REVIEW: Witchfest (The Hollowbeck Paranormal Cozy Mysteries Book 4) by Amelia Ash and Kim M. Watt
A magical mask that won’t come off. A masked ball with a body count. And a reluctant witch who’d really just like to finish her cocktail in peace.
The Hollowbeck Midwinter Festival is the event of the season — complete with flying pigs, snow monster fights, and a free bar that no one should trust after the third round. The centerpiece? A lavish masked ball featuring Alaric’s famously enchanting (and possibly cursed) masks.
Morgan Winters isn’t one for fancy dresses or mysterious strangers, but as Hollowbeck’s unofficial town witch, she’s expected to show up, mask up, and smile. At least the canapés are good—and Alaric’s assistant Finn isn’t bad either.
But when a masked witch turns up dead, and no one can seem to remember it happening, Morgan’s unease turns into outright alarm. Especially when the masks begin to take hold of their wearers — making them forget who they are, believe impossible things, and, in one case, declare themselves the Fairy Queen of the Farmers’ Market.
As more witches fall under the enchantment and the solstice draws near, it’s up to Morgan and Ruiner (still a cat, still annoyed) to uncover who’s behind the magic before the masks consume the town — and before Morgan loses herself entirely.
Dear Ladies,
So I’m going to steal from my review of book three of this series because we’re still stuck in the same place. “In fact for much of it, it has been an exercise in frustration as our heroine Morgan half-asses her way through situation after situation, not knowing what she’s doing, ignoring common sense, freezing in moments of panic during which she’s also usually in peril, yet also somehow managing to just keep moving in the vague direction of maybe, possibly coming out in one piece.”
Why am I still reading this series given that my ratings keep going down? Because I’m fucking invested and I want to see who put a witch whammy spell on Ruiner, heroine Morgan’s brother who has been turned into a cat. Are we any closer to discovering that? No. Is Morgan any closer to improving her witch skills and understanding the grimoire that is now in her possession? No. And even knowing now how powerful this grimoire is and how many people want to get their hands on it, Morgan loses or leaves it far too many times. Morgan’s familiar, Jackie the rat, huffs and sighs in frustration with Morgan to the point that a lot of people wonder why Morgan was chosen to get the grimoire. Me, too.
So here we are with another weird event happening in the town of Hollowbeck where weird is just another Monday. Morgan has no idea of what is going on, but then she rarely does about anything. Things start going bizarre while only she seems to notice – I’ll give her that – but her concerns fall on deaf ears and she, Jackie, and Ruiner – along with a few other witches – have to save the day. Does anyone in town thank her? Nope. Everyone still rolls their eyes at how useless she is with the grimoire and how hopeless she is as their town witch.
Morgan shows occasional signs of some hidden witch talent but even after four books she seems to have made almost no progress either personally or professionally. Morgan is great at rationalizing away signs of problems as well as whingeing and thinking that she ought to do something but then not doing much at all. Is the grimoire missing again and her brother possibly in danger? Yes, but Morgan puts little effort into immediately going to look for them. Does Jackie try and nip at Morgan to give Morgan a clue? All the time but Morgan generally just brushes her familiar off or plunges further into danger. It was amusing for a book or two but this is getting old now.
I will say that Ruiner is showing more character growth and has moved past the indolent, self-centered person/cat he began the series as. Ruiner seems to “get it” when it comes to realizing that something or someone is sketchy or suss. In this book I found myself thinking “just let Ruiner take over and solve this problem.”
In the end, Morgan does amazingly come up with some plan to save the day but it’s after others do a lot of the heavy lifting and come to her rescue. I still don’t think she has much of a clue about gaining a better understanding of the grimoire. Listen, I get that this is a cozy but this book ends with none of the series issues having been solved or even moving any closer to them being solved plus there’s a major cliff-hanger. Just for closure and my peace of mind, I hope there will be a book five but so far I see no signs of it. C-
~Jayne
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I really enjoyed book one, which I probably tried after your review of it, but I couldn’t get through book two. I don’t necessarily need mysteries to have a lot of character growth, but if the characters really, really need to grow, then I’d rather have that happen faster than real people might go through the process.
@Kris Bock: Morgan certainly has gone through enough drama that she should have been showing more character growth by now.
Totally agree. I enjoyed Book 1, dragged myself to finish Book 2 and am disenheartened to hear that still no resolutions have come by Book 4.
@Anon: When I started the series, I saw four books. I assumed that by the end of book four, we’d be done and everything wrapped up. As I got closer to finishing this one, I realized that wasn’t going to happen. Then another plot element got tossed on the pile and I was more than a little annoyed. And considering that it’s been a year since this book was released, I’m not sure when or if there will be a book five.