Witch Dust: A Paranormal Comedy Thriller

Oh what fun this book was, just when you need a change from the norm and something slightly unusual, a book comes along and does just that! "Witch Dust" by Marilyn Messik is a fab, fun read that I thoroughly enjoyed. I haven't read anything by this author before but I know that she wrote the 'Strange' series (which also sounds intriguing) and I'm pleased I've been introduced to this fabulous writer as she's witty, orig. inal, fun and wholeheartedly entertaining. Her loveable characters are as diverse as they are mad, even the cat 'Ink' has its own role.
The author portrayed this brilliant story in such a way as to make me almost believe it was true - the way Sandra/Serenissima portrayed her oddball family and their magical abilities you'd think it was quite customary! I love all things to do with witches and their magic and this was just what I like, traditional and very reminiscent of 'Bewitched'.
I'm sure there'll be another book to follow - I'd be first in the line to read it since I truly enjoyed this one - so if you're looking for a light hearted and amusing book that's a pleasure to read you really can't go wrong with "Witch Dust".
A magical 5 stars!!!

Over the past few weeks, I've struggled to read my usual psychological thriller and historical non-fiction books; a possible case of 'reader's block', I guess. I decided that it was time to try a different genre and 'Witch Dust: A Paranormal Comedy Thriller' by Marilyn Messik proved to be exactly the change of pace that I needed.
'Witch Dust’ tells the story of Serenissima (Sandra), the daughter of two well-known illusionists, Adam and Ophelia. Sandra spends her life trying to distance herself from the theatrics of her parents shows. She refers to their work as magic, and then of course, there is the ‘fishy stuff’ – the actual magic as cast by her mother. When Adam and Ophelia have another of their infamous tiffs, Ophelia demands that Sandra drives her to visit their family. This comes as rather a shock to Sandra who has always believed her mother to be an orphan. An even greater shock is the realisation that her new-found relatives are all witches! And the fun is only about to begin.
Messik has a talent for witty writing and plenty of darkly comic humour that ensured I was laughing my way through the book. There are a lot of elements in this story – several eccentric family members, wayward magic, potential evil, psychics, haunted hotel……. yet Messik managed to pull all of these disparate elements together successfully without loosing the thread of the story.
An easy, funny and lighhearted read. I fully recommend and do hope that there will be a followup.

This is a fun story which is all fantasy with some likable characters involved. I was pretty much hooked from the first page and although there were a couple of times I thought Sandy needed to get over herself, I really liked how she did things on her own terms. It is a light and humorous read and filled with colourful events and an unusual cast.

I cant say too much about the plot because it would definitely spoil the first few chapters if I did. Just suffice it to say that should there be a sequel, I would definitely read it and hope the author is thinking of writing just that!

Pick it up, it's worth your time to read it.

I would give it 4.5 stars if I could.

If only it was possible to give a book 6 stars! Witch Dust definitely warrants at least 6. It is an absolutely joyous read. Each and every character is entrancing and entertaining in their own right. Who can fail to fall in love with the exotically named Serenissima, Ophelia, Murray, Devorah and even Ink? They wormed their way into my affections and by the end of the book I was firmly in love with everyone. The prose is witty and razor sharp. You may need a packet of plasters to hand whilst reading. There were so many laugh-out-loud moments as well as snorting, OMGing and giggling occasions. Ms Messik has written a book that is pure joy. Reading Witch Dust was like getting a hug from my best friend whilst the man of my dreams fed me Ha'agen Dazs ice cream, which had become calorie free and essential to maintain a healthy diet having just won the lottery on a triple rollover week. Unadulterated pleasure that I never wanted to end. When will we see Witch Dust on the big screen? I'd even settle for the small screen. I didn't want it to end. You simply MUST read it. You can always thank me later.

Oh wow! I absolutely loved this book! It was such a refreshing read after being immersed in so many horrors and psychological thrillers! Everybody needs to read this.
The characters. I absolutely love Sandra, a woman who knows her own mind regardless of all the craziness going on around her!
Then there’s Murray. The solid one in Sandra’s life. Who brings the stability she very much needs at this point in her life. I want a Murray in my life!
Witch Dust is a fantastic book. So very different to what I normally read which has now got me hunting down similar stories. Plus I’ve also found out she has two prior books to this. So guess where I’m going!
This author is fantastic and thoroughly deserves the 5* I’m giving it!
Also a huge thanks to netgalley for giving me this ARC. Very much appreciated!

