Lessons in Magic and Disaster is Anders latest offering for adults. It is an unapologeticly queer novel that may be considered lightly urban fantasy.

Jamie, a trans grad student working on a dissertation examining 18th century literature, has decided to teach her mother how to use magic and with these lessons comes unexpected consequences. While a reductive summary, the novel explores the role of stories and how people take control of a narrative throughout time. At first glance it may seem like there’s not a lot on the surface of this story but much like the literature Jamie is studying there is much more to find buried beneath everything.

I appreciate the fact that Anders did not shy away from the things many queer and trans people are currently facing in today’s world but instead weaves them into a natural place within the story. Taking time to follow tangents and allow for slower moments in many ways the structure of the store feels like a love letter to older literature as well as a revelry in queer love and joy, flaws and all. To some readers the story may seem a bit slow but to a specific audience, one that has an appreciation for seeing themselves represented in literature, lovers of 18th century literature, stories within stories, or those who are fans of Anders other novels, will be right at home.

This uplifting and realistic contemporary fantasy inspires relationship bonds, both for families and for queer romance. Our heroine is a scholar of 18th century literature and a witch with wise reflections on magic in liminal outdoor spaces!

While Lessons of Magic and Disaster has an imaginative premise, the execution falls flat. The characters feel one-dimensional, lacking the depth or growth needed to make their journeys compelling. As a result, it’s hard to stay emotionally invested. The plot drifts without much urgency or intrigue, making the overall reading experience feel underwhelming. Despite flashes of potential, the story never fully takes off and ends up feeling more forgettable than magical. Thank you, NetGalley!

Huge thanks to Tor and NetGalley for an eARC copy of this story in exchange for an honest and unbiased review!

I perhaps had the wrong expectations about this story going in. I was looking forward to a story about mother-daughter relationships, magic-making in a modern setting, and getting an in-depth look at spells and their consequences. Instead of/in addition to all that, I got a really thorough exploration of an English Lit thesis based around a potentially magic historical morality tale and a really complex familial relationship that doesn't necessarily come to a firm conclusion.

I think folks involved in the humanities and who have gone through echelons of higher education (particularly thesis research & writing) would get a lot out of this, but it wasn't the factor I was most interested in and couldn't help but feel disappointed when we started focusing on it again. I appreciated the insight into both Jamie's and her mother's history through flashbacks but there seemed to be big gaps that were glanced over that ultimately made the exploration of family and the overall plot unsatisfying for me.

Full Disclosure: I received an Advanced Reader's Copy of Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders from Tor Books via NetGalley. The book will be published around August 19, 2025. You can preorder a copy now.

Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders is a touching story of family and love in its many facets. While the title tells you there will be magic involved, I found the part about literature to be really compelling. I loved the quotes that opened the chapters and learning more about female writers in the 1700s. Could we get a copy of the dissertation as bonus content? I would read that. If you want a book that sort of hugs you like a warm blanket but also doesn't shy away from the darker side of life, you'll want to check this out.

I loved this book conceptually, but I could not bring myself to care about 1700s female British authors (so sorry, Charlie). Also, I really wanted to like Ro, but they kind of just annoyed the shit out of me? That might be more of a reflection of me than of them as a character, but as an enby myself, I wanted to be able to relate to them more and just straight up could not.

I've long been a fan of Charlie Jane Anders' work, and this novel is exactly what I needed it to be.

Jamie is a literature grad student in the Boston/Cambridge area, working on the 18th century novel. Jamie and her mom, Serena, are both grieving the death of Serena's wife Mae. Serena's grief is devastating, and Jamie decides to teach Serena about doing magic as a way to try to bring Serena back to focusing on the present.

This... does not go well (hence the title).

The story bounces back and forth between the present, the 1990s when Serena and Mae were younger, and the 18th century works that Jamie is studying. Found family and the challenges of building community when things are hard are front and center, as it's a predominantly queer cast of characters.

