The introduction for the book; “the spellbinding tale of six queer witches” was all it took for me to need this book in my life.

Representation matters.

The storyline may not have been the most exciting thing or something we’ve never seen before, but the diversity in this book is beautiful. The book has sexual and racial diversity that I’ve wanted for so long to be in mainstream books.

This book was amazing. I have read other books by this author and this one did not disappoint. I loved the premise, setting, and the plot of the novel. The characters enhanced the story. The pacing was just right with the book being hard to put down.

I want to thank Candlewick and NetGalley for providing me with this book in exchange for an honest review

I really believe that this book is one of my biggest disappointments of this year, not because it’s bad but because I thought I would love it, and I didn’t, so I ended up a little sad after finishing it. Sometimes it happens, you know, you have a book that doesn’t feel like it’s made for you, and while everyone loves it you don’t know what’s going on, well, that’s me, lol. The book has some good points that I would like to highlight below and also tell you a little about the things that didn’t quite convince me

The book begins by following Danny, she has just moved with her mother to Tempest, California. There she meets a group of queer witches who call themselves The Grays, and soon Danny discovers that it wasn’t a coincidence and that on the contrary, they attracted her to the city with a spell because she has something that the girls need. Danny can find Imogen, the most powerful of the Grays, disappearing since a night that goes into the woods alone.

I’m going to do this review a little differently than what I usually do, and I’ll separate it in two points, I’ll talk a little bit first about the things that I liked and then what just didn’t work for me.

Things I liked…

The Diversity: This book is really beautiful in terms of diversity, the book follows a group of queer witches so there’s a lot of sexual rep (lesbian, bisexual, ace, etc) but we also have racial diversity and body positivity, which’s great and I always appreciate when an author writes about a group of girls so different from each other, but so united at the same time. I think this will make many people feel identified and can see themselves in the characters which is wonderful, we all deserve good reps in books

Atmospheric Setting: The places where the story takes place are so beautiful and atmospheric I really loved them, besides I feel they’re my kind of places since a lot happens in the woods and I adore the plots in woods and more when there’s witchery in the middle. If you concentrate a lot you can even feel that you’re there, so I think great work.

Things I didn’t like…

Plot Construction & POVs: I had a lot of problems to understand the plot in general, I started and the constantly POV change was already a problem for me, in general, this doesn’t bother me, the short POVs can be entertaining and also make you go fast through the story, but it’s very difficult when it’s not clear who’s narrating each part, and also you don’t even know where you are, or at what moment of time is happening, as they jump from the past to the present, and all this was a big impediment for me to enjoy the book. Because, being 100% honest, it was very difficult to understand something of what was happening.

I’ve heard several people say it’s a whimsical story and I agree, but maybe it was too whimsical for me. Maybe the idea of ​​the author was to give us an ingenious, mysterious and complicated plot, but OMG, I couldn’t connect and is really disappointing, especially because I would like to tell you a little more about what it really is about, but I don’t think I can because I’m not sure neither myself. There are chapters that are simply there and don’t contribute in any way with the plot. There are chapters that are about Crows and others about some of The Grays and others are about Danny, and although I tried very hard to understand, I couldn’t do it, and it’s a shame because it has everything I love in a book, from witches to an atmospheric place, but the plot construction is simply not for me, it’s very messy

Some important parts and “revelations” happen in a rush so I haven’t been able to enjoy them, there are some things that happen out of nowhere and it’s very hard for me to visualize them in my head, due to all my confusion about what was really happening

Sadly, I couldn’t connect with any of the characters, even though I know it’s not them, it’s me lol, really. Maybe because I was so lost in I couldn’t concentrate on them, although perhaps in another story I would have enjoyed them.
I think that if this wasn’t an ARC maybe I wouldn’t have finished it, and it hurts me in my soul to say it, but it’s real.

It’s the first time this year this happens to me, but I just feel that the book is, honestly, not for me, you know? and it’s really difficult to express what I feel with words, so I apologize because maybe the review isn’t so clear as I would like it to be. Not for this, I wouldn’t recommend it, I can tell you that it’s a book about queer witches, located in a beautifully atmospheric place where I would like to get lost in, and it has a very whimsical plot.
If you feel like reading it, go for it!!, IT’S NOT MY THING but I’ve seen that most people are loving it, so maybe this is an unpopular opinion and that’s fine.

