Sweetwater and the Witch

 Sweetwater and the Witch (Harmony series)- Jayne Castle

Berkley/Penguin Random House

Release Date: September 20, 2022

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: If there’s something Ravenna Chastain knows, it’s when to end things. And after she almost winds up the victim of a cult that believes she’s a witch, it’s easy to walk away from her dead-end career, ready for a new start. But where to find a job that would allow her to use her very specialized skill set? The answer is clear: she becomes a matchmaker.

But even a successful matchmaker can’t find someone for everyone, and Ravenna considers Ethan Sweetwater her first professional failure. After nine failed dates, Ravenna knows it’s time to cut Ethan loose. But Ethan refuses to be fired as a client—he needs one final date to a business function. Since Ravenna needs a date herself to a family event, they agree to a deal: she will be his (business) date if he will be her (fake) date to her grandparents’ anniversary celebration.
 
What Ethan fails to mention is that attending the business function is a cover for some industrial espionage that he’s doing as a favor to the new Illusion Town Guild boss. Ravenna is happy to help, but their relationship gets even more complicated when things heat up—the chemistry between them is explosive, as explosive as the danger that’s stalking Ravenna. Lucky for her, Ethan isn’t just an engineer—he’s also a Sweetwater, and Sweetwaters are known for hunting down monsters…

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Ravenna Chastain, criminal profiler turned matchmaker, has been put in the awkward position of having to fire her company's highest profile client as unmatchable. Ethan Sweetwater didn't make things easy at the start by not filling in most of his profile questionnaire and he doesn't make it easy to fire him as a client. He needs a date to a business function, she (with over 30 failed dates to her credit) needs a date to a big family function. What could go wrong? When Ethan arrives to pick up Ravenna for their date (which is also going to involve some clandestine spying for the Arcane Society) and finds her standing over the unconscious body of the man who just tried to kill her, he rolls with it. That freaks Ravenna out more than a past date trying to kill her. Is Ethan a mob connection? Who else knows just what to do with duct tape? Things heat up from there with more attempted assassinations, high drama family functions, and dust bunny shenanigans. 

This was definitely a fun book for me. You don't have to have read previous Harmony novels (Guild Boss, Illusion Town) to enjoy it, although being familiar with Harmony and the Krentz/Quick/Castle Arcane Society world helps you spot some fun Easter eggs along the way. Ravenna has enough FBPI training to handle herself as more than a matchmaker in the increasingly tense situations she winds up in as collateral to a much larger picture, but enough sense at the beginning to worry when her date is willing to help her disappear a body like its a normal thing. Most women would worry, even as they found it convenient. Ethan is the mild mannered engineer who is much more than he seems, and is stubborn enough to keep going for what he wants. I loved the declaration and "it's always been you" moment at the end! 

Sweetwater and the Witch was fast paced, full of fun, wry humor, danger and mystery, and everything a reader expects from Jayne Castle. Also, I loved Harriet the dust bunny! With her love for pens and popcorn, I think we may be soul mates. 

A book not to be missed for the Jayne Castle fans!

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Witch & the Tsar

 The Witch and the Tsar- Olesya Salnikova Gilmore

Ace/Penguin Random House

Release Date: September 20, 2022

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: As a half-goddess possessing magic, Yaga is used to living on her own, her prior entanglements with mortals having led to heartbreak. She mostly keeps to her hut in the woods, where those in need of healing seek her out, even as they spread rumors about her supposed cruelty and wicked spells. But when her old friend Anastasia—now the wife of the tsar, and suffering from a mysterious illness—arrives in her forest desperate for her protection, Yaga realizes the fate of all of Russia is tied to Anastasia’s. Yaga must step out of the shadows to protect the land she loves.

As she travels to Moscow, Yaga witnesses a sixteenth century Russia on the brink of chaos. Tsar Ivan—soon to become Ivan the Terrible—grows more volatile and tyrannical by the day, and Yaga believes the tsaritsa is being poisoned by an unknown enemy. But what Yaga cannot know is that Ivan is being manipulated by powers far older and more fearsome than anyone can imagine.
 
Olesya Salnikova Gilmore weaves a rich tapestry of mythology and Russian history, reclaiming and reinventing the infamous Baba Yaga, and bringing to life a vibrant and tumultuous Russia, where old gods and new tyrants vie for power. This fierce and compelling novel draws from the timeless lore to create a heroine for the modern day, fighting to save her country and those she loves from oppression while also finding her true purpose as a goddess, a witch, and a woman.

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In The Witch and the Tsar, Olesya Salnikova Gilmore does for the infamous Baba Yaga what Madeline Miller did for Circe, what Genevieve Gornichec did for Angrboda, and what Natalie Haynes' upcoming StoneBlind promises to do for Medusa: allow a traditionally "villainous" woman to take control of the narrative and tell her own story. Her own story is not that of an evil hag, but a good woman: half goddess, all healer, turned out by villagers and vilified when Russia turns towards Christianity. So she lives in a hut with chicken legs out in the woods and waits for peasants to come to her for help under cover of night, but no longer lives among them. She sees her mortality as a weakness and tries to ignore it, and to stay out of human affairs. But one day Russia's tsaritsa, Anastasia, Yaga's old friend and now wife of the tsar, comes to her. Anastasia is being poisoned by a hidden enemy and Yaga agrees to save her, even if that means going to Moscow itself. Soon she discovers the danger is much bigger than just to Anastasia's life, that gods and immortals are meddling with humans and nature and Yaga must decide if she is brave enough to risk everything to protect the people she has come to love.

The Witch and the Tsar may be Gilmore's debut novel, but you would never know it. Beautifully written with the confidence of one who might be on her tenth novel instead of her first, The Witch and the Tsar is crafted so that the reader appreciates the complicated lives of each character- none are one dimensional, throw away, figures. You feel sorrow for Yaga's enemies even as your heart breaks for the choices Yaga must make, this is a triumph in fantasy storytelling. Russian history and mythology weave together into an intricate world and beautiful creation that you feel as if you, the reader, are a part of. The sights and sounds, the smells, the food and clothes, the woods and city streets, all come alive and draw you in.  It is clear from the beginning that Gilmore loves the characters she has created, the ones she has drawn from history and mythology as well as her own imagination. Whether or not you are familiar with Baba Yaga and Ivan the Terrible before starting this book, expect surprises both beautiful and heartbreaking in the most unlikely places. Gilmore shows us through her characters that in the darkest places we can find our true selves and our strengths, and that even immortals can discover something new- in the world and in themselves- after hundreds of years. A message of hope for us all.

I defintely look forward to future books from Olesya Salnikova Gilmore and will be recommending The Witch and the Tsar to my friends who enjoy fantasy and feminist retellings!   

  

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review