Review: Hex, Love, and Rock and Roll by Kat Turner 2020

Coven Daughters, Book 1

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Opening Scene: Helen goes to visit a witch. She hates witches, but she’s desperate. Maybe this witch will give her a money spell! 

What follows: Old witch is like, “You are my Coven Daughter! Here’s a Grimoire and some crystals! Go cast some spells with no guidance whatsoever, but definitely don’t do the evil kind of magic! Good luck!”

And then…Helen just casts some spells, like it’s no big deal. Over the course of two weeks, Helen goes from no witch-power to doing things like teleporting her physical body over the astral plane. I just couldn’t buy it, that she would innately be so powerful with no training or guidance whatsoever. She just meditates to her chakras and…magic!!!!

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Another Early Scene: Helen overhears sketchy minor villain talking very vaguely about a vessel and a plan. 

What follows: Helen immediately knows that sketchy villain is talking about her missing crystal and an evil ritual involving Brian the Aging Rock God. 

HOW? There were no context clues and no reason for her to know any of the background. She vaguely dislikes this guy because he was rude to her, but it’s early in the book so he hasn’t even really been established as a truly sketchy character yet. How does she know these things? Is she also psychic?

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Another early scene: Have I mentioned that Helen’s yoga studio is in trouble? She is deep in debt (hence the visit to the witch) – so much so that her business partner has scheduled a meeting with a bankruptcy lawyer.

What follows: Helen tells one cool girl she meets on an elevator to come check out her studio and then all of a sudden they have paid their back-rent and are in the black. What? Did the witchcraft work after all?

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The leaps in logic calmed down a little bit (but not entirely) as the book progressed, but I must admit that the opening really threw me off. 

And then there was the woo-woo stuff. Helen is really into yoga. I also do yoga, because the practice of moving my body in prescribed sequences helps me turn off my mind. Plus, I tell myself that I’m exercising. But Helen relies on vaguely yogic ideas about chakras in order to not only guide her magic practice, but also her personal growth in ways that made me a bit uncomfortable. Especially when combined with the way her personal growth was tied to her relationship with Brian. It seems to boil down to: a combination of meditation and true love can overcome years of toxic thought patterns and self-destructive behavior stemming from childhood trauma. There’s a lot of explicit self-analysis, and I wanted less of that and more exposition on how we are figuring out what’s going on with the demon cult and the hex and how magic worked.

I voluntarily read and reviewed a complimentary copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. We disclose this in accordance with 16 CFR §255.

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