Heartfelt and heart-wrenching in the best ways, this novel is about grief and belonging, recovery, healing, and love. Even when you aren't exactly perfect. It is full of messy but well-meaning people trying their best, screwing up, and figuring out how to do better and move forward, even when it hurts. *Especially* when it hurts. Because the space between surviving and living is huge, and the best way to fill it in is with people who love and accept you for you.

Because it turns out that there's no way to make grief *not* hurt, even with magic. The fact that it hurts is proof that the grief comes from love, and leaning into that love is the way to keep living.

Highly recommended, like the most comforting of hugs from a loved one at a difficult time.

i didnt realize that the genre-bending nature of this novel would take as much getting-used-to as it did.

this is a story of how a mother (Serena, who lost the love of her life) and a daughter (Jamie, who on top of everything happening in this novel is also pursuing grad school) grieve Mae. we also see Ro, Jamie's partner, supporting Jamie and being a solid and steady part of the family, pretty much through thick and thin because they do experience some rough patches here and there. because of the title alone i expected magic to be a plot element upon which the story will hinge upon but magic is not too much on the forefront here, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. the novel's triumph is in the way it showed the story of this queer family moving through grief in a world rife with bigots.

several times though i felt as if i were reading a completely different book, one that's nonfiction in nature, only to be dropped back into the story i was initially expecting to delve deeper into.

i suppose the point of this novel is to break genres which i suppose it did by telling a story in omniscient pov (distant third person pov via jamie's and then serena's lens. and then we have snippets of what Jamie is nerding out on aka her grad school research). i tried to be extremely patient with the genre-whiplash for the sake of getting to know these characters and coming along their journey to healing and reconciliation but the writing style felt like a tall barrier to scale. almost halfway through the book, another barrier came up in the form of annoyance with Jamie although that also may have been a goalpost here? if so, goal achieved for me. <spoiler>Jamie basically intellectualizes everything including her own emotions like her rage and her sadness and her love etcetc but when it comes to <i>Magic</i> (which for a good chunk of the book, and without Ro's angry prompting, she refuses to call it), she's all emotion and zero logic. where's the Jamie that nerds out on everything, when it matters? understandable too when Ro got angry.</spoiler>

the historical snippets (as in, Jamie's research) also feel wildly disjointed with the story being told, at least in the narrative aspect. if we were to argue also that looking into the history of other queer people could be the bigger picture and the history of Jamie's family is a zooming into a very specific point in time, then i'd say the goal of meshing them together makes sense. it's just that in the narrative aspect this goal fell flat for me; or it could be a valid observation that this narration style simply did not work for me.

all that said even despite the fact that tbe narration and the overall writing style did not work for me i still think that this is a good novel. i loved the imperfect characters, and i find that if you had more patience that someone as busy as myself then you'd be able to sit down and truly, genuinely enjoy this.

thank you NetGalley and Tor books for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed just floating along and reading this, but I didn't really connect with any of the characters. The plot and the characters also felt kind of separated from each other, so it felt like having to read a couple different stories in what should be one comprehensive book.

Charlie Jane Anders’ new novel, LESSONS IN MAGIC AND DISASTER, is a fantasy novel with a light touch — sufficiently light that it is barely fantasy at all. The fantasy element — the practice of magic — is barely an extension of the actual world we live in. Jamie, he narrator/protagonist is a trans woman: a graduate student in English writing her dissertation on British women writers in the 18th century. She is involved in a difficult relationship with somebody who I presume is also a woman — though this is never explicitly stated; since this person uses they/them pronouns. The narrator’s other most important (and difficult) relationship is with her mother, who is mourning the death of her own partner (another woman). So this book is really about queer families, and about personal connections: those we cannot help being part of, and those we construct for ourselves. We all need, and most of us have, family relationships of one sort or another, though this is true without necessarily privileging the heterosexual nuclear family, and without denying the difficulties of such relationships (William Blake once wrote that “A man’s worst enemies are those/ Of his own house and family”).

In addition, the narrator is a practitioner of magic. Here, magic is understood as a way to manifest one’s own intentions. It involves finding a place that exists in between nature and culture, like human refuse left in the woods or some other natural spot, and leaving in that spot several objects: something that symbolizes or references what is being wished for, and something that is given up as a sacrifice. There can also be additional adornments. Jamie explains, somewhat dubiously: “it’s about knowing what you really want, in your fucking secret heart, and putting your wishes into the world in a way that can be heard.”

