This book starts out heavily with a conspiracy theory. The leaders of the world want everything to become a virtual reality. The thought is that soon people won't ever need to leave their houses. Businesses would be run through VR platforms. People wouldn't be working. There would be no jobs. People would be isolated into their own tiny group. Not only are the leaders pushing this through big business but it is also to become law at some point. Not to embrace it voluntarily would carry steep fines at that time. A secret society, Daughters of Hothar, is tasked with stopping the conspiracy by finding an ancient magic artifact. Sydney is the chosen one--the one that is supposed to stop the conspiracy. The book was confusing. There was a lot going on--danger, threats, attempted murder, romance--too quickly. I did not get to know who the characters were. It read as if I were skimming through the book. There was no meat to it. Thank you to NetGalley and Severn House for the complimentary digital ARC. This book gets 3 stars for imagination and the fact that I stuck with it.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the book for me. I was drawn to the plot immediately. The cover was beautiful, and the title was intriguing.

However, I felt like rather than use the events to give us a picture of situations, we had brief interactions and then a statement of the facts. If time had been spent describing the events this wouldn’t have been needed and the story may not have felt so disjointed.

The storyline was interesting, an early one using current AI threats as a point of focus. However; it didn’t feel that the storyline was developed enough.

Too much was attempted at once. Less is more, focus on character and storyline development before adding so much.

Thank you #netgalley for this early copy

This book is action packed and has a lot going on I enjoyed the history and mythology aspects of the story

It' got a little confusing in parts but overall I enjoyed it

I was really interested in this story based on the cover and title, but once I got into it I realized it was much more than your typical witchy fantasy.

It gave me Outlander vibes with the length of the story, the pacing, the depth of the history - fortunately, I love history and mythology - which this story combines both in such a way that all of the various elements are woven together for a really satisfying end.

I couldn't figure out how this would all come together because there was so much going on, but in the best possible way. I also loved learning about the Scottish mythology - it was new to me and told in a really fresh way. I don't really read scifi but this has elements of it in the story, and done in a way that I could understand the plot (even though I was googling some terms!)

I would definitely recommend this story to readers who like their fantasy mashed up with history and scifi - a really cool mix which made this story different from other books in my TBR and I'd definitely read this author's other cozy mystery series about mermaids and water witches.

Royal bloodlines. Sister witches. Quantum mechanics. A virtual reality takeover. A secret society connecting past US presidents. Time portals. A magic stone.. this book did A LOT. I was expecting a fantasy and got a little of that and quite a bit more of sci-fi and history.

The book opens on Sidney, a young historian and, conveniently, the past president of her college's Escape Room Club, who has just been fired, despite her status as the "Smithsonian's darling." At the same time, Sidney receives a mysterious letter offering her a million dollars if she will go to a small NC town to find some "artifact." We later find out that that this ancient artifact is supposed to help prevent a ploy to have virtual reality take over the world (I literally laughed out loud at this part- it felt so out of place). From there, the book covers a lot of ground, including all the things I mentioned above. Sidney and her band of small town friends have to solve puzzle after puzzle to find this artifact and prevent disaster. As one of the character's said "this is the wildest goose chase I've ever been on."

I admire the author's ambition with all these different elements, and individually they were very creative. They just didn't work well in tandem for me, with the biggest outlier being the threat of virtual reality. Aside from this, the writing is pretty clunky and conversations between characters are hard to follow, as they frequently take unnecessary tangents and get derailed by paragraphs of Sidney's thoughts. There were a lot of stories and characters and I got tired of trying to keep up. With that being said, the book did wrap up with a satisfying and interesting ending. It's clear that they are setting up for a series but I don't think I would read another like this.

Thank you to Severn House and NetGalley for access to this e-ARC. All opinions are my own.

This started so good and interesting, but I got lost in all the things the author wanted to do. There were secret societies, witches, connections to ancient Egypt, Al and modern technology and ties to the American Civil War. I wish it had just stuck to the secret society part because that storyline was initially quite exciting.

I felt like with all this the story got too messy and it was hard to follow all the different threads. I also wish we would have gotten to know our main character a bit more because the little I got from the text was interesting.

This was overly descriptive, and I found it heavy going in parts. The tale is a good story, Sydney is looking for an artifact that should be kept secret, but in the end I only read around a quarter of the book. Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for giving me a copy of the novel.

DNF. Unfortunately this didn’t land for me, I didn’t like the writing and the pacing was off.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC

The gorgeous cover and clever title attracted me to this book immediately. It's a curious mixture of fantasy, history, and political conspiracy combined into a treasure hunt for an unknown artifact. Just when I'd think I understood a piece of the puzzle, the pieces would shuffle once more. I'm familiar with the ancient history connected to the story as well as the Scottish witch hunts conducted by James I but the virtual reality component lost me. I almost gave up but I'm glad I decided to keep going. All of the pieces really do come together and I enjoyed the empowering connections between the female characters. My personal inability to understand the virtual reality and quantum physics components didn't matter in the long run. The early American history thread of the story actually dovetailed with my own family history as it probably will with other readers with Scottish ancestry. Although the plot was neatly wrapped up in the end, I hope that there will be another book to pick up where this one ended.

My thanks to NetGalley and Severn House for the digital ARC. All opinions and the review are entirely my own.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with the eARC of this book!

DNF at 15%

I had to stop when the book erroneously said that daisies were also known as narcissi when in fact they are not. Narcissi are often called daffodils or jonquils, but not daisies. I also noticed there's a mention of a character moving to "Columbia" and marrying a coffee plantation billionaire; was this meant to says "Colombia" like the country and not "Columbia"?

This is just the final straw though. I had a hard time getting into the book and connecting with the main character. I think the book needs some revision regarding the pacing and structure of the writing, and utilizing the "show, don't tell" advice. Show us the financial struggles Sidney is facing and how bad it must be for her to accept the offer to locate the missing artifact just for the money instead of just telling us. Show us her complicated relationship with her family, instead of just telling us. Show us why the takeover of VR and AI in this world would be a negative thing and how it's been affecting others to the point the discovery of this artifact is an urgent matter.

Perhaps some of these are further elaborated, but it feels as if it should have been done sooner than later.

I might continue to read this book in the future as I was enjoying the mystery aspect and the puzzles, and I'm curious to know how witches tie into this story, an element in this book that I feel has been lacking in spite of what the title might suggest.