I am sad to say that this book did not live up to my expectations. It was an easy read but the plot fell a bit flat for me. In Payback's A Witch, we follow Emmy Harlow as she returns to Thistle Grove after suffering from a terrible breakup with Blackmoore's scion, Gareth. She's left in charge of leading the magical tournament that takes place every 50 years which the Blackmoore's have always won. Emmy's long-time crush, Talia, and best friend, Linden, were also wronged by Gareth which leads them to team up and defeat the Blackmoore's in the tournament. I think the idea is great but it could have been executed a lot better. Also, the writing style just felt a bit over the top and just seemed like it was trying too hard. I am personally not the biggest fan of the book but I do love the sexy mysterious witch that is Talia.

I don’t think myself to be a stupid person. Sometimes, I have my moments, but intellectually I feel like I’m pretty average (not gonna toot my own horn).

This book made me feel stupid. The writing was so pretentious. I’ve never had a causal conversation with someone and slipped that many “large” words into it. On top of that, the conversations itself were not natural. Not only did it not flow smoothly, they were filled with details that I think should have been left to internal dialogue or descriptors - not in convo between two characters.

THAT. BEING. SAID.

The storyline itself was super cute. It’s sapphic witches meets “John Tucker Must Die” which I loooooooved. The friendships were fun, the trials were entertaining, and I needed even more Talia. I loved the fact this was an “urban fantasy” of sorts, set in the real world with a magical town smack dab in suburbia.

I really wanted to like this book. I just could not get past the writing. My queer heart is very sad :(

Vibrant, sensual, and a mystic awakening that overloaded my senses.

This is Harper’s move from YA into the world of Rom-com. I’ll be honest, this book didn’t scream Rom-Com to me. It read more like a women’s fiction but with the paranormal. Like if the L Word and Practical Magic had a baby. The story also started out a little slow. So why did I give it a four? I’ll be happy to tell you.

Magic. Worldbuilding. The reality and stigma of expectations forced upon people at a young age that they carry into adulthood. Those are the three big things that resonated with me and also has me eager to see what the next installment from this series will be.

We have our main character, Emmy Harlow, coming back home due to a family duty and tradition she can’t escape. Though upon arrival in the lovely town of Thistle Grove she’s reminded rather quickly why she left in the first place and wondering how she’s going to survive this next go-around.

Enter Talia Avramov, town hottie and a woman with natural magical talent that rivals some of the best in town. She’s fresh off a breakup with the very man who had Emmy running from Thistle Grove. So, what should two witches do when they have a common enemy… team up.

From a pacing perspective this book starts out slow, but there’s a whole world to set up and lot’s of backstory aka baggage that Emmy Harlow is toting around. At first, I found the story easy to walk away from, but then we hit about twenty percent in and I was hooked/invested. I needed to see what would happen with Emmy, how would she defeat her ex, and if her and Talia could make whatever was blossoming between them work. I wasn’t disappointed.

Definitely looking forward to the next chapter in this story and this is a perfect read to get some good Halloween vibes. If Thistle Grove was a real place, I’d move their asap.

~ Landra

4.25 Stars. I had so much fun with this! This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2021 and I’m happy to say that it was just as good as I hoped. The vibe was The Other Woman/John Tucker Must Die with some the Goblet of Fire, but with sapphic adult witches. It was really enjoyable and a great read to get you in the mood for Halloween.

I was really impressed by how good Harper’s writing was. Her style is very smooth and nice to read, plus her details are really on point. Not only do you know what this magical town run by witch’s looks like, but you even know what it smells like. It seems to me that authors don’t use taste and smell very often anymore, but Harper did and it just really brought this story to life. I live in New England, actually only a couple of hours from Salem, Mass., and I can’t tell you how magical the month of October is around here. The gorgeous colors of the leaves changing, the sunny days that are just cool enough to keep the bugs away, and the smells of pumpkins and apple cider in the air just makes it special around here. The way I feel about New England in the fall is the same way Harper described the town of Thistle Grove (minus the witchey magic of course) and I could not help but to fall in love with her setting. While this is her first book under Harper, it’s not a debut as she writes YA under Lana Popovic.

I was really happy with the characters, especially the two main characters. This is first person, in the head of Emmy Harlow, but the other characters are so well done, especially Natalia Avramov, so that you feel like you know her and she even steals a bit of the spotlight from Harlow. Natalia has this really sexy presence, mix in some darker necromancer magic, and she just has a bit of a bad girl vibe, but with a heart of gold, that made her into a crush-on-able book character. I have to also mention that I was really happy with the romance. The characters have great chemistry and you just can’t help hoping they will somehow end up together.

