeping with what listeners and readers have come to expect.

Nice easy story

Narration is good and story is easy to listen to. A little more mystery would be nice. Enjoying the series