Book Review: Witchy Way to Murder

Blake, Adrienne. Witchy Way to Murder. CityOwlPress, 2023.

Witchy Way to Murder, Dark Encounters Book 1, by Adrienne Blake

Thank you, LibraryThing and CityOwlPress, for the free ebook galley of Witchy Way to Murder by Adrienne Blake.

(Unfortunately, for over a week, Goodreads has been refusing to let me log in. Changing my password makes no difference — no matter how many times I do it. No matter that I contacted Goodreads about this issue and have had an email correspondence about it. In short, I can’t post reviews there anymore — and until this situation, Goodreads was my most-used app. Fortunately, I now have StoryGraph. I am also posting this review on Medium.)

Witchy Way to Murder by Adrienne Blake combines two genres: mystery and fantasy. It’s a whodunnit/detective story set in a slightly different reality in which humans are accustomed to Fae folk and magic.

This fantasy world includes witches, a diverse variety of Fae folk, and werewolves. The protagonist is half witch and half goblin — which is what makes this book truly original. I wouldn’t expect a main character to be a goblin or half goblin. This feels like the beginning of a series (and funny thing — looking it up on Amazon shows that it is indeed the first in the series Dark Encounters).

I appreciate that a couple characters are queer — a human and a goblin. But I wanted more.

The paranormal mystery novel is full of rich details about setting and characters. I also like background info like when Dionne reflects on how they got their private eye office (renting from a half-troll, half human). Great world-building and magic.

Once the initial dream scene is over, it’s clearly a quirky and humorous novel… never mind that the snarkiness isn’t my cup of tea. Snarkiness reminds me of the Midwest and perpetual playground bullies. Empathy-challenged people who are out of touch with their emotions. However, I’m sure this book/series will appeal more to people in their twenties and thirties, especially Midwesterners. (And based on a few ebooks I’ve read in the same genre, the snarkiness is common.)

The protagonist used to be a cop, and one of the major characters is a cop who used to be her coworker. We need to stop writing, producing, and publishing copaganda. There’s waaaay too much of that. The…