As someone with a history of paganism in my family, I found this book to be fascinating, while I myself am not wiccan, there are those who are in my family and who I know would absolutely adore this novel. Just be warned there will be some spoilers below.
Magickal Beginnings is a tale revolving around Andromeda ‘Andi’ Newton, a wiccan who owns her own magick, yes you read that right, magick with a ‘k’ shop and also works for the Seattle Task Force, which is responsible for the weird things in the world that are explained normally.
Early on in the novel she meets Tiernan, a Fey lord who needs her help and turns out to be her life mate. Together they take on Monroe, another Fey who wants Tiernan’s title.
For the most part, I enjoyed the book, it held all aspects of fantasy that I adore, magic, mythical creatures and a little bit of romance. I found it easy to relate to Andi, especially in the beginning when in chapter 1, she was bored at work having had no sales that day. That was literally me when I worked in retail.
I enjoyed the fact that there was a difference between magic tricks, and magick, one being a parlour trick that anyone could learn, and the other being something that you need a licence for and had to have the talent and ability to do. And rules! The wonderful author, Lisa Hawkins gave them rules for using magick! I love this! And I also love how, unlike in many books, the entire world knows that magick is a real thing. She is also incredibly descriptive, which I adore!
The story is really well developed and I like the concept, I did have a few issues though. My main one is simply the formatting of the book, however, that is easily fixed! Everything was where it should be, there just weren’t any spaces between paragraphs, which may have simply been a software issue.
The romance started a little early for my tastes, I personally love a slow burn and by chapter 6, Tiernan and Andi were already kissing, that’s chapter 6 out of 56, however that’s just me! It moves very quickly as well. Andi knows Tiernan all of one week before they reach the end of the book and in that time she’s discovered that she’s his life mate, made love to him, cheated on him twice and then went back to him, destroyed a fey and moved in with him. All in one week.
Initially, I started off liking and really relating to Andi, she doesn’t like partying, she works in retail and she seems to be fairly reserved at first. Then as the story moved on I started to hate her, mainly due to the above mentioned cheating, I think what annoyed me the most about that however was how forgiving Tiernan was. Life mate or not, I’d have been pissed for a while.
All in all, this novel wasn’t bad, I enjoyed it for the most part and will happily read book 2 when it comes out.
You can check out Magickal Beginnings by Lisa Hawkins on amazon.com
Canada's Bookworm 