Review--A Wicked Magic by Sasha Laurens

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina meets The Craft when modern witches must save teens stolen by an ancient demon in this YA fantasy-thriller debut.

Dan and Liss are witches. The Black Book granted them that power. Harnessing that power feels good, especially when everything in their lives makes them feel powerless.

During a spell gone wrong, Liss's boyfriend is snatched away by an evil entity and presumed dead. Dan and Liss's friendship dies that night, too. How can they practice magic after the darkness that they conjured?

Months later, Liss discovers that her boyfriend is alive, trapped underground in the grips of an ancient force. She must save him, and she needs Dan and the power of The Black Book to do so. Dan is quickly sucked back into Liss's orbit and pushes away her best friend, Alexa. But Alexa has some big secrets she's hiding and her own unique magical disaster to deal with.

When another teenager disappears, the girls know it's no coincidence. What greedy magic have they awakened? And what does it want with these teens it has stolen?

Set in the atmospheric wilds of California's northern coast, Sasha Laurens's thrilling debut novel is about the complications of friendship, how to take back power, and how to embrace the darkness that lives within us all.

Sasha Laurens' debut A Wicked Magic promised to be a dark and spooky read with magic, demons, and why you shouldn't mess with dark magic. It had all that, but it seemed to have a different focus for the story. The story was more about friendships and the problems teenage girls can have during high school.

One day best friends Liss and Dan find a book of spells and decided they wanted to be witches but when a spell goes horribly wrong and a demonic woman steals Johnny, Liss' boyfriend, Liss is hellbent on getting him back when Dan finds herself wanting to let magic go and move on.

It's senior year now and Liss goes to another school, Dan has made a new friend in Alexa and thinks she's left everything magical behind until Liss shows up at her door claiming she knows how to get Johnny back, she just needs the book of spells that Dan kept for safekeeping. But Dan isn't too quick to trust Liss again and so begins a rather long debacle with a lot of back and forth over whether they should be involved with magic again or not.

This book definitely takes a complex look at teenage girls I feel like. Dan is going through some deep struggles, especially after her favorite musician committed suicide. Then there was the fact that she had a thing for Johnny first, but then Liss ended up dating him exclusively. Alexa even has her own story going on as well, for the story is told through all three of their points of view in third person. Alexa has had a rough go of things lately with family and comes to live with her aunt, who is harboring her own dark secret.

Pretty much everyone in this book had a dark secret!

I guess I had been hoping for a little more magic in this one. While Liss and Dan were self-claimed/self-made witches, I felt like there was very little magic being cast. For part of the beginning half of the story we dealt in flashbacks of how Liss and Dan started magic, how Dan fell for Johnny, and how Liss started dating Johnny herself. Then eventually we get back onto the current day path of the argument on how Liss needed the book to rescue Johnny and how Dan wanted nothing more to do with magic.

In some ways, I felt like this was a borderline contemporary read with just a hint of magic. What kept me going was wanting to know more about the mystery of what happened to Johnny. He was essentially kidnapped by demons and held hostage for nearly a year. Though it does seems Sasha took liberties with making 2019 a leap year, but you just kind of roll with that fact, it is fiction after all.

Despite there being a "couple" and "crushes" in this one, there was very little romance. Liss was driven to save her boyfriend, but at the same time, it didn't feel like she really loved him. It was kind of weird reading a book where you somewhat expected there to be a tingling of romance somewhere and there not being much at all. As I said, there are a few crushes happening and whatnot, but very little romance was had in this story. The focus of this story definitely seemed to center on friendship, which honestly was a nice change of pace!

Though I had wanted a more magical and mystical read from A Wicked Magic, it wasn't too bad of a read. I really did enjoy the bonds of friendship and the struggles these girls went through and yet manage to stick together in the end. The ending itself was both settling and surprising! It's a bit heavy too when you look at it a certain way, but it does give you that nice feeling of hope for a better tomorrow for the girls, which again, is always nice when it comes to endings!



Overall Rating 3.5/5 stars