Kylie Strange up and moves to the town of Moody Bog to open a Tea and Herb Shop. When she arrives however, she’s thrown into the supernatural after finding the Booke of the Hidden. With the help of the local Wiccans, and a demon she must hunt the monster that’s escaped the Booke.
Westerson mentions at the end of the book that this plot came to her as a dream. Which I think is great, but a lot more re-writing may have been needed. I enjoyed the premise of the book and the plotline of a chosen person need’s to hunt the demons and write them away into the book. But the book as a whole suffered from tropes and cheesiness.
First, the names. Kylie Strange and Erasmus Dark. Pretty sure Erasmus is the international exchange programme at university? No? Anyway… even the character points out that their names are weird. And you never get used to them throughout the book. Personally, I think there should have been a little bit more thought put into creating better names.
It also fell into many tropes of Urban Fantasy. The chosen one moves to a new, often quaint town. Weird supernatural things start to happen and she realises she’s the only one who can fix it. Love triangle occurs, oft between a good guy and a bad guy, but obviously the bad guy is much more attractive. Bad guy is also a massive jerk to the chosen one. Sound familiar? Yeah… too much trope.
The good thing is that the characters were often interesting. I really enjoyed the Wiccans and how different they all were. There’s a plotline with other town people who will probably appear in future installments. It was nicely set up as a series and the town was written to be quite open for this. I just personally won’t be reading it because I disliked the tropes.
I received Booke of the Hidden* by Jeri Westerson from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an unbiased and honest review.
