Author: Melissa Marr
The Magicians meets One Last Stop in this brand-new fantasy romance Remedial Magic, about an unassuming librarian who 1) has fallen in love with a powerful witch; 2) has discovered that she is a witch; and 3) must attend magical community college to learn how to save her new world from complete destruction by New York Times bestselling author Melissa Marr!
Ellie loves working in her local library in the small town of Ligonier. She loves baking scones and investigating the mysterious and captivating in her spare time. And there is nothing more mysterious and captivating than the intriguingly beautiful, too properly dressed woman sipping tea in her library who has appeared as if out of nowhere. The pull between them is undeniable, and Ellie is not sure that she wants to resist.
Prospero, a powerful witch from the magical land of Crenshaw, is often accused of being… ruthless in her goals and ambitions. But she is driven to save her dying homeland, and a prophecy tells her that Ellie is the key. Unbeknownst to Ellie, her powers have not yet awakened. But all of that is about to change.
Remedial Magic is the first in the A Course in Magic series. In this story Ellie is a librarian and she is taken to Crenshaw, a magical land that is dying, by a witch named Prospero, where she learns about magic. There are elements of Harry Potter with the main character finding out that they are a witch followed by attendance at a magical school, a community college in this case. Initially, based on the blurb, this story seems to include only their POVs, but there seemed to be about six included. In addition to Ellie being taken, Maggie, a lawyer who wants to save her son by escaping her abusive ex, and Dan, a man dying of cancer and wants a second chance at life, are also in Crenshaw.
As there are multiple POVs and each takes place in a short number of pages, there is not a lot of time to develop each character. I have read a ton of novels where not all the characters were mentioned in the blurb, but I feel that this one was a little misleading. It makes it seem it is a two-character focused tale that will develop a relationship over time. The novel itself did not deliver this as there are multiple focuses and the relationship did not quite develop as advertised. When you add in the consent issues for the world of Crenshaw, the outline of the story may have been good, but it didn’t seem to translate to the product presented to a reader. I think a lot of the choices in this novel will not work for a lot of readers, but as reading is subjective, there may be a reader (or set of readers) where this will work as-is. For me, it did not quite work as I read the entire novel, but the ending did not make me want to read for the potential sequel. Overall, the author has a talent for world-building, but I think the characters need some work. I may not read the next novel or re-read this one, but I think other readers should read it for themselves.
**I give a special thank you to Netgalley and the publisher, Bramble, for the opportunity to read this entertaining novel. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.**
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