It's a Curse Thing Singles Town Book 2
Paranormal Romance/Fantasy and Futuristic/Ghosts/Witches and Wizards
Up All Night Publishing
April 27, 2021
242
It’s not forever. It’s not freaking forever. What’s a witch to do when her magic’s been hacked and her tongue wickedly cursed! No matter how hard Eloise Redd concentrates on keeping her thoughts to herself, she blurts them. The only option is to lie low and wait for the hacker’s ransom note —and hope the demands aren’t too steep. In the meantime, she hides out in a haunted town as a palm reader. What could possibly go wrong reading palms?
Jeffrey Bales, Chief Operating Officer of Think Tank Innovations, is excellent at peopling. What he’s not good at is fending off a multitude of women convinced he’s their souls’ missing puzzle piece. This thanks to the town’s magical palm reader. A woman whose mouth should come with a hazard warning. He has no choice but to turn his charms on her to silence those wayward words. Just a tiny, fake relationship should work…
Unless it takes place under the roof of a bewitched house. One determined to bind them together eternally. That ransom demand can’t arrive soon enough.
What if this is forever?
Reviewed By S.C. Principale
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
It’s A Curse Thing (Singles Town book Two) by Lisa Wells is a delight. It’s also the second book in the series, so the first few chapters feel like you’re late to a big annual meeting and someone is trying to catch you up in five minutes. After a somewhat clunky, albeit intriguing, beginning you’ll get the gist of Knotty, a small town full of paranormal quirks. One of the quirkiest characters is the protagonist, Eloise Redd, Wicked Witch by blood and cursed by an unknown magic hacker. Eloise is suffering from a curse that makes her spells go wonky and her mouth blurts out harsh truths at the wrong moment, which is not what you need when you’re working as a lawyer. Placed on leave while she tries to undo the curse and get her life back, Eloise heads back to the family home in Knotty and uses her remaining unhacked magical skill— palm reading.
Palm reading seems to be popular with the lovelorn citizens of Knotty who all want to find their “Puzzle Piece”, what is commonly known as a soul mate. Do you know what else singles looking for love use (besides a palmist)? A dating app! That’s one thing Jeffrey’s company is trying to create for this town (which seems to be unusually full of singles).
Jeffrey and Eloise don’t hit it off at first, to put it mildly. Jeffrey is a rude, pompous, and insulting individual who believes Eloise is a con-artist. The book has some large-scale inconsistency here, as Jeff seems aware of the paranormal dealings of the town and takes them into account when conversing with other residents and his employees but hotly denies believing in palmistry, even when Eloise tries to explain its scientific basis. The interaction between them is almost painful to read, but thank goodness there are wonderful, zany characters like elderly Ruby Rae and talking cat Charm to provide comic relief.
Of course, Wells brings these Jeffrey and Eloise together with a suddenly inconvenient wiring problem in Eloise’s establishment and home. She ends up living and working with none other than Jeff, and soon sparks begin to fly. Jeff overcomes some of his preconceived notions about people who are “odd” and begins a sweet friendship and roomies-with-benefits relationship. As Eloise thinks she’s about to break the family tradition of being unlucky in love—she realizes that Jeff appears to be the Puzzle Piece. Just not her Puzzle Piece. In fact, he’s cropping up in palms all over town! Don’t worry, all becomes clear, but not before some harsh words and heartache occur.
Aside from the romantic entanglements of this book, there’s a considerable mystery that still needs to be untangled. Who hacked Eloise’s magic? What do you do with dueling ghosts? And who is spying on Eloise for her old boss? With steam, snark, mystery, and romance, this book is a buffet of goodies, an even blend of tricks and treats! I cannot wait to read the third in the series!
ROMANCE/PARANORMAL/FANTASY/WITCHES & WIZARDS
ROMANCE/PARANORMAL/FANTASY/WITCHES & WIZARDS – SERIES
