The Witches of Echo Park: An Echo Park Coven Novel (utgåvan 2015)

This is the first book in a new series and most of the book is bringing the heroine up to speed on the coven her great aunt wants her to join before she dies of cancer. Lyse has been kept in the dark about all things magic by her great aunt Eleanor while she was growing up and moved across the country to attend college. When Eleanor is diagnosed with cancer she calls Lyse, who flys home and is dropped into an entire world she has never seen before. And before she can do much to figure out everything Eleanor dies suddenly and more secrets come out including someone is hunting down the blood sisters of the coven.

The book reminded me a bit of Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand. The plot does suffer from being the first book in the series and there isn’t much of any resolution to the plot since there will be more books in the series. I’ll pick up the next one.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edeleweiss ( )

Book club review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP8f2M8df3k&index=2&list=PLEV2gVMzSaCciU... ( )

I was sucked into the series and it is definitely a page turner, but didn't leave me with anything heavy on my mind. I'm definitely looking forward to the next book in the series though. Full review to come. ( )

Lyse Macallister lives her comfortable life in Georgia and flies to Los Angeles when she learns that Eleanora, her great-aunt, the relative who raised her after her mother's death, is nearing death from cancer. Shortly after Lyse's arrival to the Echo Park neighborhood she discovers that Eleanora is the master of a coven of witches charged with keeping humanity safe from the "darkness" and she hopes that Lyse will replace her in this role.

The novel spent much of it length detailing the relationship between the "blood" sisters, many of the coven alternating telling the coven's story and the relationships between the women. It was heavier on character development; less on fantasy and magic. The inaugural novel is the first of a trilogy; however, will probably be the only one read. The first half moved at such a glacial pace that I considered dropping it several time. When it finally became interesting when only a few pages were left, it moved like a blink of an eye. Generally, I have found the second novel to be the slow one. The first should have sufficient action to encourage the reader to complete the novel. The author failed in this endeavor. ( )

Urgh, I really wanted to like Witches of Echo Park and once I realized there was no plot, I had an easier time reading it. It consists of backflashes and history summaries for each of the coven members, a lot of awkward sex scenes (including rape), instalove without even the teenage puppy love excuse, and some action in the last 20% that could have been interesting but ended up just being melodramatic. The writing was fast and easy to read but often that was because it was repetitive and simple. This book kind of felt like a collection of novellas strung together with an afterthought of a plot now that I think about it. ( )