A Letter to Three Witches | ARC Review

Thank you to Kensington Books and Netgalley for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway.

Nearly a century ago, Gwen Engel’s great-great-grandfather cast a spell with catastrophic side-effects. As a result, the Grand Council of Witches forbade his descendants from practicing witchcraft. The Council even planted anonymous snitches called Watchers in the community to report any errant spellcasting…

Yet magic may still be alive and not so well in Zenobia. Gwen and her cousins, Trudy and Milo, receive a letter from Gwen’s adopted sister, Tannith, informing them that she’s bewitched one of their partners and will run away with him at the end of the week. While Gwen frets about whether to trust her scientist boyfriend, currently out of town on a beetle-studying trip, she’s worried that local grad student Jeremy is secretly a Watcher doing his own research.

Cousin Trudy is so stressed that she accidentally enchants her cupcakes, creating havoc among her bakery customers—and in her marriage. Perhaps it’s time the family took back control and figured out how to harness their powers. How else can Gwen decide whether her growing feelings for Jeremy are real—or the result of too many of Trudy’s cupcakes?

A Letter to Three Witches had a promising idea. Witches that aren’t allowed to practice, a sinister letter and enchanting cupcakes. Unfortunately a few things flew flat for me and I could not end up loving this book.

In this book we follow Gwen. Gwen is a normal girl, in a 6 month old relationship and rather close to her cousins as the cupcake coven. Oh and her family is one of witches. But they aren’t allowed to practice because of a mistake their great great grandfather made. But when her adoptive sister sends her and her two cousins a sinister letter, hinting at taking one of their lovers, they all get a little nervous.

This book is meant to be a lighthearted and fun book about witches. Almost like a romcom. Except there wasn’t a whole of humor to be found in this book. It was a real missed opportunity because it would have notched up this book quite a bit. Now some situations that could have been funny kind of just blew by. It made it fall flat.

Adding to that is the big bad evil also flew flat. They were there but not really. And they didn’t actually do a whole lot except send a letter. Most of it was done by their own imaginations running wild.

The romance was also flat, flat, flat.

However I did enjoy some of the ideas and some of the characters. Like Miles and his boyfriend and future Mayor Brett, the cat of Tannith that appeared with his own chapters on occasion (which could have been done more with) and their aunt Esmee who clearly can kick some butt. There really was potential.