Secondhand Spirits

As a Wiccan I'm always both tempted by and leery of books about witches. That being said, I really like what Blackwell did in this book, how she made her main character, witch Lily Ivory, into a fictional witch with magical powers but also honored the tradition of Wicca without stereotyping Wiccans as either fluffy bunnies or evil wannabes.

I'm always intrigued by a plot having to do with La Llorona/A Woman in White. It's such a sad myth and Blackwell respected by sadness while not shying away from the harm that was done to innocent bystanders. She also very well wove the thread of family through this book, tying it to La Llorona, the sad old woman, the missing child, and Lily's own family issues.

The secondary characters in this book show more were more than just cardboard cutouts, and I also appreciate that from an author. Each of them had their own personality and I'm looking forward to seeing them again in the other books in this series.

And, last but not at all least, I love Lily's vintage clothing store. I could read the descriptions of her different outfits all day long. Luckily Blackwell knows books better than I and keeps those descriptions, however wonderful, to a minimum. All and all a thoroughly enjoyable book with a solid mystery. show less

Not a badly written book, although I had hoped for something closer to Sarah Addison Allen, than Katie MacAlister (and without the humour that made the first Aisling Grey books worth reading, even).
Lily Ivory is a 'natural witch' (ie. born that way), who has recently settled down in San Francisco and opened a vintage clothes shop. Although she tries to keep a low profile, she gets involved with the local supernatural community and acquires a familiar.
During an sourcing expedition for her shop, she encounters a child stealing demon, and most of the plot is about her solving the mystery of a child disappearance and a sudden death of a senior citizen.
Despite several potential romantic partners, the main focus is kept on the mystery plot show more line, a bit like early Sookie Stackhouse.
Another sweet side plot is focused on Lily Ivory creating a found family, making friends and belonging after a lifetime of feeling excluded and unrooted. show less

6 years ago I moved to the other side of the world from my home state of Florida to a place you'll all recognise as Australia, but I like to affectionately refer to as Opposite Land. This realisation struck me when I was explaining the move to my friend's then 6-year-old boy by telling him all about the cool ways AU was different: opposite side of the world, water ran through the drain in the opposite direction, "on" was "off" on the light switches, locks locked by turning them the opposite direction, etc. etc. To which his reply was a question: "Do they wear their shoes on the opposite feet?" Hand to god, he said that, and I snorted my iced tea up my nose.

The other thing that's opposite is, of course the whole driving thing. Other show more side of the road and other side of the car. (Just today, after 6 freaking years, I went to get in the car on the wrong damn side....) I took 6 months before attempting to drive here and then only at night - the logic being that there'd be fewer people on the roads if I accidentally, say, started driving down the wrong side of the street. I adapted fairly quickly though and was soon tooling around in my own car.

What, you may be asking yourself, for freak's sake does this have to do with the Witchcraft Series?? Well, it turns out that no matter how cool a driver you were in your homeland, the combination of other-side-of-road-and-car + the insanity that is driving in Melbourne (NOT NOT NOT the best drivers in the world, just... NOT) makes for a very stressed out driver prone to outbursts of road rage.

To keep others safe from my wild gesticulations and skin searing profanities, I started listening to audiobooks while driving to and from work (plus, morning radio = blech). And thus we finally reach the point of this review: Xe Sands narration of the Witchcraft Mystery Series.

I've read, reviewed and I own all the books in this series, but I had heard somewhere in one of my groups that the narration for these books was particularly well done and since I'm always looking for something to listen to (my drives are not short ones) I decided to give the first book in the series a try. Which led me to immediately purchasing every book in the series on audio. At full price.

Xe Sands is brilliant. Absolutely freaking brilliant at narration. I've heard some really well narrated books previously, but she's ruined them all for me. Everyone else now sounds like Clint Eastwood in drag. By this I do not mean to infer that narrators everywhere have OD'd on testosterone supplements, but so many of them now sound to me as though they are mimicking his style of talking. I don't know how to explain it beyond that. Choppy, overly grave, um... yeah, let's go with choppy.

Xe narrates these books just the way you'd imagine real people talking. She's not reading a book to you, she's living the story as she speaks it. Lily could be sitting next to me in the car telling me all about her latest adventures and it would sound exactly the same way (plus, she could totally use her magic to fix the damn traffic!).

