I got 50 pages in, but couldn't finish this. The description sounds fun, but the writing is lazy. The slang used is basically already outdated. There's nothing new about witches here that hasn't already been done. When i got to a passage where the authors were describing what the characters were wearing like this was a cliche fanfic, I was out.

Hunter and Mercy are direct descendants of an ancient line of witches who settled in Goodeville. These twins must learn what they need to do to be Gatekeepers and keep creatures from other realms out of our world. They quickly learn that there is a lot they don’t know after their mother is the first victim in a series of murders. Will Hunter and Mercy be able to learn the spells and rituals they need to protect their town? Will this crisis break even their twin bond?

Spells Trouble is the first book in the Sisters of Salem series. There are many books out there that have witches who are descended from a Salem Witch and this one isn’t much different than those. I do understand that Cast needed to complete world-building and character development, yet the overall storyline fell flat. Readers can tell from the ending that there will be more books in this series and I hope that the story will become better evolved in the upcoming titles. For now, I recommend this series as a no rush to-be-read book.

I love P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast! Their books are just magic. They know how to create a world and draw the reader in. This book is no different. I loved this book. I can not wait to read more in this series.

This was a good book. It's about twin witches who are meant to be Gatekeepers until their mother is murdered and now the twins must solve the case of who is murdering the people. I have read P.C. Cast and Kristen Cast's past books, House of Night, which I have enjoyed. The writing of this book was the same but it didn't suit the book in my opinion. The story plotline was all well structured and well-paced but I didn't enjoy the word choices as much. I felt that it was very childish at times when it should have been more mature. I did enjoy reading about the witches of Salem and getting to know the history behind the Goode witches which I think more will come in the other books.

In this book, there are two main characters who are Hunter and Mercy. This book is written in both of their POVs. I enjoyed Hunter's character more as I felt she was more mature and organized vs Mercy who was childish and annoying. Though both did have a great story development. The side characters were enjoyable in the book especially the cat who turns into an aunt which I thought was cute. I wish for the other side characters we got to know a little more about them but I think that will expand in the future books. In this book, I was confused with the super detailed s*x scene as this is a YA book with a teenager who turned 16...

The ending was well done in this book and I enjoyed how all the characters came together with taking part in solving the mystery. I think this book could have been so much better if the writing wasn't childish and possibly have had older characters. The writing was the reason why it got dropped to three stars but I'm hoping for the next books to be better. I recommend this book to fans of fantasy and witches.

I cannot describe how excited I was to both see and get approved for this title. I was absolutely head over heels for House of Night (and seeing myself in Zoey bc you never see Cherokee girls being the MC) so my excitement for this novel knew no bounds. I really enjoyed the dual POV take as I feel it gave the story the dimension and depth it needed to really give you an idea of the who, what, and why that drove the plot. I will say that I felt like the execution of this story fell a bit short for me; the tonality of it all sort of clashed (middle grade feel w/ a sex scene? Why.) , there were bits that drug on, and areas that could’ve used a rework. There was so much potential for this story, but unfortunately the execution of it all didn’t do it justice.

Goode sisters are twin witches. On the midnight of their 16th birthday they take up the work of gatekeeping of different underworlds from their mother as did the generations of Goode witches before them. But something goes awry during the ritual. As their mother dies protecting them from the nightmarish mythological beast, it falls on their shoulders to keep the ancient portals between their worlds and the mythological realms, closed.

The best part of the story was the prologue. It started out like this - Salem Witch Trials era, a mother daughter duo and a feline familiar - a rather promising start of a fantasy fiction. From there, each chapter was a downhill journey. The interactions between the characters felt forced somehow. Some were downright cringey. If not for the unexpected inclusion of a very graphic sex scene I would have said the writing style was aimed for children and middle graders. Loose ends and unnecessary subplots were all over the place. With floundering plot and dull characters, 'Spells Trouble' could not become the story it promised. I hope the second story brings forth the same magic as the prologue of this story did.

T/W death of a parent, sexual content, homophobia, bullying, violence, gore.

This book releases on 25th May. If you are a fan of magic, mythology and YA fictions then this might be a good summer read for you.

Thanks to Netgalley and Wednesday Books for providing the e-ARC.