The beginning was a little difficult to get into with all the characters being introduced, but they're each so different from one another that once I got to know them a better it was impossible to get them mixed up. Our main character Danny has been searching for a place where she fits in when she meets the Tempest witches and finally feels like she's exactly where she wants to be. I could totally relate to the need to find a group to call your own. Seeing the coven slowly accept her as one of them as she worked on finding one their missing sister witches was extremely satisfying. I really grew attached to their little group and loved how they all supported each other, even when mistakes were made. The female friendships were just amazing. I do feel like there could have been a couple more mother daugther scenes, but I did like that some parents were actually involved.


I love the wide range of representation within their group. We have Danny, a queer girl with a fondness for kissing other girls, and Rush, a fat queer witch with a condition called synesthesia which lets her taste words. Then theres June, a Filipino lesbian and Leila, a nonbinary gray ace. We also have Hawthorn the black bisexual who started the coven and Imogen the lost lesbian witch. I appreciated how they were all more than their labels. They each had their own personalities and backstories. Out of all of them I think Rush was probably my favorite character, but June was pretty great too. Theres also a sapphic romance that turned out better than Id hope considering one of them was already in a relationship. I liked that we got to spend time from some of the other witches perspectives both in the present and in the past, but one of the flashback when the witches were very young was a little confusing and it's purpose was never really explained.


I really enjoyed the atmospheric redwood forest and the witches different affinities. The magical elements weren't fully explained, but it worked for the story. I would have loved to know even more about the ravens and the redwood trees, especially after getting some chapters from their point of view. The mystery did a great job of keeping me engaged. My theory as to who was causing trouble in the forest was correct, but there were many other elements I didnt see coming. I loved the message and the overall themes in this book. The point it made not to shame Danny for wanting to kiss a bunch of different girls meant a lot to me. There was also the desire to show affection for all the people before them who couldnt that really resonated with me. I just loved how it was so very unapologetically queer. Its definitely a book Ill be recommending to a lot of people.

I have plans to feature this book in a few more posts like my monthly wrap up, 5 star prediction results, queer recommendations, and some others.

'Time isn't the only way to know someone.'

Danny feels lost, disconnected, uneasy. She keeps getting up and walking away, from school, from home, and from her mother, who doesn't know what she can do to help. That is, until Danny looks at a map of the USA and is drawn immediately to Tempest, in northern California. So her and her mother up and leave, in an attempt to fix whatever is wrong with Danny.

Danny doesn't know why she's so drawn to Tempest, but when she arrives, it soon becomes clear that The Greys - a group of witches known as the weird girls of the town - have cast a spell to bring her there to do what they cannot - bring back one of their own. Imogen disappeared one day, and none of their magic can bring her home. But when a boy ends up dead, Danny's not sure she should have ever made her way to Tempest.

I LOVED THIS BOOK!!!

And yes, I do feel like I need to scream from the rooftops about it. 

First off, I need to talk about the cover.

This is one of those covers where I read the book on my Kindle and feel the need to go out and buy it too, so I can have a copy of this beautifulness in my life too. 

Sometimes, you pick up a book and you read a sentence, a paragraph, a page, and you know. You just know, that this book is going to be something special. This was that book for me. I knew from the very beginning that this was going to be a five star read. Capetta writes so beautifully, and I was immediately drawn in.

But it wasn't just the writing. It was everything.

The Greys - the five girls of Tempest who are outcasts because of their weirdness - are a great set of characters. While I do think that June and Leila needed a little more page time because I often found them melding together and found it hard to pinpoint their individual characteristics or personalities, I loved the group as a whole. Not only is it amazing to have a book with so many female characters at the forefront (and to be honest, there's only two main characters of importance throughout the whole novel) but they're queer witches!! 

QUEER WITCHES!!!

