Item: Strange Magic
Rating: 3.00
Author: wyvernfriend

by Syd Moore

Rosie Strange doesn't believe in ghosts or witches or magic. No, not at all. It’s no surprise therefore when she inherits the ramshackle Essex Witch Museum, her first thought is to take the money and run.

Still, the museum exerts a curious pull over Rosie. There’s the eccentric academic who bustles in to demand she help in a hunt for old bones, those of the notorious Ursula Cadence, a witch long since put to death. And there’s curator Sam Stone, a man about whom Rosie can’t decide if he’s tiresomely annoying or extremely captivating. It all adds up to looking like her plans to sell the museum might need to be delayed, just for a while.

Finding herself and Sam embroiled in a most peculiar centuries-old mystery, Rosie is quickly expelled from her comfort zone, where to her horror, the secrets of the past come with their own real, and all too present, danger as a strange magic threatens to envelope them all.

has potential I'm not sure where the author was going with the story, I found the humour a bit laboured and it felt a bit forced to me but there were moments that kept me reading.

Rosie Strange has inherited the Essex Witch Museum and her family assume she's going to sell it. She decides to go there and get it ready for sale and then gets caught up with a child possessed by a ghost who is slowly killing him. To save the child she has to work with the handsome Sam Stone, the curator of the museum to find the bones of a witch.

Rosie is a burnt out cynical Benefit Fraud investigator who has met all the bad in society and has all the attitude of someone who has to do this too much. There are several infodumps and "as-you-know Bob" moments, which seem to be mostly there to educate the main character and to show how much research the author has done.

There is potential here and hopefully things will improve with more. There were times when I felt like things were moving quite slowly and then it felt like I had missed some moment. This is basically a road trip through the English Countryside but it also felt only like the author was forcing the characters to spend time together.

Falls into Urban fantasy, amateur sleuth, supernatural, ghost, witches, possibly chilling children, terror in a small town and terrifying women but I'm using it for plain horror, possession that could kill you is pretty horrific.

Strange Magic (Essex Witch Museum Mystery, #1)

by Syd Moore

Reviewed by wyvernfriend on Oct 25, 2017

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