So remember how we said that we had just recently been introduced to the witchy romcom subgenre of contemporary romance? Well we're trying another: What the Hex, by Jessica Clare.⁠
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So like, what did we think of this one? Well, do you like sunshine/grump romances? Do you like PNR? Does the idea of entering into an illicit professional relationship that you're covering up with a fake romantic relationship sound like something fun? Then you might want to pick up What the Hex.⁠
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The way witchcraft works in this world is a little bit complicated: spellcasters make offerings to the gods while drawing on the well of magical power in their familiars. Familiars, in addition to acting as the magical batteries for their witches, are also kind of like apprentices: they are learning how to cast magic of their own. Also, witches live basically for-ev-er. So by becoming someone's familiar, you can learn how to cast spells AND get eternal life. You can imagine, then, that the pool of familiars is much larger than the pool of witches looking for familiars. It's a total buyer's market.

Willem is a warlock who was banned from taking familiars about a decade ago. Normally he would just wait out his 20-year sentence, but he's been targeted by his old master and needs to cast spells to protect himself. Enter Penny: the secretary of the Society of Familiars, she's been hoping to be picked up as a familiar ever since she turned 20. (It's better to be frozen into eternal life when you still look young, amirite?) She's 30 now and sees no hope of being chosen by a witch in the near future. So even though she's a rule follower, she agrees to be Willem's secret familiar. And since they have to spend a lot of time together, she comes up with the perfect cover: they're in a SERIOUS dating relationship and she just moved into his place.

This is a fun romcom that keeps the tone light, despite the heavier elements of the plot (Willem's past, Penny's relationship with her neglectful parents, and a touch of wrongful imprisonment). But the highlight of the book is watching Penny's raunchy manic pixie dream girl pull down all of Willem's walls.

This objective review is based on a complimentary copy of the novel.

I enjoyed the grumpy / sunshine trope and the mix in of the fake dating trope – both being easy favorites for me. I was intrigued by the mystery / situation that brought Penny and Willem together as well. This one was a bit heavy on the steam for me, and it did take away a bit from the plot and storyline so it didn’t feel like a smooth flow for me. Overall, it was a cute, easy read romance and does have an interesting magical realism world. Great pick for those seeking a witchy / paranormal type romance.

There must be something about magical witchcraft and spice level. What the Hex by Jessica Clare is spicy spicy, which truthfully isn't for me. I've read a string of books recently that have been just too steamy for me. However, that's a me problem and my review below isn't about the steamy bits.

NetGalley Synopsis:

Penny Roundtree wants nothing more than to be a familiar to a witch. She’s been a member of the Society of Familiars ever since she was old enough to join the Fam. There’s just a small problem—no one’s hiring. Witches and warlocks are so long-lived that there are far more familiars available than witches to train them. So when an unorthodox arrangement to apprentice under the table to a forbidden warlock presents itself, she takes it.

Willem Sauer is banned from having a familiar due to past transgressions, thereby limiting his magic-casting abilities. Unfortunately for the surly, Prussian warlock, he has no choice but to work with enthusiastic Penny as a familiar. They immediately clash like dried roan horsehair and honeycomb gathered by moonlight (it’s a terrible spell combination, ask anyone).

Casting spells has delightful perks Penny never could have dreamed of, but also greater dangers. Someone is targeting Penny. Willem and Penny must work together to catch their enemy, and if their ploy requires a little kissing on the side, who is to question the rules of magic?

Verdict? I really liked the complexity of the story and learning more about familiars and their function and relation to a witch/ warlock. I also enjoyed Penny's summery and quirky personality and style. Her friends were also likable, but you know who I couldn't stand? Her parents. Oh my goodness! Willem also can't stand them which made me like him even more. Identity is explored in Clare's novel in a way that I found eye opening. Toxic relationships exist beyond the romantic level, although most often that's where focus lies. In this case, witch and familiar relationships can be toxic, all-consuming, one-sided and the book explores what the consequences of that all consuming commitment can be.

I think I need to go back and read Jessica Clare's first book now! Thank you to @BerkleyRomance and @NetGalley for granting me access to the ARC and to @PRHAudio for access to the ALC.

What a splendid book! Grumpy/sunshine, fake dating, enemies to lovers, and the spice! Yes, please!