This is everything I wanted from The Raven Boys. And don't get me wrong, I LOVE The Raven Cycle, and this has a very Raven Cycle-y feel to it with the magic and rituals and mysteriousness. But that was a very male orientated book (yes, yes I know Blue and her family were amazing characters too, I'm not trying to dismiss that.) But The Lost Coast is so female centric. And so queer centric! The Grays are all queer - whether they use that word or bisexual/demi/pan/ace/lesbian - they all like girls in some way or another, and none of it is a big deal. They kiss each other on the lips as a greeting, they hold hands just because when walking, they are not afraid of their sexualities, but neither are they over sexualised. They just are.

I've seen some reviews that comment that the differing points of views and time lines can be a bit confusing, but I didn't find it so. You often switch from Danny's first person account to a third person overview of some of the other characters, but I loved this switch, this jump away from what Danny knows. Again, the jumps back in time weren't difficult to follow and I loved the meandering way the story gets told, through these different perspectives and timelines. 

I can't think of anything I didn't love about this book. And the best thing about it is that now I can go and add Amy Rose Capetta's back catalogue to my to-read list!

Actual rating: 2.5

This seems to be a clear case of "It's me, not you". But somehow, this book really didn't work for me.

Let me start by saying, I loved the writing style! It was so poetic, and I especially loved it combined with the LGBTQ+ rep, because this was honestly described beautifully and I really did love that.

However, it took a long time for the story to take off, and by then, the story became overwhelmingly confusing for me. This, combined with a lack of character development, made it very hard for me to feel invested in the story.

Queer witches! I think that's all you really need to know about this book - it's definitely what drew me to it. But if you'd like a little more, it's a coming of age story about Danny, who feels like a misfit until she moves with her mom from Michigan to the California coast and meets The Grays, a group of teen witches. Danny is finally starting to feel like she belongs, but her new friends are embroiled in a mystery involving their friend Imogen. This book is very atmospheric - I felt like I could feel the fog and see the redwoods. I also liked the narrative structure, with chapter viewpoints alternating between time, characters, and even animals and objects. My one complaint is I was a bit confused about part of the story involving Imogen (which I won't spoil by mentioning). The resolution was satisfying, though, and I really liked the characters - Rush, especially. Recommended as a great addition to the YA canon.

Thank you to Netgalley & Candlewick Press for providing me with a copy of The Lost Coast by Amy Rose Capetta in exchange for an honest review! All quotes used in this review were pulled from the ARC & may not match up with the final copy.

This is how the Grays fall in love. This is how the Grays do everything. In the weirdest possible way. This is how they go down. Together.


I didn’t take half as many notes as I usually do while reading The Lost Coast, because Amy Rose Capetta had my attention fully captured with her poetic writing style — I didn’t want to be disturbed by something as minor as jotting down a quick thought. Not to be dramatic, ghouls, but I don’t think I’ve ever read anything this beautiful before. For me, it was the writing of The Lost Coast that truly stuck out & gave it that 5-star rating.

But that’s not the only thing that made The Lost Coast a favorite read of mine. When it was mentioned to me months prior (thank you, Michaela!), I was thrilled to hear that this book centers around six queer witches! QUEER~ WITCHES~~~~ Two major keywords that usually win my heart.

I won’t declare myself and stick to one side of a fence. I don’t know how to explain that I don’t even see the fence.


The Lost Coast is filled with representation. We got bisexuality, non-binary — the list goes on and on. & I loved it. All six of these witches all differed in one way or another & still merged together into an inseparable group.

This book is so important when it comes to friendship & finding your place. The Grays are classified as the weirdos (which strongly reminds me of The Craft) of the town, but each one has found a place within in each other & honestly, I am over here getting emotional over this group. Ten out of ten would recommend.

The Lost Coast is a very fast read. The pages just keep flowing; which makes you want to keep reading until you reach the finale. The Lost Coast is honestly a piece of art. This book has a sex scene & I’ve never read a sex scene that hasn’t made me cringe until I read this one. Like wow. Kudos, Amy, kudos.

This book is a really hard one for me to review because it's mostly a mystery, and I think mysteries should be kept a... mystery until you read it. So, what I can/will say is this book is unapologetically queer AF. These witches are queer and proud. There's a sapphic romance that I really enjoyed. And throughout the book my guesses about the mystery changed so often!

I absolutely loved everything about the setting. Redwoods of North Cali? take me there now, please!

