Julie Sveen's Reviews > Witches Get Stuff Done

** spoiler alert ** Riley connects with her estranged aunt not long after her mother dies, and is invited to come see her in the coastal Michigan paradise she calls home; hoping to learn more about her mysterious mother and her own family; and she sets of for an island adventure/family reunion. She finally arrives at Starfall Point after a harrowing boat journey filled with puking and other strange (and perhaps handsome) passengers. Sound intriguing yet? Because I personally found it mostly gross and unnecessarily stretched out. Also it was a bummer for both Riley and myself to find out that her aunt had died just a few days(I think?) previously.
This is where I should point out that I would have given the book one star if it hadn’t been for the fact that this was a free audible audiobook; and I feel like the narrators did a decent enough job that the book deserves an extra star, but sadly I really didn’t enjoy this book.

I found the pacing to be really weird; I couldn’t get a sense of what amount of time was passing, and even when I was literally told that X amount of time had passed since Y-event it just didn’t sit right with me.

The characters.. how do I even begin? How come everyone is bffs or making out etc so quickly? There’s no time for chemistry to ever exist between Riley and Edison, I was so blindsided by them suddenly kissing that I had to re-listen about three times before I understood what was happening. It just ended up feeling extremely rushed, a bit cringey, and not in the least bit romantic.

I enjoyed Riley’s sisterhood with her new friends far more than her boring relationship with Edison - and wish more time was spent exploring the girl-power witches’ coven than the “romantic” aspect of the story.

I did find the conversations very odd though; they sound like they’re pulled straight out of bad sit-coms - and by extension are not realistic at all. Actually I got the vibe that the book is trying REALLY hard to evoke Gilmore girls (even the name of the place, Starfall Point, gives Stars hollow vibes); but with magic. And not really successfully, unfortunately. The book honestly reads more like sloppy fan fiction of a slightly poorly produced hallmark Christmas movie.

Riley spends WAY TOO MUCH TIME plodding around throwing out strangely familiar one-liners to people she doesn’t know, when she should be spending her time unraveling the mystery of her family and her new house. I would personally NOT have the time for some one-dimensional hot guy™️ at the library if I was suddenly thrust into a life of witchcraft and necromancy.

There are aspects of the story that I quite like, the magic; the crumbling estate; ghosts; the three-witches-imagery amongst other things - but it’s annoyingly enough mostly ignored, much in favour of blah romance.
Another aspect that really pulled me out of the story was Edison’s chapters. He was a more one-dimensional and boring character than almost everyone else in the book; and he narrates almost half the story - it’s quite impressive! Honestly, having his chapters read through his inner monologue felt more like an excuse to not have to write proper relationship progression between him and Riley, and I feel like a better way of getting to avoid that would have been to cut him out of the story entirely, since he didn’t add anything but mild annoyance to my reading experience.

Over all though, I didn’t really feel like there even actually was a real story happening. The characters definitely didn’t feel or sound like real people, and I don’t believe in any of their motivations (if they have any).
I will give it this though; the last 3-ish chapters were a bit of fun and set up a further storyline, but I probably won’t give this series another go as it just wasn’t for me.

If you’ve bothered to read this far I’ll leave you with some final thoughts.
In my mind the book literally could have ended with Riley on the ferry saying “and that was all a fever-dream I had while throwing up over the railing” and I would have believed it more than the story itself.