I'm a big fan of the House of Night books so when I saw that PC and Kristin Cast had a new book series coming out I was really excited, especially since it was witchy. Unfortunately this book was nothing but a big letdown. It was messy, chaotic and really immature. Hunter and Mercy are incredibly childish heroines and it is unbelievable that they would be able to handle the task put before them. The magic system is super basic and feels under-researched, and while the idea of the gates and multiple mythologies had potential it was poorly developed. I also found that the sex scene was unnecessarily graphic, especially for it being between teens in a YA book. Not good. Overall this book is a big disappointment and I'm not sure how it got past the editors.

This book’s premise was amazing but unfortunately for me, I didn’t love the execution.

While I understand these are teen characters and they will act like dumb teens, it just felt even more unrealistic because both Hunter and Mercy were usually super wise and read older quite often. It was a bit weird when they would go from smart/mature to super childish in the span of a couple pages.

In this novel, twin sisters Hunter and Mercy Goode are descendants of a long line of witches with real power leading back to the infamous Salem Witch Trials. On the night of their sixteenth birthday, a spell seems to go awry and lead to their mother's death. While the twins are grieving they have to tend to five trees that guard gates to various mythological underworlds.

I wanted to like this book. No, I wanted to LOVE this book. It had everything going for it in the description - Salem witches, underworlds, demons, magic... However, when actually reading this book I was never actually sure what age it was written for. The language and character-building seemed more like a middle-grade book, while the plot seemed more YA, while the very detailed blow job and orgasm scene seemed VERY ADULT. This book was listed as a YA and that should mean that it's OK for about 13-year-olds. I believe Amazon lists YA as 12-18-year-olds. As a parent to a kid in that age range, I certainly wouldn't let him read this.

Even if you ignore the drawn-out and detailed sex scene, there is still a terrible ending. I'm not going to give spoilers to what happens, but at the end of one chapter, Mercy is so upset because she can't feel Hunter and thinks her twin is dead. The next chapter gives that same time frame from Hunter's perspective and the next is an epilogue set days or weeks later with no explanation to what happened in between or how things have been or what the aftermath for the town was. It's just a happy-go-lucky beach day. Like... what? There is no way an entire town just forgot about Hell beasts murdering at least four townsfolk!

3 1/2 stars....

Spells Trouble had all the ingredients to be a great book. Unfortunately, for me, it fell short. It wasn't a bad read. However, I felt like it had potential to be much more. In my opinion, there was a significant amount of time spent on unnecessary details. There was also a great deal of inner dialogue with Hunter and Mercy. Some of that helps the reader understand their feelings and impressions. However, too much of it can become somewhat redundant Because of this, I thought the story felt drawn out without enough activity to keep my attention. I believe sometimes the first book in a series can be challenging. Many times a lot of effort goes into world building and I'm hoping that is the case with this series.

I did enjoy the relationship between Hunter, Mercy and their friends. I also think the premise behind this story is a good one and I believe the next book in the series has promise. I look forward to seeing where these authors take Hunter and Mercy's story.

In addition, I both listened to the audiobook and read the ebook. The narration for the audiobook was good. She gave the story a solid flow and helped the listener easily differentiate between the characters.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. I voluntarily chose to review it and the opinions contained within are my own.

Spells Trouble is the first book in the Sisters of Salem by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast. A paranormal young adult fantasy that is full of mystery and intrigue.

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin's press for providing me with a copy of this book to read and review.
This was my first book by these authors. I have heard good things about the writing and wanted to give it a try.
While I loved what the story line represented, I honestly was not thrilled with the writing. I think my biggest gripe was that one of the characters, who is not British, used many British colloquialisms. Couple that with her being a twin, living with her sister in the USA and it just annoyed me.
Overall I liked the theme. Witches are fun to read about. Though their powers in this book really do rely on spells overall, so it was a bit different for me.. I do feel like there could have been more explanation of each tree, more background about what they truly represent. Perhaps in the following books there will be more background.
The third person was a bit hard to follow at first. I had a hard time figuring out which twin was talking sometimes. I did like that their personalities were very distinct.
The writing seemed a bit off to me and definitely did not feel like YA but more like middle grade. There were times I thought it would pick up. The bones of a story were buried there, I thought I would start to love it, but I did not. I felt like there was a disconnect in many areas, perhaps because it's two authors writing together. I'm not sure if this is how their writing normally is.
The whole time I was reading I felt like I had fell into the middle of a series. Like there was some background I was missing. I kept going back to Goodreads to see if there was something I missed about a tie in series.
Overall it wasn't really for me. I"m sure fans of these authors will adore it. But I don't see myself moving on for another shot at liking the next book in the series.