This book is definitely not for everyone because the writing style is a bit different, but I think if you're queer, and actively looking for a book that doesn't shy away from queerness, you should at least give this one a shot.

This is a beautifully written book with a very vivid setting and an ensemble of queer witches. The plot wanders a bit, but it will definitely appeal to certain readers and I'm glad this book will be in the world.

Oh I really, REALLY loved this book. Witches, unapologetic queers, beautiful scenery, outsiders that stick together, a diverse group of friends, feminism and imperfectly perfect characters are just the beginning of why I loved this book so much. Let me break down my love a little bit more.

First, growing up, I didn’t get to see characters like these in books, or movies, or in real-life either, if I’m being perfectly honest. People that are unapologetically being themselves-whether that entails the color of their skin, their culture, their sexuality, what they like or how they like it, how they identify, or a combo of all of the above. I wasn’t seeing that anywhere. Here it is though! These characters showed us what it’s like to be different from mainstream culture and then how to embrace those differences. I found myself fist pumping for each of them every step of the way. They are the ones we all aspire to be. And after reading the author’s notes at the end where she made mention of this book being for those different ones, those who don’t know where they fit and those who live in places where being different is hard, it really solidified my thoughts. Basically, she wrote this book for the magical ones and I’m forever here for anything like that! I hope this one gets into the hands of as many young people as possible so they all know just how magical they really are.

Second, the scenery descriptions in this book were everything. I lived for a year in San Francisco and I remember those majestic redwoods and their smells and the fog surrounding life at times and it was all brought back to me through Capetta’s words. I could smell the woods, feel the fog on my face and walk in the soft earth below the trees. The writing alone in this book felt magical to me. Trees are truly my love language and right from the beginning, I knew I was set up to LOVE this book.

Third, the queer witch talk. Let me repeat…so much amazing, carefully crafted, inspiring, exciting queer witch talk. And I’m in for all of it! I’ve always thought of queers as a little bit witchy anyways (myself included in this) so all the YESES!

Fourth, I’ve always thought that we (those outside of “societal norms”) carry each other. Queers, witches, women, people of color, and any others living outside of the societal norm…we are all a part of each other and we hold each other up. We may not interact on a daily basis, but when you come for one of us, you come for all of us. I’ve always felt that whether it’s in politics, in a classroom, in a bar, or in my daily life. I will stand tall and strong behind my other weirdos and this book might be the one that has made me feel that the strongest. Throughout the book I kept thinking of that concept and it would make me so emotional I wanted to cry, or yell my loyalty from a mountaintop while pounding my chest. (side note: I stuck with crying for all of those waiting for the live mountaintop feed).

Lastly…my life goal is to now become a Gray.

There is so much more to talk about in this book, but I’ll leave you to go read it now. If you enjoy witches, magic, queers, YA literature and writing that you can taste-I would highly suggest this book. I don’t think you will be disappointed. As always, let me know what you think! You can find me over on Instagram at bookishfolk or right here on the blog! Happy reading and thanks again Candlewick Press for the free copy!

bookishfolk…read instead.

Review found here: https://bookishfolkblog.wordpress.com/2019/05/14/the-lost-coast/

I finished this book earlier today and I’m still trying to gather my thoughts and feelings. I will start off by saying thank you to NetGalley for providing me this ARC inn return for an honest review. I’ve heard so much talk about people being excited for this one so when I was approved for an early copy, I was pretty excited. Queer witches in the woods? Sign me up. Sadly, I didn’t enjoy this as much as I hoped I would.
This story starts off and were quickly jumped around in time and perspective. I had a hard time figuring out what was going on for the first almost half of the book. There were so many different characters all introduced and several different time periods. I’m not a huge lover or stories that use flashbacks, I like ones that are done well. This was sometimes jarring and confusing. Despite this I finally got into the story a little over halfway and then it seemed as if it suddenly was just over at the end.
I loved the atmosphere of the story. It’s totally spooky and draws you in. This would be a great book for the spooky season this October. The magic was interesting and I’d love to have learned a little bit more about it.
There was a huge cast of characters that came from all different kinds of backgrounds. They were diverse and accepting and just full of love for one another. I really enjoyed this girl gang once I finally got into the story.
There was mystery and suspense and drama with a kickass girl gang, in the woods. Overall, it didn’t blow me out of the water, but I read it in only a few hours. I’d love to see more from this bookish world.
Keep on reading lovelies, Amanda.

