Book Review for Small Town, Big Magic by Hazel Beck

 Small Town, Big Magic by Hazel Beck

Paperback, 416 pages

Publication: August 23rd 2022 by Graydon House

 

Taken from Goodreads:  For fans of THE EX HEX and PAYBACK'S A WITCH, a fun, witchy rom-com in which a bookstore owner who is fighting to revitalize a small midwestern town clashes with her rival, the mayor, and uncovers not only a clandestine group that wields a dark magic to control the idyllic river hamlet, but hidden powers she never knew she possessed.

Witches aren't real. Right?

No one has civic pride quite like Emerson Wilde. As a local indie bookstore owner and youngest-ever Chamber of Commerce president, she’d do anything for her hometown of St. Cyprian, Missouri. After all, Midwest is best! She may be descended from a witch who was hanged in 1692 during the Salem Witch Trials, but there’s no sorcery in doing your best for the town you love.
Or is there?

As she preps Main Street for an annual festival, Emerson notices strange things happening around St. Cyprian. Strange things that culminate in a showdown with her lifelong arch-rival, Mayor Skip Simon. He seems to have sent impossible, paranormal creatures after her. Creatures that Emerson dispatches with ease, though she has no idea how she’s done it. Is Skip Simon…a witch? Is Emerson?

It turns out witches are real, and Emerson is one of them. She failed a coming-of-age test at age eighteen—the only test she’s ever failed!—and now, as an adult, her powers have come roaring back.

But she has little time to explore those powers, or her blossoming relationship with her childhood friend, cranky-yet-gorgeous local farmer Jacob North: an ancient evil has awakened in St. Cyprian, and it’s up to Emerson and her friends—maybe even Emerson herself—to save everything she loves.

My Thoughts:  From the small town feels, the paranormal twists, the cute romance, everything about this book was enjoyable.  I love how Emerson is St. Cyprian and St. Cyprian is Emerson.   This is what her grandmother told her and she lives by this.  Her choices are made to make her hometown better, her life is lived to make her friends/family safe and happy, and her future is to keep her hometown still on the map. 

St. Cyprian is a town of witches.   Some are powerful, some do not know that they have powers, some use their power not for the good of the town.  Emerson and her friends know right from wrong and go out of the way to protect their town from impending doom.  I really enjoyed watching the in-charge Emerson take control of the future and make tough decisions.  She is truly a good person with good friends that all come together to protect the town. 

My only complaint, which is not even a complaint, is that it ended.   I am hopefully for book two to come soon.  I hope Hazel Beck does not keep us waiting for more for Witchlore. 

 

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Meet Hazel Beck (taken from her website):  Hazel Beck is the magical partnership of a river witch and an earth witch. Together they have collected two husbands, three familiars, two children, five degrees, and written around 200 books. As one, their books will delight with breathtaking magic, emotional romance, and stories of witches you won’t soon forget.