Penny is a sweet, wonderful character that I instantly fell in love with. Especially because she has a pet squirrel that she loves. Willem is a surly warlock in need of a familiar to help him with casting even though he is not supposed to.

I didn't read the first book, so there were parts of this that made me feel a little lost, but that's a me problem. I really loved this. I love how Will and Penny worked together, especially the spice! Overall, this book left me feeling warm and fuzzy!

Out April 4, 2023!

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for providing the ARC.

After reading Go Hex Yourself, it seemed fairly obvious that Clare was setting up for a romance brewing between Willem and Penny. And she did not disappoint.

This is quite literally a grumpyxsunshine on steroids. Penny is consistently cheerful, even in the face of adversity and Will is grumpy to a fault. But these two work so well together.

Overall, it was a great follow up to the first book and it's nice to see old friends receive a renewed vigor.

Go hex yourself was one of my fav witchy reads. So when I saw there was another one I was so excited!

I enjoyed this book from start to finish!
The writing was great, the characters, the cover to Omg. I will say I loved the sequel more. Penny won me over from the first book, so do read more about her was great!

This book hit all my fav tropes so I loved that!

Will totally recommend to everyone!

What the Hex is such a fun, witchy read! Penny just wants to be a familiar and learn to be a witch; Willem needs a familiar but due to former transgressions he’s banned from getting one. So the two form a partnership: they’ll pretend to date but in reality Penny will serve as Willem’s familiar. This is a grump/sunshine, fake dating, enemies to lovers. It took me a little bit to get into if I’m being honest, but then I fell in love with the leads. Penny is all joy and sunshine with a dirty mouth, and Willem is all decorum and ambition and I loved Penny knocking down his walls. The magic and mystery throughout was also so interesting and enthralling. And this was one very steamy read! 🥵 I loved how these characters supported each other, Willem’s protectiveness was so sweet and endearing and I loved Penny’s sharp wit and vivacious energy. It’s fun, it’s funny and sharp, it’s witchy, it’s spicy, it really has a little for everyone and I really would recommend it!

This was a little too much insta-love and Penny was annoying as hell.
This was disappointing. A lot of potential! But the writing fell flat and the characters and world building wasn’t as good as I needed it to be

I love a cute, witchy romance and this didn’t disappoint. I haven’t read the first book, Go Hex Yourself, yet but this is totally fine as a stand alone. Though I can tell the first book must have been about Reggie and Ben, I didn’t ever feel like I was missing any of the story or any context.

At the beginning of the book there were a couple of things that were throwing me off. The magic system was a little convoluted but that’s easier to overlook in a romance book than it is in a fantasy. It was mostly some random moments and cringey wording choices that were trying to overly cutesy-ify Penny that kept pulling me out of the story. It was unnecessary and, while I assume the author is just trying to portray her personality, it felt really forced. Her bubbly, vibrant personality comes across just fine, and more naturally, without the extreme ditzy, cutesy additions. Willem is pretty awful for the first part of the book, too…he seems like a total, irredeemable douche. But about ~35% of the way through when Penny and Will start really talking, everything starts coming together. The cringey word choices become much less frequent and Will shows he actually is redeemable, so the rest of the book is just really fun and I could hardly put it down!

I’ll definitely be going back and reading the first book, I really enjoyed the parts with Reggie and Ben, and looking forward to hopefully a third book in the series.

This was a fun follow-up to Go Hex Yourself by Jessica Clare! I loved the grumpy x sunshine dynamic between Penny and Willem and how Willem slowly start to *defrost* and embraced Penny's vibrant personality. While I enjoyed Penny as a main character, some of her dialogue was hard for me to read, as it seemed strange that a 30-year old woman would speak like that. However, I think this personality spoke a lot to her upbringing.

The mystery aspect of the novel was also a little confusing to follow along and overall, I think I enjoyed the mystery in Ben and Reggie's book better. It was great to see them in this book and watch Reggie and Penny become fast friends. I think if readers enjoyed Go Hex Yourself, they'll definitely enjoy What the Hex as well.

I liked this book much more than the previous, Go Hex Yourself. Willem and Penny have my heart. They were both such entertaining characters and their storyline was engaging as well. Definitely would recommend especially to my fellow witchy romance lovers!