Let me start off with the fact that I enjoyed a ton of the things Capetta was trying to do. There's a whole bunch of diversity here that spans race, gender identity, class, and sexuality. That diversity, while is important to each character, is not the defining characteristic of them. It centers around a group of teen witches who have lost a friend and are trying to get her back. That friend becomes the mulligan in a pretty unique mystery. There's magic creatures and people.

But the huge drawback for me was the attempt to create more of a mystery by jumping the story around too much. If you are not a fan of a non-linear story telling style, then this will frustrate you to no end, despite the characters and writing. There were times where the story would jump to the trees or other animals in the woods that this mostly takes place in, that I thought was really unnecessary. It felt like Capetta was driving home the fact that the setting isn't quite what it seems, and I thought it was redundant. Like I got it, we know of a girl who is here but not really, her friends all have some preternatural abilities, and the new girl has an ability but we don't know it yet.

Other than that, I loved the richness of the story, and the world building. We know Imogen went... somewhere, but we don't really get to see what that place is as a whole until near the end of the story. Each young woman has their story, and is well developed and relatable. Also, there's a ton of drama that, while at times is a little much, makes it really feel like a teenager is narrating it. Which Danny, the new girl, does for most of the book.

This is a good, if a little messy young adult book that has some great themes in it. Recommended.

This book came to me at just the right time! It was a perfect palate cleanser after some longer works and some nonfiction. Queer, teen witches in the Redwoods of California. Sign me up! Danny has been searching for something ever since she became obsessed with kissing all the girls who needed kissing in her Michigan hometown. Her search finds her in Tempest, California in the path of The Grays, a tight knit group of friends who use magic. One of them has somehow gone missing even though her body is still present. Danny will have to team up with this band of misfits (and fight her attraction to one of them) in order to find Imogen and bring her back to herself.

I loved so many things about this book. Its short chapters made it a quick read. I’d plan to just read one or two, but I’d quickly fly through five or six before I realized it was time to go to bed. The characters are amazing. Each Gray has her/their own personality, and each bring some cool magic to the table. We are introduced to them through Danny’s eyes, and that introduction is a great way to get to know all of the characters.

The alternating point-of-views also do a lot of work in the character development. We get an insider look into Danny’s head in her first person POV chapters, an outside look at the kids at school, and third person looking in at the Grays with a bit of insight here and there during their chapters. Each chapter breaks down relationships and are titled things like ‘Rush and Imogen” to help provide insight and keep the audience straight with where we’re at in the story.

There is a solid but very secondary romantic storyline, just how I like my romantic storylines. There is just enough teenage drama surrounding the buildup to establish solid romantic tension, and honestly, I loved the friendship among all the girls and their inhibitions around their relationships more than anything. They have truly remarkable friendships, and I’d be lucky to find people like them.

There are some solid plot twists, and once I got to the last hour or so of the book, I couldn’t put it down. As mentioned above, it’s out today, so be sure to pick it up wherever your local fine books are sold. This is my third book by Capetta, but it certainly won’t be my last.