In the course of the novel, Jamie teaches her mother how to do magic, in an attempt to cure her mourning for her late partner. Over the course of the novel, magic sometimes works, but not always. It can have unanticipated consequences (as all forms of desire can have). And it sometimes blows back on the practitioner. Also, since one’s wishes generally involve relationships with other people, there are problems with what those other people — lovers, family members, friends, enemies, innocent bystanders — might themselves want and need.

Though personally, I do not believe that magic, as defined in the novel, actually works in the real world, it makes powerful sense in the novel as an intensified form of all the delights and dangers that come up when we negotiate our desires with other people (whom we may desire, love, or hate, and who in their own turn have their own equally complex desires). The workings of magic are also depicted as liminal (in between nature and culture, in between what we feel consciously and unconsciously, and so on), which makes it impossible to draw clean lines between realms as we all too often want to do. And the practice of magic also occurs within a world that, like the world we actually live in, involves both individual and collective dimensions, both the personal and the political, if only because bigotry is real, and homophobes interfere with the lives of people who just want to continue doing what they do.

The hardest thing for me to describe about this novel is its mood or tone, which is delicate and hopeful, but also all too aware about the obstacles other people and the very structure of the world place in our way, as well as the ways we harm ourselves and others, make mistakes, treat other people (even our loved ones) unfairly, and generally have difficulty separating joy from pain, generosity from selfishness, or satisfaction from regret. In a way, this is therefore a mundane novel, or a ‘realist’ one; except for how the existence of magic in the narrative, and in the lives of its characters, serves as a form of self-therapy, and a way to connect with others. This other-directed dimension is what distinguishes it from the more common first-person realist narrative, and what allows it, ever so lightly, to access, and use to its advantage, the subjunctive dimension (as Samuel R. Delany might call it) of non-naturalistic fiction.

A grad student dealing with academic bureaucracy, and increased hostility toward the trans community, decides to teach her grieving mother witchcraft. Things do not go as planned.

I loved this! It’s a book about family, grief, the ways bigotry keeps beating people down, and the ways people keep fighting back. Also magic. We follow Jamie in the present dealing with social media smear campaigns, and then see how her moms dealt with the same kind of bigotry in a different package decades earlier. This book never went in the direction I was expecting, and really drew me in. These characters are messy, and they love each other, and they make mistakes, and they keep trying.

And I love Charlie Jane Anders' writing- like how a local band “clanged out the same few chords with a vicious insecurity.” Or the scene where baby Jamie stands in the corner to think about what she’s done, and then lists everything she accomplished in the day? Loved it.

I know that Charlie Jane Anders is beloved, and I love a story of queer, found families and magic, but this novel unfortunately didn't work for me. I found the literary plot line too disjointed from the family story and the chaotic rules of the magic hard to follow. (This is place where I'm pretty sure I'm missing the point—the messiness of the magic is a metaphor, etc etc, but it was still hard for me to untangle what was happening and why.)

What did work were the characters themselves, who were vibrant and real and very much showing their own agency. (This felt like one of those rare novels where the mechanisms of plotting took a backseat to the characters making choices and telling the author to write it all down.)

Would recommend this one to readers who are looking for fiction that tells the story of queer liberation history through a light magic overlay, and certainly folks who have enjoyed Anders' previous work.

I wanted to love this book but the characters and the story just weren't that engaging to me. They just seemed kind of uninteresting and uninterested in the world.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Tor for sharing the eARC of "Lessons in Magic and Disaster" for review. Opinions are, as always, completely my own. I was a little nervous about this book, purely because I am generally a historical accuracy nerd, but honestly, I absolutely loved all the liberties Charlie Jane Anders took in this story. The plot is centered around our main character, Jamie, who teaches at the fictional Rugby College, where she is also a graduate student. It primarily explores Jamie's relationship with her mother, Serena, which has grown complex, particularly since they are both still struggling to process their grief over the death of Jamie's other mother, Mae.