Thank you NetGalley, authors P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast, and Wednesday Books publishing for giving me a free arc of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
4 stars
TW: Loss of a parent
Ever since I read the House of Night series by these same authors, I have been a huge fan of their works.
I was excited to see they have started a new series after such a long time.
This book follows twin witches, who are descendants of one of the the original witches of the Salem Witch Trials Sarah Good, who was able to escape with her daughter and started a new life in Illinois.
On the night of their 16th birthday Mercy and Hunter are to preform a ceremony ritual with their mother, but as they are about to come into their powers by choosing a god or goddess, something comes through one of the portals, which leads to their mother sacrificing her life to protect them. Now left on their own with only a family cat familiar to guide them, they must find out why the trees are dying and what came through the portal the night of their birthday.
As always the authors developed great characters and showed their growth throughout their journey. I liked Hunter more than I liked Mercy! Mercy seemed to be more like a younger sister than the same age as her twin. Mercy seemed to hold onto her grief a little more and was more focused on her relationship with her boyfriend. I liked how close they were even though they were really opposites in many ways. This book was a little more mature that their previous books. There was a darker side to this book with all the murders and the sisters trying to stop them. The ending was not overly surprising, but made for a great set up for the next book to pick up from. Overall, I would recommend this book to those who like YA stories about witches and sisterly bonds. I am looking forward to the second book in this series!

I love the witches of Salem so was looking forward to this story.. It had magic and a mystery. There was a shout out to HON which was great until I started to feel like I was reading HON but with different characters. You had the main protagonist surrounded by a group of friends doing spells in a circle using the same greetings.. I was glad when HON ended as it outlived its life, so I was not looking to read the same formula again. I was surprised by the explicit oral sex scene as being a YA book these scenes are usually glossed over. I did enjoy Aunt Xena and would be interested in more of her story. It was good but would like the sequel to build on the world and divert from HON's formula.

As a fan of both witch books and mythology, I was excited to read this. Sadly, this book is witches with a hot mess of mythology just splashed everywhere. I like books where mythologies from all over are together, like American Gods. But the magic and mythologies in this novel weren’t cohesive. I understand it is a new take on the genre, but I couldn’t immerse myself into the world. The opening takes place during the Salem Witch Trials, and there are references to Gaia and Odysseus by Puritans that had actually existed.

While I normally LOVE books by this dynamic duo, this one did not meet that bar. I looked forward to reading it when I had free time but I found the characters less complete than other story lines by them. Not once did I sacrifice sleep to read just a little more. A couple of the minor characters were developed enough that I look forward to seeing them again. The ending felt abrupt but I guess it is a good opening for book two. That said, I think that the story line has great potential and look forward to seeing the characters come more alive in future books. I am grateful for the opportunity to read and review the book. Overall, I think it was a good read and it gives me something to look forward to.

I just don't think this book was for me. I got excited because I thought maybe this could make me like YA Fantasy but it just missed the mark with me even though it was still contemporary.

I was really excited to read this book because I’ve been wanting to read more books about Witches and I recognized the authors.

Unfortunately, I feel like this book would have been better if it was geared towards younger readers. The writing style reminded me of books I read in middle school. It was trying to reach an older audience without matching the writing to it.

I ended up skipping the sex scene because it felt super uncomfortable. Partly because it really didn’t fit with the writing style but it also was cringey.

I found this slow and flat. I loved the concept and the two sisters connections. I didn’t care much for the boyfriend or their friends. I thought it was fun that the Cat was also their “aunt” that was a fun throwback to Sabrina the teenage witch. But overall I wouldn’t recommend this book.

1 STAR

What should be a celebration turns rapidly into a tragedy for Hunter and Mercy Goode.


The night of their sixteenth birthday, they pledge themselves to their patron gods, preparing to become full witches in their own right. But even as they reach this monumental milestone, something goes horribly awry, killing their mother and weakening the gates of Goodeville in the process. Now, overrun by grief and fear, without their beloved mother’s guidance, the twins must discover the source of the evil seeping into their town if they hope to protect their loved ones who remain.

That’s easier said than done, though, and along the way, Hunter and Mercy must come to understand one another, too.


Conceptually, this could have been exciting. In practice, though, Spells Trouble is an exercise in futility.