I was pleasantly surprised that while this book had a good romance, the magical fantasy parts were well done too. I find a lot of paranormal romances to either have too much romance and not enough paranormal, or the opposite. I think this book was perfectly balanced and that it will appeal to fans that love magical and paranormal books, but it will also work well for romance fans that are more dipping their toe into this category for Halloween reads.

TLDR: I absolutely recommend this one to readers looking for good Halloween books. I think this book will have a wide appeal to many different readers and it was good fun too. I really enjoyed the writing and I hope Harper will write more sapphic stories, in the future, as I would love to read them. This was really enjoyable and I hope this will be out on audio as I think the writing style would transfer very well and I would definitely buy it.

Thank you so much to Berkley Publishing for sending me a last-minute eARC in exchange for an honest review. This in no way impacted my rating of the book.

It's giving John Tucker Must Die meets Triwizard Tournament but make it sapphic. I loved the magical town of Thistle Grove, Harper did a great job with the setting and developing the magical system in this town. I really appreciated this because although this is a rom-com at its core, you can tell that great care was taken to ensure the fantastical elements in this world were just as captivating as the romance. I found the plot was fast-paced and the characters were well developed.

I also love when romance novels touch on all relationships, beyond just romantic ones. This book touches on themes of friendship, familial love, and romantic love. To me, that is always the mark of a well-thought-out book. I'm really impressed with Lana Harper's writing and very excited to read the second installment in this series about Talia's sister Isidora and Linden's brother Rowan.

I am about the witchy rom-coms right now! There was a lot I loved about this book. For instance, I have a hard time creating mental images when I read, but the way this is written made it way easier for me. I loved the importance of friendship as well as finding yourself.

I wish the romance had been a bit...more? But otherwise I felt like it was a perfect seasonally appropriate read! I would love to go there...and I could easily picture this as a movie!

Think Stars Hollow meets Halloween town. That’s the backdrop for “Payback’s a Witch.” When Emmy reluctantly returns to her hometown after nearly a decade to help with the town’s traditional witchy competition, she hopes to avoid seeing her ex. Which of course is exactly who she runs into on her first night back in town. Worse is, he doesn’t even recognize her. Emmy soon finds that this ex also double-crossed her best friend Linden and her high school crush, Talia. The three witches hatch a plan for revenge!

This was a little slow for me to get into. There was ALOT going on, which I realize now may be setting up storylines for future books as a sequel has already been announced. Overall, I did enjoy the themes of family and reconnecting to your roots. If you are fans of witchy, fall vibes and the movie John Tucker Must Die, I think you’d like this book too.

Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for the ARC copy in exchange for my honest review. “Payback’s a Witch” is out now!

Thank you so much to @ berkleypub + @netgalley for my advanced copy.

I was throughly charmed by this FUN, fresh and effervescent story. Emmy Harlow is a young witch whose lost some of her magic touch. Years ago after getting her heart broken, she left her magical small town of Thistle Grove to strike out on her own. Now she’s headed back at the request of her parents to assume her role as arbiter of a spell -casting tournament between the town’s powerful founding families. Emmy finds herself falling back in love with her hometown, her magical abilities and the mysterious + compelling + gorgeous, Talia Avramov. Together with her best friend Linden, the three decide to get revenge on the man that did wrong by all of them. A story about love, friendship, revenge and tradition with plenty of magic and chemistry sprinkled in, you don’t want to miss this one! The writing was engaging, the magical aspects were creative and intriguing and I loved the chemistry between the characters. A queer, witchy, magical love story!

When the prodigal daughter returns to her witchy hometown, she is only expecting to do her duty one last time before she can go back to her no-magic life in the city. What she doesn’t know is her lifelong crush and her bff have been in cahoots. And cahoots of such magnitude! Used by the same asshole scion of another magical family, they intend to get payback and they rope our heroine into their plans. What begins as a simple plot of showing a guy up turns into a romance, a ploy to save the whole town, and help our heroine find her true place in the grand witchy scheme of things!

There, vague enough to feature as a blurb that you’d find on the back of the book? Good! Now, for the real good stuff:

It features one of the most mature lead couples I’ve read about in ages. Not only are the two women great together, they also retain their own personalities as they get the feel for their new relationship.

You get to see how the heroine interacts with other people who matter to her, as well, such as her friends and family. Not just that, you also see her realize the consequences of a deed she did in her wayward teens come and bite her on the ass in adulthood.

There’s a whole Triwizardy magical tournament that takes place and it is so much fun to read about!

So many female characters who can hold their own are woven into the story.

