CASTING SPELLS – Barbara Bretton
Berkley
ISBN: 978-0-425-22364-2
November 2008
Paranormal Romance/Chick Lit

Sugar Maple, Vermont – Present Day

Have you ever been to one of those picture-perfect postcard types of small towns? Just so perfect, it might be a movie set? Well, Sugar Maple is one of those towns, and best of all, it has the best yarn shop anywhere, Sticks and Strings, owned by Chloe Hobbs. Chloe grew up in Sugar Maple; she understands that Sugar Maple is hiding in plain sight. Magical beings, fairies, trolls, vampires, etc. populate the town. Chloe, however, is half-human, and that is the problem. She is the daughter of a sorcerer, the last in a long line of women who own the book of magic and use it to maintain the protective spell that keeps the outsiders in happy ignorance. There is one little problem, Chloe is thirty, and she has never come into her magic, and to make things worse, the spell seems to be weakening. She has also never met her true love and made a daughter to inherit it all. Now, time is running short. Isadora, a woman of strong magical abilities wants to take the town and rule it, transporting it to the faerie realm, something almost nobody in Sugar Maple wants to do.

The first death ever to occur in Sugar Maple in over two hundred years brings the town to the attention of the outside world. Since Sugar Maple has no police force, and no hospital, no death or birth records for that matter, the outside decides to send in one of its own to investigate the death -- a police officer from Boston, Luke MacKenzie. It is a sad coincidence that the victim was a childhood friend of his. When he sees Sugar Maple and its inhabitants, he observes, “It was like being trapped inside a snow globe inside a hallmark ad inside a Disney movie.” Everyone here is perfectly beautiful, and everything is too perfect -- where are the warts?

CASTING SPELLS is a little bit of paranormal romance, a little bit of mystery. Ms. Bretton takes a lot of care in creating a charming, quirky Vermont town. She populates it with ordinary people, who happen to be witches, faeries, trolls, and vampires. Chloe is a delightful character who falls in love where she should not, with a human. It’s really hard for people to maintain a normal façade when a human is there 24/7, so Luke is starting to see a lot of impossible things. Someone is trying to harm Luke and Chloe, but how can Chloe work with Luke when she has to hide things from him? Luke is so hot he melts her toes and tangles her brains. Their passion is tangible and fun to experience along with them. CASTING SPELLS is a charmer of a story to read on a cold winter night. Qiviut*, anyone?

*Qiviut is the downy-soft underwool from the Arctic musk ox, eight times warmer than wool and much lighter; it is one of the most luxurious yarns you will ever dream about.

Lisa Baca