It is really hard to write this review because I have problems finding the right words to express how I feel. This book was unlike any I've read before, that much is sure. If I had to sum it up in 3 words, I'd say atmospheric, queer, weird.The whole book had an atmosphere of magic, like you could taste and feel it. Of course, this is a book about witches, but even without the actual magic the story itself would have been so. But with the addition of witches it is made even more magical. It is all around, there for the protagonists to use, a part of everything, a thing to be shaped. It reads like it was a character itself. The magic is in the redwoods where the most part of the story is set, it's in the witches and in the graveyard, it's in the water and the birds. And it is described in such beautiful, soemtimes almost prosaic ways.The characters were amazing. In the center of the story are Danny, who moves from Michigan to Tempest in California. She's never felt like she belonged anywhere until she meets The Grays. Danny likes to flirt and kiss girls and sometimes she finds it hard to keep her mouth shut. Usually, when she thinks something, it just pops out. But she is also smart and trusts her intuition. The Grays are a very diverse group of witches. One of them, Imogen, has become an empty shell, until one day she completely disappears and her friends have to find her. They each have very different kinds of magic, and they're each very different as well. What brought them together in the first place was Imogen. But they're wonderful and special on their own as well. While the girls dig deeper into magic and the history of the place they live in, the story gets darker and weirder.But it's a good kind of weird. The story is told from several point of views that are spanned over different decades that are all vital to the story and come together later in the book. Some parts of it were confusing, some were beautiful, but all were relevant. The chapters were short, just little snippets of what's happening. It felt like being in a thunderstorm and from time to time lightning cracks and you can see a bit of what's happening. That's how it felt reading this story, the ups and downs and the soft drizzle of rain, hard thunderclaps, the occasional insight into the characters. And while at first I just thought it was weird and I wasn't a fan of this way to tell a story, I came to like it a lot. It shows the characters in a different light, highlighting certain aspects of their lives that are relevant to the story. There's so much I don't know about this characters but it doesn't feel like I'm missing information either. The story itself feels whole in itself while I still want to read more about the characters and how their lives go on.

3.75 stars rounded up to 4!

This book was full of lyrical, atmospheric writing that hooked me right in. Being able to read about so many queer girls - which was SO validating to me, especially as the book went on to describe how the girls loved each other and displayed this love (both romantic and platonic) was an experience that I found to be an extremely important part of the book. This is undoubtedly where the book shines.

However, while I loved the way in which this book was written, I also had issue understanding what was occurring in this book at times. This rang especially true as the book went on to not only switch point-of-views between different characters, but also how it changed sporadically between first-person and third-person point-of-views. While I did become used to this while reading, it was highly distracting and confusing at times.

However, I undoubtedly loved this book and would recommend it to anyone who wants more wonderful stories about queer witches.

ARC provided by Netgalley and Candlewick Press in exchange for an honest review.

"But sometimes lost is where you need to be for a while."

4 STARS

CW: mild body horror, homophobia, smoking, nudity, disordered eating, death of a loved one, underage drinking, on page sex

Like I tweeted a few days ago: as a queer girl from Michigan, I needed and adored every last word of this. Every last word.

It's a surprisingly quiet novel in some ways, despite the magic running through it all. This isn't a story about saving the world, it isn't the beginning of a series too big for just one book, it isn't something with the stakes so high that you're on the edge of your seat and worried one mistake will send everything crashing down.

It's a story about witches and about love and about finding yourself at home even when you've uprooted everything. It's about making and breaking trust, and it's about finding purpose and peace.

I will say this before I launch into the rest of what I loved: I do wish the characters had had a little more depth. As the story progressed, we got to finally see who they really were, especially in the ways that Imogen tended to bring them to life and grant them confidence in themselves, but at first, they really did feel kind of ephemeral, even Danny, whose POV is the only first person POV in the novel and should have felt a little closer and easier to read as a result. It frustrated me enough that this is where I took away a star.

But with that said, it was beautiful otherwise. For one, the prose was stunning, especially in the third-person, non-human POVs. It had a lyrical, haunting quality to it that suited the fog and the towering redwoods of the coast, and it made everything the Grays did in their sleepy little town feel all the more special and worth cherishing. It gave this book life in a way that takes talent and patience and an eye for stringing the world together in delicate, lovely pieces, and I really appreciated it.

There was also an incredibly diverse cast. Danny is queer, in her own terms. Hawthorn is a black bisexual girl. June is a Filipino femme lesbian. Lelia is nonbinary and gray-asexual. Rush is fat and queer. Imogen never adheres to any labels, but she's shown to be attracted to other girls as well. All of them are so open and frank about themselves in this way, and their confidence actually almost had me in tears. I can't imagine reading this when I was in high school and still grappling with what it meant once I realized I was not straight. Having grown up in a relatively conservative house, in a rural conservative area, I was terrified, but now I'm imagining the confidence and comfort this could have given me, and I can only hope this gives other queer girls a feeling of comfort and belonging too.

And of course, the setting had a life of its own. This ties back to the prose in some ways; the setting wouldn't have been half as enchanting without the words that so smoothly crafted it. But it really was amazing. You felt that those massive redwoods had lives humans, even witches, can't quite comprehend. You felt some of the pressures of a small town, where everyone seems to know everything, except the secrets that matter most. You got lost in the fog and the magic and it all blended together and carried you somewhere else, if only for a little while, if only just long enough.