The one not-so good thing about this book would be that not much happens between the rounds of the tournament, except for a lot of talking. But hey, if it means the heroine gets to deal with her shit on-screen, I can live with that too.

Best of all, there’s going to be a next book in this series and I’ll be gunning for it for sure!

Considering that I got to 48% of Payback's a Witch, I probably should have finished it, but... honestly, I was bored. The technical aspect of the writing was fine, and the characters had pretty strong, distinct voices, but the pacing was all over place. Harper seemed to have trouble juggling all the different parts of the plot and figuring out how to have things move in a way that made sense. The character's plot to get back at the man who hurt them made very little sense, and would have been easy to foil in real life.

I wasn't overly into the relationship between Talia and Emmy, either, as I didn't see much to support their relationship other than mutual lust-at-first-sight. That may be some reader's cup of tea, but it isn't mine, unfortunately.

Also, this is maybe a stupid quibble when Payback's a Witch is meant to be a fun rom-com that you don't think about too much, but I was a bit bothered by the history of Thistle Grove. The novel states that the four founders of the town gravitated to the area because the land "had an abundance of magic".

The land that, by the by, is in America. So... what about the Native Americans who were there first? Were they using that land for anything? Or was it just happily empty of people and waiting for a bunch of colonizers to come take it?

Looking at the reviews, it seems I'm in the minority as far as Payback's a Witch goes, so YMMV. It just wasn't for me.

A huge thank you Berkley Pub for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

4⭐️ 3🌶

I loved this book SO MUCH! I finished this feeling so autumnal and ready for Halloween, it’s definitely the perfect witch-y read for this month. I just want to be transported to Thistle Grove right now!

Firstly, I love the whole premise of these three ex-girlfriends coming together to get back at their as/shole of an ex with the two of them ending up falling for each other. That bit had me hooked immediately but I mostly loved the friendships, self-discovery and character development that went along with that plot.

I absolutely loved Emmy, the main lead! Her narration was well-paced and so relatable. I enjoyed reading about her journey with finding her identity and establishing independence outside and within her hometown as well as her rekindling with her magic.

The plot involving the competition between the three founding families was so entertaining and intense, I really enjoyed reading those chapters especially! Though my fave part was the two families working together to bring down the Blackmoores which works with their plan of getting back at Gareth specifically. It was such a ride seeing them in their zone and using their spells in combat but nothing beats seeing the Blackmoore heir lose constantly!

Additionally, the setting of Thistle Grove gave me so much autumnal, cozy vibes to the point that I just wanted to be there with everyone the more I get to know the place. The presence of the Witch families really added that homey, communal feel to it.

The family dynamics and friendships in this book were among my favorites! I loved Emmy’s relationship with her family as well as her friends and their families. I loved that Emmy had the best support system with Linden, Talia and Rowan! And of course, her parents, Nana and even Delilah!

I’m always up for queer witches so the romance between Talia and Emmy was everything! Their banter and chemistry was so good even from their meet cute! The sexual tension was sizzling! I was looking forward to their every scene together!

I was also so intrigued by each of the families specialized magic so it was interesting to me getting to know each of them. I was invested in the Thorn family and most especially the Avramov family. I’m just excited that we’ll be getting more books in this series so we can further explore the magic systems and Thistle Grove! (The chapter excerpts for book 2 had me wanting the next book ASAP 😭)

Overall, this had such a perfect balance of queer romcom swoon-worthiness and intriguing fantasy elements with all the magic and witches! It’s the perfect autumnal read that will have you laughing, swooning, rooting for the main characters so hard and wishing you were at Thistle Grove with them. I’m excited for more from this series!

This was a perfectly witchy read. I enjoyed the premise and the relationships between Emmy and the other people in the town.

I struggled a little with the writing, or perhaps the way the story unfolded. It took me a bit to really connect to Emmy and her feelings towards the town & her magic. But once I connected, I was invested.

Overall, a great read featuring a queer couple and interesting magical elements.

[More like somewhere between 3.5 and 3.75 if we’re really trying to pull hairs]

If you are looking for a great Fall/Autumn read to get you ready for the season this is it! I simply loved the characters, especially Emmy and Talia, and how their lives intertwine with a place that they love. If you love quests, magic, witches, and friendship you will love this title, too.

Such a wonderful read, its as if Hocus Pocus and Sabrina came together and was made with the Sapphic edge we all needed!
I truly felt committed to the competition feel the girls fell in for the plot. I like all that animosity targeted towards the ex, and something about falling for your old best friend.. sigh.. Love that!
The fantasy aspect was easy to understand so it calls for a quick read and I never felt lost or trying to wonder the hierarchy of things.
I could have used a bit more romance to it, but it may just be me, I like the longing, the sensual.
All in all, THIS IS THE ULTIMATE HALLOWEEN, WITCHY READ! I highly recommend!