#netgalley #witchdust

The old saying "You can pick your friends but you can't pick your relations" is given a delicious twist in this jolly tale of witches and warlocks.
30 year old Sandra is the daughter of magicians Adam and Ophelia. Sandra's view of her parents' magic shows was radically altered when, as a young girl, she saw her mother actually disappear during one of their performances. Since then, Sandra has tried to live a "normal" life and be the sensible one in her family. But, all that changes when her father is unfaithful once too often, which results in Ophelia asking Sandra to take her to see her family.
This request comes as a shock as she'd always thought her mother was an orphan. Reluctantly she drives her mother to the family home where she meets a bunch of odd relations she never knew she had and then things start to get really weird. Sandra is persuaded to use her organisational abilities to resurrect her new family's fortunes, turning their hotel business into a haunted house experience.
But the harder she tries, the more obstacles are put in her path. There's the chef whose culinary skills involve channeling famous TV chefs - but the spirit of Sitting Bull gets in the way. There's a housemaid who hanged herself and a TV documentary crew looking for a sensational story.
I don't want to give away any more of the plot, so I'll just say this was a story that made me smile and even laugh out loud. The action gets bogged down here and there but overall it's fun read. A book to raise the spirits, if you'll pardon the pun!

A fun and different read. And they gave away just how the knives into the assistant’s outline is really done, even when he is blindfolded...
And what a way to run a hotel... and what a family. I hadn’t realised 8 was a coven but maybe with the baby they were really 9? And such a sweet baby and so used to being thrown from person to person.
I got the evil person wrong. I should of thought about the timeline more. More fool me. And the whole head twisting thing? Really nasty and then the wasps...
Not going to say all of what happens but look out for some paranormal nasties. And yes, of course Sandra or Serenissima is not going to stay away from the hotel. So we can expect more of the same in the future, which I shall look out for. I liked her - Sandra that is, and thought she coped extremely well under the circumstances. But them after coping with her parents all her life...

Paranormal comedy thriller - sounded promising. Sandra is the lead character. Her parents are a pair of performing illusionists who live to row and make-up. This time Mother and Sandra head off to mother's family of which Sandra knew nothing believing what she had been told as a child the Mother was an orphan. Said family comprises grandmother, great grandmother, uncle and various others, all eccentric and the woman all witches of the white sort. They live in a large dilapidated house trying to make ends meet running it as a hotel, not very successfully. Sandra manfully accepts the eccentric relatives and decides that she will have to make the hotel idea work so that she can get out and go back to her "normal" life - all by the week-end. Things go downhill, an OTT documentary film crew arrive, 'Ghostbuster' types arrive, along with a food writer who raved about the cuisine (cook possessed by various celebrity chefs at different times but also Chief Sitting Bull who sort of gets in the way of the celebrities), not to mention the black witches who are also paranoid, The characters are larger than life, well being witches they would be, and there's plenty of almost farce going on, rushing from room to room, hiding behind things and so on. A satisfying drawing to a conclusion but with the suggestion that there might be more to come. I could cope with that. A read to take one's mind off darker things. Thanks to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

There is a really long and chatty blurb – so my advice would be to skip it, as it reveals far too much that this accomplished author tells you in her own time, within the story. And that would be a real shame, because this is a little gem. I thoroughly enjoyed the first-person viewpoint of Sandra, whose odd upbringing has equipped her with superb organising skills, a hatred of muddle and a real sense of entitlement. That last one isn’t a bad thing – she has been brought up with two showbiz parents, both with egos the size of a planet, so she had two ways to go, either be cowed into permanent submission, or come back with an ego of her own. Which still is a whole lot more attractive than either of her parents, whom I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. The fact that she talks about them with exasperated affection says a lot for her inherent niceness, I think.

I very much appreciated the humorous thread running through this one – Sandra makes an amusing narrator, with her enjoyable descriptions. I also liked the fact that when it got dangerous and a whole lot darker – which it does – she neither becomes Supergirl, or collapses in a whimpering heap. In fact, she copes with discovering exactly what her family is and what they can do impressively well, and I appreciated that Messik took pains to set up a premise where it didn’t take a quarter of the book before Sandra accepted the weirdness that was unfolding around her.