Male voices are done without the male characters sounding like they'd just been kicked and she's really adept at making one male character sound different from the next. In fact her overall range of voice characterisations is quite broad.

I'm gonna stop gushing now - it's almost time to get back in the car and drive home, but if you're looking for great audiobooks and cozy/paranormal mysteries are to your liking, I can not recommend these strongly or emphatically enough.

Happy trails! show less

Charming and light, this was a fun supernatural mystery. I'd "cast" is as a cozy supernatural mystery, in fact. Lily is a 31-year-old witch who has relocated in San Francisco, determined to finally put down roots. She's opened a vintage clothing store and has tentatively begun making friends when a little girl is snatched from a neighborhood surrounding a home she's bought vintage clothing from. Soon, Lily is embroiled in a mystery involving La Llorona, a male witch, a gargoyle familiar, a very handsome skeptic, and a murder investigation.

Blackwell is clearly setting up a long series, as she's introducing intriguing characters (Lily, of course, but also Max, a "mythbuster" of sorts, Aidan, a handsome and powerful male witch, and a show more watchful police detective who just might be a believer) and hinting at a very troubled history of her own, including a very possibly evil daddy.

Lily is very charming, as are the two good-looking males, and the supporting characters are very appealing. The witchcraft is treated very matter-of-fact, and Blackwell has a nice way of adding humor. I look forward to more in this series... show less

Secondhand Spirits is a promising start to the Witchcraft Mystery series. I loved the setting of the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco, with the array of offbeat characters living and working there. This gives a lighter, humorous backdrop to the somewhat darker undercurrent of the story.

Lily's character is well developed and likable, though at times she feels a little too self-sacrificing in her heroics. The secondary characters are also well developed, each unique and memorable. I absolutely loved Oscar, Lily's familiar. I did have a minor problem with Aidan. His role seemed too convenient.

The mystery is intriguing, though for me it was sometimes overshadowed and weighed down by meandering detail. The spells, particularly in the show more beginning, were given to us in a step-by-step process. While I appreciate the realism, these parts read a little too much like a how-to book and slowed the story down. The vintage clothing aspect was fun, but again the description was sometimes overdone.

The other problem for me came in understanding Lily's background. We have quite a bit of references to her father and various family members, but we're never completely clear on what went wrong in her early life that sent her running from them all. Because of this, the walks down memory lane became more of a distraction than necessary.

While this book can't really be called a light mystery, since the plot centers on some darker issues, the writing style does give it a lighter feel. There is no strong language, so it can also be considered a "clean" mystery for those of you with that preference. show less

I may just continue with this series, even though I'm not a mystery reader generally, and just read this one as a lark. Lily Ivory is an engaging character, and the author's portrait of San Francisco and her evident knowledge of witchcraft and folklore made for pretty interesting reading.

★ ★ ★ 1/2

I had this on order from outside Libraries and it never came. Then I read a review here and from that I surmised that the book to be more violent and less paranormal than I might desire. But then two other events occurred, I came across the 2nd book in the series and I read it, then I was ordering Mysteries for the Library and I came upon this title, so I ordered it.....so of course when it arrived I read it.

I liked it: Ivory has run away from Texas & her grandmother Graciela in the middle of her "training", as she is unable to control her "powers" and has become known as a dangerous freak/witch. She has now opened a vintage clothing store in San Francisco and is called upon to to outfit a wedding... She has also met an show more elderly woman who has a house of vintage clothing, including 2 bridal dresses.....

While visiting the elder woman, the little girl who was just in the kitchen grabbing a cookie disappears and a cry through the neighborhood goes up in fear of La Llorana. Ivory then becomes involved in helping to save the little girl, safe keep the elderly woman, and banish La Llorona.

I stayed up all night, till the Witching Hour to finish reading this..... I just had to know what happened! The story is pretty fluid and interesting. There are a few side stories about the police, store staff, neighbors, an powerful male witch, and an investigative reporter that fit in pretty well.

What I didn't like was that for the life of me...and I did go back & peruse the book, I could not figure out one of the characters at the end of the book, or where that person came into the story, because I couldn't find that person mentioned anyplace else in the entire book. Some of the descriptive parts you know I skipped over, but they didn't have too much importance (for me) in regards to the overall plot.

I have the 3rd in the series on order for our collection. show less