Camilla Chafer

Told in first person through the eyes of Stella Mayweather a woman with uncontrolled powers who doesn’t know she is a witch. She’s hunted by the ‘Brotherhood’ and rescued by Etoile another witch, and taken to safety in the United States. There she learns about her powers.


This book started out interesting but turned predictable. When Stella was attacked at the party with the leaders of the Council, I knew who the attacker was immediately from the clue in the photograph of her parent’s wedding picture. When we find out who the evil perpetrator is at the climax, the character is over-the-top crazy. There was no subtlety of insanity, which made the character a bit laughable.

I didn’t get much of a feel for Stella’s personality. I’ve noticed authors seem to think that telling a story in first person will draw readers in. I’ve found for me, that an author has to be very good at showing in order for me to feel for the protagonist; else the character comes across as ‘bland.’ Unfortunately, Stella came across as ‘bland,’ although not as bland as I’ve read in other first person books.

I did like the fact that the author had Stella learn about her abilities and how to control them. Stella just didn’t suddenly turn into a superhero. I give points to the author on this.

There were so many secrets in this story. No one wanted to tell Stella anything and she let it go. Why do characters (authors) think that keeping the protagonist blind to what is happening around them helpful? Is it supposed to make the story more mysterious? I find it very irritating. It’s like the other characters treat the protagonist like a child and we end up finding out nothing about the secondary characters. The secondary characters could have had much richer personalities if Stella found out a little about them during the story. In fact, it would have added to Stella’s personality to find out how she dealt with finding out that Meg was a vampire while Stella interacted with her instead of when she was fighting Eleanor. That Kitty told Stella about Meg during the stand-off had me guffawing. I couldn’t believe the author stuck the info about Meg during that segment. It slowed the action down tremendously.

Another section that I found awkward was after Stella had sex with Evan the first time. She’d informed him she was a virgin and they had a long, strange conversation about how Stella didn’t lurk outside men’s doors to have sex. I don’t know if the author was trying to make this a humorous section or not. If she was, I think someone needed to proofread it more for her, because instead it came out odd and awkward. If fact it would have been better to eliminate the conversation all together and left it with just the sex.

The author has a good eye for detail, but unfortunately over uses her ability which slows the book down a lot. The author goes extensively into what clothes people wear; the details of food and even the look of the china. In the last chapter the author stretched the drive from the seaside home where Stella had lived, to Stella’s family’s home to excess. There was no need to go into such detail such as Stella eating her sandwich, marking the route on a map, stopping to get her cars and so forth. The last chapter plodded along. It was like the author didn’t want to stop writing and so kept adding detail.

The ending was unsatisfying. No one came back for Stella, or even to tell her what had happened to Kitty or to Evan. You’d think that someone would notify her, even a short note that said they’d be in contact, or nothing had changed with the health of her friends.

One technical detail that needs to be fixed. In my epub version, all thoughts voiced by Stella show up in a much larger font than the font size for the rest of the story. It looks strange.

The things that saved this book for me, was the concept of the Brotherhood, the mystery of the Council, Evan, learning about Stella’s powers, and the author’s good descriptive ability, although it was overused and should be reined in. I give this book three stars.




… (more)

I started reading this because I needed a book with a title that starts with J for a A-Z Title Challenge I joined the challenge to discover new cozy series that I’d enjoy. So far I found this book and The Wonkiest Witch and I still have 7 more books to find before I’m done.

This was good but I was looking for a new series, and while this is a series per se, it’s a series of stand alone novels with different main characters all set in the same town “Calendar”. This book was built around Sara the town librarian, the next book is going to be about Ally a restaurateur. I think some of the characters may appear in multiple books but I believe the main character will change in each.

Anyways this was a pretty good book, I liked Sara and Bree right away but I pretty much guessed at about 1/3 of the way through that Tom was the killer. I’d hope that it was just a red herring but no I was right. Something I did like a lot was that Sara used her librarian skills to help her investigate the murder.

Cozies Reading Challenge… (more)

Well, I always have to have a book on my Kindle, so as I was browsing through my books on my list, I decided to pick up a cozy mystery. I got bonus points for me that the cozy mystery is about a library.
Sarah is our main character that finds her coworker murdered in the library.
In a battle to keep the building open to the public, Sara is continually confronting the man who wants to raze it. His company wants to replace it with condos. On another level, she investigates the crime that put the library into the center of a treasure hunt. Also, another good-looking man has come into her life for pleasure.
The mystery was unraveled in a pleasant way, with a wiff of romance. Liked the inhabitants of Calendar.
The whole small town setting is a nice backdrop, and the villain turned nice-guy subplot heartwarming. The hiding place of the sought-for plunder from the original crime is not hard to figure out, but since none of the characters in the book can find it, the suspense keeps going.… (more)