And weird it certainly is… Sandra’s family is eccentric to the extent that she decides that marketing some of that oddness to build up the fortunes of the family hotel seems like the way to go. But it also draws down some seriously unwelcome interest and alongside the farcical humour, something a lot darker emerges. It’s very well done – never too much, but there were some genuinely creepy moments. It was a thoroughly enjoyable read, taking some familiar tropes and putting a pleasingly original spin on them. The ebook arc copy of Witch Dust was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest opinion of the book.
9/10

Witch Dust is a very fun and quick read. It’s quirky and filled with eccentric characters and happenings. Sandra, our protagonist and first person narrator, is dragged to meet a family she didn’t know existed when her mother becomes fed up with her father’s latest affair. While discovering that her new extended family is a bit more than she expected, Sandra is somehow wrangled into helping with the struggling family business. What she refuses to acknowledge is that the work she is doing is attracting the attention of something dangerous.

I thought Sandra was such a fantastic character - she’s so consistently head strong and stubborn throughout the novel. She’s also clever, impulsive, and competent. It was so fun to see her keep all these traits while working through her denial of what her family really is. The supporting cast of characters are all equally fun, and made up of unique individuals. How I’d love to be a fly on the wall in a room full of them.

The only thing I found I didn’t like about Witch Dust was the fairly long introduction to Sandra’s parents and the first few years of her life. I’m not sure how this could have been done differently, but it meant it took a bit more effort to get into. The pay-off was definitely worth it, though.

For those who like (mostly) light-hearted paranormal reading, with fun and strong characters, this is doubtless a novel to enjoy.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to the publisher for a copy of this book! I really enjoyed this story! It was a fun, light read, and also had some laughs. I enjoy anything witchy and anything paranormal so this was a great book for me. Overall, I gave it 4 stars because it was super enjoyable, I would love to read more in the future.

This is a really good fun book. I laughed out loud in places. The magician and his wife/partner are as over the top as could be and everyone else takes their character to its extreme.

Loved it. More please.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher I read an advancee review copy of the book. This review is voluntary, honest and my own opinion.

Sandra has parents that are magician and assistant but do they use real magic or deception? And if real which one? Or both? Sandra has been lied to and found out about a family she did not even know existed. She drives her mum there and that is when the real mysteries begin. This is a must read for anyone who likes things that go bump in the night. Recommend this book

Fun, quick read full of quirky and amusing characters. A little slow to start, probably because Messik did a lot of backfilling. I'll certainly read the future books in the series.

Thank to NetGalley for providing an ARC copy for me to review.

A delightful new to me author whose voice had me rolling with laughter as she introduces us to her long suffering heroine, Sandra, who is forced into a variety of roles and situations by her narcissistic parents. Falling somewhere in between paranormal and crime fiction, Sandra is a young woman whose need for normality is thwarted by her drama driven mother as she finds herself thrust into her destiny as a magical being. Add in a failing business, extremely dysfunctional relatives, and a possible hit against her and you have a definite outlier worth checking out.

How fun this book was! I got into it a little apprehensively but man was I pleasantly surprised! The story starts off with the introduction of Sandra, daughter of famous illusionists Adam and Ophelia, two artists who never really were there for their daughter. Sandra therefore learned to be independent from an early age. Then Adam starts entertaining an extra-curricular romantic relationship with young Sacha and angry Ophelia walks out the door and takes her daughter for a visit to her side of the family whom Sandra did not know, let alone knew existed. That's where all the fun begins.

The book had a Addams Family feels to it. All characters were endearing despite their quirkiness, and I loved the message behind the book. Sandra said, "You choose your friends, but you're stuck with family. Well, like it or not, this was my family --mad as a box of frogs." It encapsulates the main theme: family is family; we stay together through hugs and fights, and together we are stronger. Family is part of our identity, whether we like it or not. Sandra is who she is and she will have to accept it and learn to live with it.

My favorite characters was Etta Goodkind, the great grandmother. I loved her iciness, her smarts, her strength, and her matriarchal status. She is the kind of person who doesn't speak much, but when she does you listen.

I will definitely be on the lookout for #2 as I cannot wait to see what is next for Sandra and Ophie.