Penny has wanted to be a familiar forever which is a battery of power for a witch or warlock. There are many familiars in line ahead of Penny so she feels like it is a hopeless cause. Willem has been banned from having a familiar because other warlocks hate him and wanted him framed for a crime he didn’t commit. So, can Penny get along with Willem long enough to learn magic and get experience being a secret familiar ahead of all of those I’m front of her?

This was a fun, sexy, witchy romance.

It’s fake dating and grumpy/sunshine. It follows Penny as she becomes the under-the-table familiar for Willem. To cover up what they’re doing they pretend to be in a relationship. Of course, they develop feelings.

It was fun to see the interactions between Penny and Willem progress. See their banter and how they slowly developed trust.

I really enjoyed this one.

Thx to PRH Audio for the ALC.

Thank you to PRHAudio for my complimentary audiobook. Thank you to Berkley for my complimentary eARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Not so much spells and witchcraft but rather a lot of open door sex scenes
Fast moving quick read
Grumpy sunshine
Enemies to lovers
A bit of mystery
While I did enjoy the story I was disappointed in the lack of actual witchcraft and spells. The world of familiars and the bond they have with their witches was explained, so we get a feel as to what life was like for Penny. But I was hoping for more of the training and how spells are cast, not a play by play of
Penny and Wilhem’s sexual encounters.
The squirrel was cute but he did not have an over the top personality.
Bonus. No third act break up and no miscommunication! For that I will round up to 3.5

I'm loving this paranormal fantasy series sooo much and What the hex was a great follow up after Go hex yourself! In this grumpy/sunshine, forbidden, fake dating romance we get to know aspiring Familiar, Penny and William, a Warlock who has been banned to do magic.

Both characters need one another in order to do the magic they've been longing for. Penny is far down on the list to get picked as a Familiar and William has another ten years of being banned from having a Familiar. When attacks on his house start happening, William takes a chance and agrees to let Penny work for him. In order to hide what they're really up to they make it seem like they've fallen in love.

Full of intrigue, secrets, magic, a cute squirrel sidekick and some seriously steamy scenes, this was a great combination of murder mystery, suspense and romance and I couldn't get enough! Great on audio too narrated by Andrew Eiden and Islay Jacobs, with cameos from Ben and Reggie.

Many thanks to @prhaudio for a complimentary ALC copy and NetGalley and Berkley Books for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review!

Last year I read Go Hex Yourself, the first book in this companion series. I had some problems with the initial plot of that one but that wasn't at all a problem with What the Hex. I find it a much more fun and solid book than the first.

In What the Hex we continue on in the world where witches and warlocks take on familiars. A friend of Reggie (from the first book),Penny, is in search of witch or warlock to become their familiar. When she gets an offer under the table, she can't resist. Who says another opportunity like this will come up again? Willem however is not quite so friendly and it isn't so easy for Penny to adjust her life to this big secret.

What I liked best about this book was that the plot wasn't so far fetched as the first book. There I really had to close an eye to logics. Where as that was not as much the case here. Instead we got a bit of deepening on the world by meeting familiars that have been waiting for a long while and are a part of the magical world. Here the fake dating to cover up Willem secretly having a familiar kind of made sense. I mean, it wasn't nessecarily smart but at least I could understand it.

And as much as was tried to put Willem down as some unpleasant person he actually started to listen to Penny when she said he wasn't treating her right. He just wasn't used to having other people around him anymore, being a bit of a hermit. He took care of her, first mostly when she passed out, but he also learned what calmed her and what made her feel better. I really appreciated that.

A theme that reoccurs in this book is the toxic parental relationships. Reggie had to deal with that in book 1 as does Penny in book 2. Her parents are both familiars to witches and they spend more time in their families instead of their own. In fact, Penny was taking care of them as if they were her elder teens instead of the other way around. And it is hard to read about because these people actually exist in real life.

All in all I really enjoyed reading this book and read it all in one night when I couldn't sleep. And then I couldn't sleep because I had to finish this book, haha.

If you came out of Jessica Clare’s Go Hex Yourself wanting to know more about grumpy warlock Willem and sunshine-personified shop assistant Penny, then What The Hex is exactly what you’ve been waiting for, as the story throws the two together for a delightful tropey adventure, which I mean in the best way possible.