Jamie has experimented with magic all her life, asking for small things from the universe in exchange for offerings. I really like the magic in this book, particularly as someone who prefers a vague or more mysterious magic system to something with hard and fast rules. The writing conveys a sense of how much is unknowable in a beautiful way. For me, the idea that you need to sacrifice something or give the universe something in exchange for a blessing has always rung true, but the story also deconstructs that idea in a unique way. As Jamie tries to teach her mother, Serena, how to use magic to find herself and get her life back, things predictably go awry and the situation becomes a total disaster, as the title promises.

The backdrop of Jamie's parents and their marriage is also a lovely framing device for the story's other primary arc, the tension in Jamie's relationship with her nonbinary partner Ro. Their relationship felt so real and tender to me, and authentic to the way that people engage with each other when they're hurt. It illustrated the strain that grief can put on a relationship and at the same time, how a strong relationship can be your center of gravity. Without giving any spoilers, the narrative touches on the current political situation surrounding censorship on college campuses and the rise of homophobia and transphobia in particular in the United States, and how that impacts all of the characters and the way they engage with their situations.

I loved my experience with this book and fell in love with almost all the characters, with some obvious and intentional exceptions. There were just two things that didn't fully work for me. The main antagonist of the book felt a little bit like a two-dimensional character to me. That's a real kind of guy, we can all think of some of them, but I just wanted him to have a more specific defining trait or some aspect that confounded my expectations, since the rest of the book does that so well. Beyond that, in my opinion, the narrative voice veered occasionally into what I can only describe as millennial-speak. Spork jokes, using interjections like "bleh" as full sentences, that kind of thing. For me, it was distracting, since a lot of the prose was intricate and interesting and well-crafted. Ultimately, there were a lot of lines that I definitely would've highlighted if I were reading my own physical copy. Overall, especially as someone who has lost a family member recently, this was a cathartic read and I highly recommend it.

Lessons in Magic and Disaster is a spellbinding blend of queer joy, generational trauma, and academic chaos, with Anders’s signature warmth and wit. The magic feels both personal and profound, even when the plot occasionally meanders.

I really had to fight to read this book. I think the voice was too personal for third-person; there was no narrator, yet the story was told from both an intimate and impersonal perspective. Another reader who can overlook the voice may enjoy the book! The writing style was not for me.

Additionally, I struggled with grasping the whimsy of a reality where magic can be done with pure intention, the depth of 18th century literature research, and then certain modern-day allusions (like listening to K-pop). The contrast felt more like whiplash than a setting.

I do think the author provided excellent social commentary and perspectives that are necessary today.

If you’re anything like me you’ll want to pre-order Lessons in Magic and Disaster or request it at your library ASAP. It follows grad student, Jamie, who is trying to finish her dissertation and nudge her mom back into living after the death of her other mom. She does this, as you may have guessed from the title, by teaching her mom to do magic. Things do not go according to plan.

I loved this novel so, so much. From the snapshots of the main character’s research and teaching life to the complex and varied exploration of queer histories, to the poignant navigation of relationships and desire and magic. As someone who has a PhD in lit and still regularly nerds out about the history of the novel, the author’s note was perfection. And now I have some real live 18th century women writers to follow up on!

I love Anders' work, and this book is no exception. The intertwined tale of two generations -- the mother's and the child's -- and how they both combat the same sort of bigotry, although with different tactics. Also, witchcraft! Great characters and writing here.

I love how Charlie Jane Anders writes people, their thoughts and their interactions. Her character characters are likable and go through relatable story arcs. The author went through so much work on this to create a fictitious work of fiction and to really dig into what it’s like to be a graduate student of English literature. I really appreciate all the layers of this book. The story is about and parenting and being a child, it’s also about being a lover and a partner. I really enjoyed the parallels between the 17th century subjects of the protagonist’s research with the protagonists own struggles. Really well done book. I enjoyed this a lot.

Lessons in Magic and Disaster unfortunately was not my cup of tea. I did not understand the plot and the writing was a little all over the place. I didn't connect with the story or characters.