If you liked “The Ex Hex” this is for you! Second chance romance and a really cute animal familiar. Emma and Bastian overcome an emotional history to become friends then lovers in the present day. I received an arc from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was an adorable witchy read featuring the second chance romance trope.

This book has:
-A shy introverted heroine and an extroverted sunshine hero
-The friends to lovers trope with (seemingly) unrequited love from one of the parties
-Forced proximity and the marriage of convenience trope
-An “it’s always been you” scene
-Betrayal trope in the third act

If you’re looking for a steamy supernatural romance with intriguing family dynamics and an opposites attract couple, this is the book for you!

Thank you to Harlequin for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4 stars

Thank you to NetGalley for this eARC.
I enjoy a good paranormal romance, and this one touched on many familiar tropes- friends to enemies back to friends, introverted heroine, arranged marriage, and secrets. I also enjoyed the secondary characters and see the potential for spin-off works focusing on them.

I enjoyed this second chance romance with a little bit of magic thrown in. I'm kind of a sucker for a paranormal rom com.

Emma is a witch who, after being abandoned by her fiancee several years ago, keeps her distance from witch society in an effort to carve out some independence. But when her ex-fiancee Bastien rolls into town with the aim of getting Emma to agree to a marriage of convenience, she has to work hard to keep up her walls!

This is a sweet and sassy romance with a fantasy twist. Really enjoyed it!

I devoured this in a day and I'm in love. Sometimes with romance novels you just have to forget about being critical and just enjoy the ride. This one is an amazing example. We start of with a character who is just living her life years after she's spent years away from the society she grew up in and out of nowhere the man she was engaged to pops up pretending that he didn't run away from her and completely destroyed her world. And we spend the book following them as they fake date and fall in love and it is so wholesome and beautiful. This one is very much for the wattpad girlies and wattpad girlies is ME!!!

Rounded up.

Dragged a little in the middle and the angst was a bit much for me, however, I found the topic of choice timely.

A warlock's and a witch's parents have had an arranged marriage for them from childhood. However, Bastian disappeared without a word to Emmaline, when she came of age. Emma has since left witch society and grown a backbone. Due to a condition in the magical contract Bastian is forced to walk into her bar and try and win her back seven years later.

Cute romance with the perfect amount of fantasy hiding among the real world! I like the way magic works in this world. Different people have different strengths and levels of ability. My favorite magical aspect was the description of how familiars work. I liked how they help the witches with both magical and emotional issues and their bond allows for communication of feelings or needs. I was definitely laughing at her dog’s interruptions. I enjoyed getting to know both Emma and Bastian and I liked the support of her friends and good family members and even the bad family worked for moving plot along. I like the fake-fiance trope and felt their relationship developed at a good rate. However, I'm not a fan of forced miscommunication and secrets being kept. I get it is there for character reasons but it is no fun to watch. I’m looking forward to reading more in this series.

If you combined Bewitched with the movie Sabrina, you would have The Witch is Back by Sophie H. Morgan. This book is my favorite type of romance: full of magic and chemistry. The banter between Emma and Bastian is electric. In addition to the steamy romance, I kept rooting for Emma to finally find her courage and her voice. Despite being witches, the characters were very realistic and relatable. I hope that this book is just the first in a series because this world was delightful. Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy!

When warlock Bastian Truenote abandoned his witch fiancé Emmaline Bluewater seven years ago, wallflower Emmaline was crushed. Now living in Chicago and owning a bar, “Emma” is shocked when he unexpectedly shows up at the bar, ready to finally follow through with the engagement contract signed when they were children. Despite the binding nature of the contract, Emma-hurt and confused-is not prepared to trust Bastian with her heart, but she is willing to get married to help save Bastian’s sick mother, whose illness is tied to their failure to get married. With secrets about hidden clauses in the contract being kept by both parties, Bastian and Emma embark on a renewal of their relationship, with an understanding that they will be friends with benefits until after the marriage when Bastian can once again vanish from the scene. However, as Bastian and Emma grow closer, they realize their secrets must be revealed before it is too late for them to find happiness. Although the plot is filled with somewhat predictable misunderstandings of the genre, this is a quick and easy read for those interested in romance and all things witchy.

Fun enemies to lovers romance. Especially good for readers who enjoy a magical vibe. I especially enjoy when a protagonist grows a backbone and stands up to someone who has been bullying them for years, which is the case with Emmaline.

Loved the cover and the title! The story was really cute and I enjoyed the characters and their development.

Thank you to Netgalley and Harlequin for access to this ARC in exchange for a fair review.

I had a lot of thoughts about this book, so I’ve separated them into things I didn’t care for and things I enjoyed. I had a lot of issues at the beginning and almost DNF’ed, but I’m so glad I didn’t! A lot of my issues were satisfactorily and cleverly resolved, and I’ll definitely be picking up subsequent books when I’m looking for a cozy read.