Longtime familiar-in-waiting Penny gets the opportunity of a lifetime when she is offered the chance to act as familiar for the extremely grumpy Willem Sauer, who is currently serving a long ban on casting with a familiar. Knowing the opportunities are few and far between, Penny agrees to the job on the sly but of course things are never so simple.

Because no one can suspect what Penny and Willem are actually up to, the two of them concoct a fake dating story, and tell the entire magical community that they’re dating, to explain why she has suddenly moved in with him. Their wildly different personalities, however, make even this ruse difficult to pull off.

Complicating things further is Willem’s former master stopping at absolutely nothing to make his life miserable following a personal slight, and Penny’s so-called friends refusing to believe she and Willem simply fell in love, and casting doubts on her intentions as a result.

Unlike Go Hex Yourself, both Penny and Willem are fully immersed in the magical community and how it works, making it much less of a fish out of water story. Instead, because both of them already have that baseline knowledge in common It gives Clare the space to explore more of the world, and also give over more time to Penny and Willem as a pair.

This time around, while there was once again both the magical mystery to be solved and the budding romance happening at once, I feel like the story was a lot more focused on just the two of them in both respects. This is probably due to the actual mystery, not to mention the secret nature of their relationship in the first place, but as a result, it really made the chemistry jump out. They might not have gotten along at first, but having them both indisputably need each other from the get go - more so Willem needing Penny - forced them into a much quicker partnership than I am used to seeing from an enemies to lovers dynamic.

And to my Star Wars fans, if the cover art seems representative of a certain sequel trilogy ship…the in-book dynamic supports this theory 100%. In all, What The Hex was an extremely fun read, with a compelling plot and absolutely exquisite chemistry.

What The Hex is out April 4, 2023. Special thank you to Berkley for an advance copy for review purposes.

I enjoyed the overall plot and the grumpy/sunshine fake dating trope of the love story. But the steamy bits were so distracting from the plot. They say in romance that sex scenes need to move the story along not take over completely, and for me, it was just too much.

Thank you to Netgalley, Berkley, and the author for the eARC in exchange for my review.

What the Hex is the second book in the Hex series and follows Rose and Hux - I mean Penny and Willem as they navigate vengeful warlocks, meddling associates, pet squirrels and most importantly attraction to each other. Willem is a grumpy warlock who because of past deeds is forbidden to have a familiar. Penny desperately wants to be a familiar. The two are brought together by Reggie and Ben and Penny begins to work secretly for Willem. Unfortunately this raises suspicion in the wannabe familiar community and the two must pretend to fake date to explain their close proximity. The novel is billed as enemies to lovers but the two basically have a couple arguments before their fake dating becomes real. I did enjoy their romance but it felt a little rushed for my taste.

This is a very cute and fluffy romance and I (mostly) enjoy Clare's writing style. I am docking half a star for the constant spelling out of words like omg, wtf, stfu. It was super annoying and made Penny sound like an airhead (and made me agree with Willems initial assessment of Penny as well). Overall though this was a fun quick read and solid entry in the witchy romance genre.

I was provided a free copy of this book through NetGalley.

I'm gonna be honest, I've never been a fan of witchy books, I've tried a few and they fell flat for me. For some reason, last April I decided to give a witchy book one more try. I'm honestly not sure why. Isn't that definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? So yeah, I guess I'm insane.

Anyhoo, that book last year was Go Hex Yourself by Jessica Clare. And I absolutely loved it. I mean seriously one of my faves of 2022. So obviously I was thrilled, I mean THRILLED to get my hands on What the Hex, the 2nd book in the series.

This book is just as entertaining as the first one. Pure fun! Absolutely delightful!

Penny is dying to be a familiar, but jobs are sparse. When an unconventional opportunity presents itself she can't say no. Even if it is to help Willem, a super grumpy warlock.

What the Hex joins all the best romance tropes:

Grumpy Sunshine
Enemies to lovers
Fake dating

The result, pure magic ❤️❤️❤️

I absolutely loved it
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

And this baby is spicy 🔥
Their chemistry is off the charts, and the doors are WIDE open
🌶️🌶️🌶️ to 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ out of 5


Thank you Berkley for my copy