Madelyn Alt

Margaret Mary-Catherine O’Neill (Maggie), disgruntled bookkeeper and ironic Hoosier, is not living her best life, trundling back and forth between her dismal collections job and her basement apartment in her small town in the middle of the Northern Bible Belt.

All of that changes when Maggie meets the mysterious Felicity Dow, owner of a curio shop called Enchantments, who is also a practicing witch. Maggie accepts a job at the shop, and almost immediately she is pulled into a murder investigation. As she works to exonerate the main suspect in the murder, Maggie is also dealing with the awakening of her latent psychic abilities. Of course. There are hints of romance, with two gorgeous men vying for her affection.

The Trouble With Magic isn’t perfect; there is some awkwardness as we meet Felicity and her friend Marcus, the pace is a bit uneven, and the cliffhanger at the end is just plopped into the last three or four paragraphs with no previous groundwork laid, but the book mostly improves as it moves forward. Felicity’s Mary Poppins speaking style smoothes out, the pace improves, and Maggie’s voice is authentic and relatable. It’s a solid 3-3.5 stars, but I awarded a fourth star because I didn’t guess the killer. I will be reading more of this series.… (meer)