CBR18 Bingo: Refuge (The Aestas coven works hard to be a safe haven and refuge for young witches who have snapped and would normally be ostracised by other witches)
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for this ARC. This book is on sale now.
There are two types of witches (in this world, all magic users are called witches, regardless of gender). The ones who are born from families with established magic, who grew up as part of a coven, and who are therefore guided and helped through the process of manifesting their magic, and then there are “unsettled” witches, who manifest their magic in their late adolescence or early teens in an explosive “snap”, usually in a stressful situation or when they lose their temper about something. These snaps can cause immense injury and even death, and tend to be very traumatic for the young witch in question.
Katherine Barnes, who is now the enforcer for the Aestas coven in Los Angeles, was one such witch, and when she snapped as a teenager, she collapsed an entire wing of her high school, leading to three deaths and countless injuries. Katherine ran from her home, abandoning her family, and ended up helpless and desperate in Los Angeles, where Sylvia, the leader of Aestas, found her and helped her through the very turbulent first years until Katherine’s magic settled. Now she has a new name, a magically altered appearance and lives in constant fear and guilt about her past catching up to her.
Katherine is trying to figure out who is manufacturing and selling magical drugs to regular humans. She’s also trying to help a newly unsettled teenage girl named Lily come to terms with her recent snap. On top of everything, Aestas is expecting its annual “audit” from Noctis, the most powerful coven of the United States. Sylvia, Katherine’s boss and mentor, is on edge and stressed. She’s noticed her own powers fading and is having trouble keeping up with her responsibilities as coven leader. She fears that Silas Khatri, heir to the Noctis coven, is there to replace her (she’s not entirely wrong – his parents have sent him to find faults with Sylvia’s leadership so he can replace her, but he really doesn’t want to take over the coven) and becomes desperate to find a solution that will allow her to retain control.
Full review on my blog.
