Pumpkintown Perils: For a Magical Town, There isn’t Much Magic

Deep in the Jagged Wood enchanted forest, wild witch Wanda Tempest owns a magic supply shop, practices witchcraft, drinks too much, dances, and struggles with a weakness for attractive men. She also happens to be a promising, if only part-time, Private Investigator. She’s talented, beautiful, and has earned the respect and admiration of the equally talented, though far less striking, Police Inspector Sam Shamrock, an overweight leprechaun. He’s crazy about her… she’s crazy about her cat-food-refusing whiskered companion, Jinxy.

Join this formidable, if mismatched, crime-solving duo, as they tackle mysteries ranging from the scandalous to the outright strange. Talking trees, evil gnomes, murderous wood trolls, and homicidal humans will keep Wanda and Sam fighting for justice, and their very lives.

Troublesome twin sisters, a crazy great-aunt, a kiss that shouldn’t have happened, and a spoiled Siberian cat with a smart mouth all guarantee that Wanda’s life remains full of surprises. As long as Sam doesn’t drink too many Irish Coffees everything usually works out.

Wild Wild Witch Mystery Bundle (Book 1)
Humor/Mystery/Paranormal
260 Pages
Publication Date: August 4th, 2016
Get a FREE copy here!

Quick Reasons: fairly annoying, arrogant main character; none of the characters really came to life for me; weird moments of crude humor; very fast, unbelievable plots; easy-to-spot endings; the internal monologue happening throughout this read was chaotic and often confusing; a lot of repetition and awkward sentences

1-Dimensional

watch for gore

fishing for more

Huge thanks to Aubrey Law and the crew at BookTasters for sending me a copy of this title free in exchange for an honest review! This in no way altered my read of or opinions on this book.

I’m going to be honest, penguins–this book didn’t work for me, personally, for several different reasons. When I picked this book up, I was really looking forward to diving into my first actual mystery read–as you might know, I don’t usually pick up mystery books, and I’ve been hoping to change that as I feel some of them sound like a ton of fun. This one, for instance, seemed to be right up my alley–and I really DID enjoy the quirky setting and the element of magic/fantasy that was woven throughout the story. The characters, for the most part, sounded like a ton of fun–who wouldn’t want to follow a witch and her talking cat around, after all? Or meet up with leprechauns? Or solve magical mysteries?

Unfortunately, that’s not quite what I got from this book. Don’t get me wrong, the four stories included in this read do all have an element of mystery/whodunit….but the plot was so quick, the stories so concise to fit all four into one go, I don’t feel like we really got the best side of Aubrey Law’s writing. Instead, I felt like we got a high level of crude humor and arrogant confidence in the form of our main character…mixed with some quickly-written and chaotic stories. Instead of being able to dive into the world of this town, I found myself plodding along listening to the main character make snap judgments about everybody and talk about herself as if she’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.

The writing is also pretty spotty throughout the read. There are some awkward transitions, some poorly-chosen descriptive images, and a LOT of repetition. The main character often thinks to herself before opening her mouth…which leads to readers already knowing what she’s going to say, and then having to follow along after while she actually carries on the conversation. I think Wanda could be a sassy, snarky, strongly independent character…if she were written in a slightly different way. In this book, however, she comes off as arrogant and prideful, and I found myself rolling my own eyes more than once throughout the read at her antics or thoughts.

Overall, this perhaps wasn’t the best fit for me personally. The characters and world fell a bit flat, I was annoyed with how arrogant Wanda seemed, and I didn’t really connect with anyone or anything I read about. The spotty writing and unbelievably quick plots also didn’t help to make this book more entertaining. I will, hopefully, be picking up more mysteries in the future…perhaps I’ll find that this genre just doesn’t work for me. I’d recommend this to lovers of crude humor, magical mysteries, and quirky characters. Just because I wasn’t caught up in the race, doesn’t mean you can’t be!