In some ways, I'm at a loss for what else to say, because this was a book after my own heart, one that would have meant even more to me if it'd existed in my hands just a few years earlier. But it still means so much now, just in a different way, and I can only hope there are other queer kids out there who share this feeling.

And if you want to visit the Lost Coast and the witches that call it home, your chance is coming. It releases tomorrow, May 14th. You have just a few hours left to preorder it if you're reading this on the 13th, and then after that, it will be out in the wild with its gorgeous rainbow cover and the incredible pages inside. I honestly can't recommend it enough, and I really hope you enjoy it as much as I did, if not more, if you decide to read it. What more could I wish for, honestly?

[This review is scheduled to go live on The Words Gremlin around 10 am EST on May 13th, 2019.]

A modern magical coming of age story, The Lost Coast by Amy Rose Capetta is a book about friendship, love, acceptance, and of course witches. Danny is struggling to find her place, and when she and her mother decide to up stakes and move to Tempest, California, she is not sure that her new home will be any better than her last one, but something about it seems to be drawing her in. When she starts at her new school, she soon finds herself being drawn into a group of girls known as The Grays, each very different but bound together by their magic and their friendship. Despite their different backgrounds and upbringings, they are completely comfortable with each other, accepting their queerness as readily as their magical powers. It soon becomes clear that they are what has drawn Danny to Tempest, she is needed to help them save Imogen, a fellow Gray with immense powers, but Danny has no idea what kind of power she has , if any, and in the meantime people are getting hurt or even killed.
That should give you a basic idea of the story, without spoiling anything significant about the book, but suffice it to say that I was really satisfied with how the plot progressed and the ending of the book.
There were many things I really liked about this book, starting with the diversity of the characters, both in terms of race and sexual orientation, and I loved that most of the girls felt comfortable in their own skins, while those who didn't were always encouraged and comforted by the others.There are open discussions about genders, pronouns , being bi, gay or ace and these are incorporated as a natural part of the story. The value and importance of female friendship is also really emphasised, which I always love to see.
I also loved how the author made the forest setting almost feel like another character in the book, the mysterious and ancient redwoods , dark and rolling fog, and mercurial and dangerous storms really added to the atmosphere of the book.
I really liked how the magic systems in the book felt very natural and believable, and certainly fit the natural woodland setting very well.
Overall I have to say I really loved this book and would definitely recommend it. I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

Danny has recently moved from Michigan to Tempest California with her mother. She felt pulled to ate,pest, and she soon finds out why when she meets “The Greys” the weird girls who hang out together and do ,ago on the woods. Most of their peers are afraid of them, but not Danny. One of their own has gone missing, and The Greys need Danny’s help to find her.
I want to start out by saying this is the most gorgeous cover. I’m in love with this cover design. Like the moody cover, this novel was filled with lyrical prose. I found it distracting at first, but it is really something I enjoy, there was a very Francesca Lia Block feeling to the writing style. I enjoyed that queer was normal for these girls,. I thoroughly enjoyed this queer, lyrical, magic filled mystery.

When I first heard about this book and read "queer witches" I was there. I was there before it was written. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to my expectations.

First off, let me say how grateful that Candlewick and Netgalley approved me for this arc. Although I wanted to love it, the execution was way off for me, and it could not save it.

The setting of northern California was fantastic, and the atmosphere was magical. Throw in a group of diverse, queer witches trying to find their lost sister be recruiting another, and you'd think we'd have some terrific story-telling. The characters were so unique, and I wished we had more time with each of them. The platonic love between them was refreshing.

But the thing that was throwing me off was the setup. We jump from POV to POV so quickly that it's a bit jarring. Not jarring in that we switch POV's, but that we have to get comfortable in a setting that fasts forwards and I never felt truly grounded. I was a bit confused plot-wise since it moves so quickly without much information. I never truly connected to the character's, as I never really had time. Then it ended and that was that.

I hope others enjoy it, as I am sure they will since we all have differing opinions. I did hope for more and I suppose my expectations were too high.