Frankly, the only reason I didn’t DNF this book was my own stubborn nature, and the faint hope that maybe it would improve by the end. Obviously, seeing as I gave it only a single star, it very much did not, and this is due to its constant failure to accomplish anything of note. You would think that portals to various underworlds would elicit a great sense of urgency, even with grief weighing on the twins. Yet the pacing and tone is all over the place, sometimes leaning almost towards a younger YA voice and focusing on blips of character bonding that don’t advance the plot, and sometimes launching into a full on sex scene between sixteen year old kids that also does very little for the plot.

(I would have had less of an issue with the sex scene if it wasn’t so…detailed? I get that teens sometimes have sex, and I think it’s reasonable for YA authors to include that. But when your sex scene is written with such an emphasis on the sexy? In YA? Yeah, that’s pretty uncomfortable.)

Really, most of the issues stem from this failure to advance the plot. Over the course of the entire book, the Goode twins alternate between mourning their mother and fumbling through possible ways to protect the trees that serve as underworld gates, only to end the book knowing they failed after all their hard work. What, then, was the point of all those attempts? What was the point of all that tense research and the drawing of boundaries between characters?

It ultimately feels like a waste of 320 pages to place our characters essentially where they started, except more distrustful of one another than before.


But Spells Trouble doesn’t just flounder in its plot. It’s careless in its representation and approaches.


This section of my review could easily go on forever, but I’ll try to keep it concise. The short version? Certain fragments of representation were handed out as if to score brownie points. Certain personality traits were slapped onto characters to make them less dull, only to make them feel even flatter. It’s overall a train wreck, dripping with a carelessness that has me rolling my eyes so hard I can see the back of my skull.

The personality trait issue is the far less serious of the two I’ve mentioned, and takes a little less time to cover. For some reason, the authors make sure to highlight that Hunter is an aspiring author, only to give that hobby minimal depth beyond a single notebook and her inability to put the words on the page. It barely shapes her character otherwise.

Meanwhile, Mercy sometimes uses British slang for absolutely no reason at all. She doesn’t have anyone in her life from England, and hasn’t spent any time there at all. It’s entirely inexplicable, and while I’m sure there are kids out there who play around with slang and accents for minimal reason, it only serves here to make Mercy irritating, as well as a collection of eccentricities pasted on top of an otherwise boring character. Complexity and nuance who?

But easily most frustrating are matters of attempted representation. The most obvious issue is the way Hunter is treated. She is a lesbian, but the matter only surfaces when discussing childhood bullying she faced (complete with gratuitous slurs!), or when she feels isolated and not like other folks in Goodeville. Here I was, all excited about a book that might have a sapphic witch, and all I got was this lousy case of dogpiling and misery.

And while we’re at it, let’s talk about how the authors handle race and culture, because they’re terrible at it. Turns out, the underworld gates in Spells Trouble are linked to mythologies across the world, including underworlds from Japanese, Hindu, and Egyptian mythology. And these gates? They were founded by a white woman, who conveniently found the solution to holding mythological underworlds at bay when the indigenous populations could not.

(It’s no surprise that this indigenous population is said to be gone now, and that SURPRISE, one of the supporting characters is half Native American! Not that you would know unless it was mentioned, since there are absolutely zero indicators otherwise. And naming which group of indigenous people he’s part of? Gee whiz, that must have been too much work.)

Overall, it makes Spells Trouble clumsy, frustrating, and disrespectful, even if that wasn’t the authors’ intent. After all, you can intend to do right by someone or something and still cause harm instead. Or, as it often feels in this case, you can try to score your brownie points but just not really, truly care.


In full honesty, I cannot recommend this book.


I regret not DNFing it, to be frank. And I can’t even come up with a sort of reader who might enjoy it. When I finished reading, I felt like I’d wasted the last three hours of my life. You probably know as well as I do that’s never a good feeling.

Save your three-odd hours for another book, one that’s actually enjoyable. Or go for a walk. Maybe play a video game. Simply anything else is probably more rewarding than Spells Trouble.


CW: animal death, underage drinking, violence, gore (including eye gore), graphic injury, loss of a loved one, homophobia (including slurs), sex scene, drug use


[This review will go live on Hail & Well Read at 2pm EST on 5/17/21.]

Im having a hard time getting into this book. I have time still to keep trying to read it but I honestly don't think I will.