Book 69, 2023
Four Charming Spells by Lynn Cahoon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Jillian and I kept our usual 'Thursday Night Phone Call' short last night, which enabled me to finish reading Four Charming Spells by Lynn Cahoon. This is the fourth in the "Kitchen Witch" mystery series. Narrative is in third person pov of the main character, Mia Malone.
As Mia's meal-delivery-service and catering businesses take off, she finds herself in need of extra help. She hires her boyfriend's mother, Abigail, as a cake decorator, and takes on another young woman, Hailey, to help with deliveries and catering gigs. In the meantime, a local coven member, Mahogany, asks Mia to look into her mother's death. It was ruled natural causes, but Mahogany is convinced it was murder. Mia agrees to look into it, even though she has her own supernatural issues to deal with. Ghosts in and around the old school house, which Mia bought and repurposed for her business, have been causing problems. Normally, Mia's grandmother can help with such things, but Grans has been experimenting with a spell that has made her appear younger but also caused her to be unusually rude and acerbic. Mia has a lot on her plate, but she has a strong support system to help her through it.
So much going on. That seems to be the case with each book in this series. I often think the author could split some of these plots/subplots into separate books. At least things wove together, and the pace certainly kept me engaged. I'm enjoying the slow build of Mia's romance with Trent. I'm loving even more the fact that HE'S NOT IN LAW ENFORCEMENT. Huzzah! What I didn't love were the editing issues. Mostly they were minor things, such as a tiny shift here and there from 3rd person pov to 1st. The most egregious error, however , was a contradiction within a single chapter. On page 176, we had this: She hadn't mentioned the spirits in the library to Lasher. Um, yes you did, on page 163, where Mia said to Lasher, "I also have at least two ghosts in the library upstairs." If I noticed this during a casual read, certainly a competent editor should have caught it! Heck, a competent beta reader should have caught it.
Favorite lines:
♦ "I love a thoughtful gesture with an ulterior motive."
♦ "I'd hate for my first experience being a mom to be for my teenage grandmother."
♦ "You had me at coffee cake."
Very good, overall, but I'm dismayed enough by the editing errors to only award this four stars.