Magic tournament, a revenge plot, an adorable dog, and a steamy romance.


It was really cute overall. Loved the couple but I was not on Emmy's side for their fight lol.

The competition was so cool, I would have preferred more tournament, less caring about what that gross boy is doing/did in the past. We're not here for men.

4.5/5⭐️

I was lucky enough to receive this as an Arc, and holy hell did I love it!! This book was described as a rom-com that’s Sabrina the teenage witch meets the L word, and I new it was right up my alley! It’s the perfect mix of magic, sapphic romance, magical competition, and family. Its the perfect October book to give you all the fall, witchy, Stars Hollow with a hot cup of coffee vibes. And is easily high on my list of new favorite books!! Please go read this!!!

I love both the covers I saw but this one, the colors!!! I just can't!

This is such a great witchy read! A unique magical town with 4 magical families. At the time of a spellcasting tournament between the families to determine who is the most powerful family, the Blackmoore's always win. 

Emmy Harlow has been living out in the world since she had her heart broken and has come back just in time for the tournament to take her family's place. Before the tournament she runs into Gareth Blackmoore who broke her heart in high school and also her best friend and one of her former classmates Talia, who happens to be the most beautiful female ever. I will tell you I loved the descriptions that Emmy kept giving her in her head. I would love to be described as a sexy tundra wolf.  All three of the girls had been used by Gareth and decided to band together to take him down.

Emmy's position as the arbiter sounded so powerful and cool as she used the town's original Grimoire to hold the tournament. Each of the competitions sounded dangerous and each family specialized in different magic so it basically would test your knowledge at times. I loved all the down times as well. This town sounded so fun and I totally want to go visit Camelot and Tomes and all the other awesome witchy shops. 

Talia and Emmy's growing relationship was pretty steamy at times but also will they be able to overcome their differences and adapt to how they both like to live. I mean Talia is a necromancer right and can speak to ghosts. 

Thank you berkleyromance and netgalley for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.

Fans of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina rejoice! I have just the book recommendation for you!

This is the perfect spooky season read if you are looking for something light, fun, romantic and magical. Our main character, Emmy, left magic behind to pursue a normal life in Chicago. She's returned to her magical hometown of Thistle Grove for a special spell-casting tournament. 

When she arrives, she becomes a part of a plan between her childhood friend, Lin, and new friend, Talia, to seek revenge on their mutual ex, Gareth. What develops for Emmy is a rekindled friendship, healing, and a little romance. 

I found this book truly delightful. The magic was captivating and the characters were very likable. The steam level is mild and there's plenty of humor as well. 

Payback's a Witch is definitely the Halloween Read you didn't know you needed.

Thank you much to @berkleyromance for my free copy of Payback’s a Witch!

I should have loved this book. I expected to. It has witches, revenge and a sapphic romance, all things I love in a book, but alas I did not.

The writing was overly detailed, almost patronizing and definitely grandiose. I have a good vocabulary but some of the paragraphs I had to stop and look things up multiple times. What is a vesper martini? Vespers are prayers? Gimlet eye? Gimlet is either a boozy drink or a drill. What the heck was I reading? There was so much of this kind of thing that I lost interest.

The revenge stuff was totally trite as well. The author herself made Gareth Blackmoore super bland and constantly said “he wasn’t intentionally a bully, he wasn’t that much of a bad guy”. Well then why do you care after 9 years? Lol

I did enjoy the magic system and the family vs. family set up. That was very well written.

I hate to give negative feedback like this, I was just very disappointed. Hopefully this one finds it’s audience and is a great success, I’m sorry to say it wasn’t my style.

Lana Harper’s Payback’s A Witch is much more than a fun title. It tells the story of Emmy Harlow, a 20-something woman coming home to Thistle Grove. She fled to Chicago five years ago to make a life for herself away from the guy that broke her heart and the town’s expectations of her.

But this isn’t just a coming home story. It’s so much more. Thistle Grove is not just an ordinary town. It is filled with magic and witches. Emmy is a witch but lost most of her magic when she left Thistle Grove. Now that she’s back, she can feel the magic coursing back into her veins.

The big question is why is she coming back now? Well, every year, the four witch families of Thistle Grove have a competition. The Gauntlet. It’s three rounds. Best two out three takes it all. Emmy is there to be the Arbiter. But after that, she’s gone. Back to Chicago (or so she thinks).

More at: https://culturess.com/2021/10/04/paybacks-a-witch/