Review Detail

What worked: Spooky fantasy filled with mysteries, disappearances, and an urban legend set in the Appalachian mountains. Think YA meets Practical Magic in a rural small town that holds secrets that might be best left hidden.

I love a good witchy tale and what makes this one unique is the setting in the Appalachian mountains that have a legend of a woman who walked into the rural town Caball Hollow and the secrets she passed down throughout the generations. Linden James has the ability to smell the emotions of people. Seems all the James women are born with unique abilities. They run a family restaurant that uses some special recipes handed down through time. Some in town call them witches. But all agree that their enchantments work. I never heard of the Moth Winged Man legend. In this legend, it states someone calls his name three times and he appears. But like Linden's grandmother tells her, "All legends have some truth." And this one is chilling and frightening.

A local mystery resurfaces after Linden's best friend goes missing. Linden also went missing a year previous but has no memory of that date. She's determined to find out not only what happened but how these events might all be linked. There's a slow build-up on what happened which involves her own family's secrets. The tension builds when Linden and her sisters call on their paranormal abilities to find out the truth. I loved how emotions are shown through the foods that the James women cook at their small family-run restaurant.

There's almost a fae atmosphere feel with the Moth Winged Man legend throughout this story as well. That adds to the creepy factor of this novel. Linden and her sisters reminded me of the Charmed sisters, especially when they come together to try to figure out the mystery behind a local death and a decades-long missing child case.

The relationship between Linden and Cole Spencer moves slowly and is on the back burner while other secrets surface. This story is more about the relationship of sisters and the paranormal abilities they share and how they work together to solve a decades-long mystery in Caball Hollow. The final reveal did surprise me and I'm curious how this will be woven in the second book in this series.

Beautifully written dark fantasy where some secrets once revealed have the power to change not only those in the town but lives as well.