Four childhood friends, who happen to be witches, have grown into adulthood and survived a brutal witches' war, all suffering loss in the process. When oracles start to see the rise of an evil entity, and the portent of doom shows up for real, each of the friends must decide where their loyalties lie...

Well that wasn't what I was expecting. Even slightly. I don't know why, but I had in my head that this might be more of a darkly humorous tale, but there's absolutely nothing funny about it. It starts off relatively pedestrian, but quickly becomes an examination of the prejudices and privileges of certain elements of society and the divides and dangers they can cause. The main focus of the story is on the acceptance (or otherwise) of a transgender character, and the author tackles both sides of the argument with gusto and does a great job at rebutting the increasingly ridiculous and circular arguments put forth by those who insist that biological sex and gender are the same thing. I feel like the book absolutely makes the point it's aiming for here, but it could have done so much more to make the arguments of both sides more nuanced and avoid the simplicity of 'accepting = good, prejudiced = bad' trap. There is a brief attempt to try and explain the prejudices of one character with a legitimate concern or fear, but it falls really flat and doesn't actually make that much sense.

Likewise, one of our band of friends, Leone, spends a lot of her time focused on the privilege of white women and the effect this has on women of colour. This starts off as an interesting and thought-provoking perspective, and seeing her run her own Coven to specifically cater for those she feels are excluded or discriminated against by HMRC felt like quite a powerful thing. But  as we progress and the same "rant" happens over and over (it felt like every time we shifted to her POV), it lost its effect and ended up just making me want to fast forward (not that I did). Now, I appreciate my perspective is entirely that which she's railing against, but a lot of the comments made me feel like the character (and by extension the author) want to see big change, which is completely right, but it came across as all  surface-level stuff within the story. I feel like if the author had had Leone's Coven play a more significant role in events to illustrate the points made about how they work, this would have made for a compelling and effective contrast between the old white ways of HMRC and the scope for progression which is clearly badly needed!

The amount of 90s pop culture references in here is astounding, and it's clearly written for someone of my precise age group to indulge in a little nostalgia, while at the same time reminding us just how old we actually are! The frustrating thing is that I just couldn't identify enough with any of the characters enough to really submerge myself into the story. I'm convinced that I'd have enjoyed this book far more if one of the characters spoke to me a little more. 

Nicola Coughlin is a fantastic actress, and she made bringing the characters to life in the audio version look easy with the sheer number of believable accents she was able to use to populate the world. Everything from Yorkshire to RP, from her native Ireland to French, the performances of the dialogue were impeccable. Sadly however, I can't say the same for her narration of the descriptions. She wasn’t monotone or dull, but the spark just wasn't there and I ended up feel like I was just powering through to get to the end. There are also odd moments where it doesn't quite flow properly, so it feels like it might need a few tweaks in the edit.

I'm also not convinced by the writing itself. It comes across as very much telling rather than showing, and there's a lot of convenience for the sake of the plot. Plus there are a good number of 'c' bombs dropped throughout. There is a plot and steps to get from one element to the next, but actually it doesn't feel like all that much happens, even during the grand finale, and none of the characters have huge amounts of depth to them. As you've probably figured from my above comments, while prejudices do play an important role in the plot, it comes across to me that the author has used this as a vehicle to set out their agenda loud and clear and has come up with a story to fit, rather than it being seamless woven in.

This has left me quite disappointed and underwhelmed overall. I had bought the second book on sale on Audible, but I'm not convinced I'll listen to it any time soon. The prequel novella does sound more up my street and I may give that a go. But yeah, this isn't one I'll be revisiting. And now I'll go and hide under a rock somewhere as I'm convinced that, despite my best intentions and a genuine desire to respect anyone and everyone, given the subject matter I'm sure I'll have offended someone...