That’s a no for me:
-Lack of depth with the settings. I will allow that I know both the main settings (Chicago and New Orleans) really well, so my expectations were on the higher side. That said, if the settings are as rich as those two—two real-life cities with a wealth of information available about them, I’d expect more than just mentioning the French Quarter, beignets, and Lake Michigan once each. Mentioning more specific locations would have been nice. Relatedly, one of the characters conjures a cup of Starbucks coffee, and no one who has spent time in New Orleans or Egypt would pick that.
-Britwashing. The characters occasionally said things that were way too British. It was more turns of phrase than vocabulary, so I can see how it would be harder to spot! I think this ties into the setting issue—Chicago is massive and there are so many other places too, so I’m unsure why the magical folks of the US all seem to be in New Orleans. It’s a scope issue I find most often in books written by UK authors writing about non-European places.
-I thought the villain/antagonist was a little over-the-top and would have liked more nuance.
-I found the best friend, Tia, incredibly unsympathetic. She treated Emma a lot of the ways her mother did—she was controlling, judgmental, overly involved, and equally willing to curse people. I’m still excited to read her book down the line, but I hope there’s some sort of confrontation or reckoning, internally at least.

Hell yes:
-I generally find the “virgin heroine in her late 20s” trope off-putting, but it made so much sense for this one, and I was delighted that the hero was pretty much equally inexperienced.
-Through the first half of this book, I kept wanting to say, “the world won’t end if you say fuck! Or shit! Or damn!” But then I realized that as the characters were becoming more comfortable with each other and in their own skins, the language wasn’t as guarded. I thought that was a great, subtle bit of characterization.
-The smut is open-door, sweet, and spicy.
-Pacing—as I mentioned, I thought I was going crazy for the first bit of the book, but it ended up being intentional and very well done.

This is a 3.5/5 star read for me, and I look forward to reading any new stuff the author writes!

3.5⭐️

Emmaline Bluewater is the definition of a wallflower; shy, demure, and would truly rather be anywhere else. But growing up in a witch society gave her little reprieve from the judging stares and endless whispers. Seven years ago, her attempt at fitting in ended when the man she was contracted and desperate to marry left town without a word. Despite the initial heartbreak and embarrassment brought to the Bluewater family, Emma has found a happier life in Chicago with friends, family, and owning her bar, 'Toil and Trouble.' That is until her estranged fiance, Bastian Truenote, returns and wants her back. Emma is determined not to fall for Bastian's charms again, even if seven years later, their marriage of convenience is a matter of life or death.

The Witch is Back is a charming and corny second-chance romance. The introduction to the witchy world and characters was a bit heavy-handed initially but I found that the book hit its stride about halfway through. This book is very trope-y, which leans into the lightheartedness of it all. I loved the setting and magical elements. One of my biggest complaints is that Emma's mother deserved far worse than she got- let's hope for a sequel with Leah and Sloane to really destroy what that wretched woman was trying to build. This book was low stakes, low angst, light, and sweet. I loved watching our two main characters learn and grow to find their way back to one another.

Thank you, Netgalley and Harlequin Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book contained so many of my favorite rom-com tropes that it made my heart so full and happy. It was fun, light hearted, magical, full of amazing characters and even had some twists thrown in. One of my favorite witchy reads so far this year.

I was really pleasantly surprised by this book! It had not been on my radar but I received an email about it and decided that it looked interesting so I would check it out. I thought that the characters had good chemistry and I liked that Emmaline demonstrated her independence and she had a lot of great witty lines! I really liked the focus on her "chosen family" friend relationships as well. I think there are a lot of places in this world to go if there is interest in having additional books in this series!

A runaway fiancé, a magic society hidden among society, and a magical contract makes The Witch is Back a fun and sexy ride.

This book was cute! I thought it was pretty funny and the writing was nice. I love anything with witches, so that held my interest. It had some fun aspects. I didn’t love this book, but I did like it!

If you love cute witch romances, you will love The Witch is Back. The characters are alive with emotions, friendship, caring, and love. The relationship of Bastian and Emma is fraught with past experiences, distrust, and love. I really loved the book.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This was such a delightful read!

I am a big fan of the witchy rom com, and this absolutely did not disappoint. I adored these characters, and I felt like their chemistry was so organic and real. Emma is a complex character, she was treated terribly by her mother all throughout her childhood and it is easy to get frustrated with her over how little she stands up for herself. However, as the story goes on, we get to watch her grow and change in such a realistic way. Emma and Bastians chemistry is similarly raw and believable, which I don’t say lightly as someone who often finds rom com relationships to feel rushed and forced.

I loved the use of magic in this book, and I’m excited about some possible spin-offs in the future. I also was SO happy to find that the third act conflict wasn’t rooted in a needless communication issue, and rather in a protective instinct of Emma’s fbaa is easy for the reader to resonate with and understand.

Overall, this was a solid 4.5 stars for me. I am excited to see what this author comes up with in the future!