Thank you Net Galley and Satin Publishing for this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Book 42 of my 2020 Reading Challenge
read from May 15 - June 4

Note: I read an ARC provided by NetGalley (full disclaimer in my review)


Witch Dust
by Marilyn Messik

Summary (via Goodreads)
published 2020

For Sandra, daughter of illusionists, Adam and Ophelia, life’s never been run of the mill! But when Adam’s wandering eye lights on yet another conquest, it proves a chorus girl too far, and Sandra’s caught in the reverberations of her parents acrimonious parting. Coerced into restoring her depressed Mother to the bosom of a family Sandra never knew existed, she’s sucked into a situation that even for her is unnerving.
From being without a single relative, she suddenly acquires several she’d rather do without, and learns a few home truths she’d prefer not to know. Ophelia, it appears, has not been entirely honest about any number of things. There’s no doubt in Sandra’s mind, the sooner she puts as much distance as possible between herself, her newly discovered nearest and dearest, their peculiar tendencies and their failing hotel business, the happier she’s going to be.
Dire straits call for desperate measures and Sandra reluctantly rises to the occasion. A hanged housemaid, a fly-on-the-wall documentary, The Psychic Society and a quasi co-operative journalist all handled correctly should, she reckons, get the family business up and running, which will allow her to do the same – as fast as she can, and in the opposite direction. Things unfortunately move swiftly from bad to farce and then get a hell of a lot darker. One moment Sandra’s struggling to save the family’s income, the next, she’s battling to save their lives.

My Opinion
4 stars

**I received an electronic copy of this book via NetGalley and would like to thank the author and/or publisher for the opportunity to read and honestly review it**

There was an interesting disclaimer at the beginning of the book that I'd never seen before. Along with the usual 'work of fiction, any resemblance to people coincidental' stuff, it said, "The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any techniques as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly." It definitely piqued my interest to see what kind of spells I'd be reading about!

The narrator had a philosophy of not asking questions about things. When it first started to appear as she talked about her childhood, ignoring anything that might have led her to her family discovery earlier, I questioned the lack of details and wondered if it was going to lead to half-baked storytelling. Then as the story went on the narrator specifically addressed this characteristic of hers so it cleared it up for me that it was a choice of the author for plot and not for writing style. I still didn't like it at times, such as when the ending was wrapped up in a description to her after the fact (the character had a reason for hazy memories but I still don't love that plot device when authors do it), but overall it worked for the story.

I would continue reading about this family, especially now that the basic secrets are out of the way and it could be more about the adventures.

This was such a quirky, fun read. Very original and a fast-flowing book, it was so easy to get into that I had a hard time putting it down. The characters are unique with so many eccentricities. What a fun and funny bunch.

Poor Sandra, all she's wanted for her whole life was normalcy. Alas, a zinger gets thrown in and she's left to deal with her crazy relatives on her mother's side, with a failing business to help sort out. To make matters worse, there's something going on between her parents. And that isn't even dealing with the magical things that are transpiring. To say that life is far from normal is an understatement.

Thank goodness for Murray. The one steadfast, loyal and enduring presence in her life. A no-nonsense, kind person. We all need a Murray.

What a wonderfully written book. It's so different from my norm, but brilliant just the same. I totally recommend it.

I would like to thank Marilyn Messik, BooksGoSocial and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I love a paranormal book and this was different, in a good way. It was fun and I didn’t want it to stop. All of the eccentric characters were funny and annoying just like any family and so much yet to be understood about all of theirs different gifts and abilities and I love that only the women have the gift. I hope that Serenissima does decide to explore that part of herself and there are more books.

I found this to be an enjoyable read, keeping me on my toes throughout. The storyline was written well and flowed seamlessly. I look forward to reading more by this author!

I really enjoyed reading this book. However it is not at all what I was expecting, Honestly, I probably wouldn't call this a thriller. Its probably closer to a cozy mystery, This was described as the book version of the film Scream, So I thought that I was in for a thriller but almost comic in the way that it is written, This doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy the book as, as you can see I still rated it 4 stars. I just feel like the marketing and blurb of this book (mainly where it relates the book to the film scream) could use a little revising.

I really enjoyed the found family (almost) aspect of this one. This book is filled to the brim with quirky, weird and wonderful characters and is such a wild ride.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I reserve 5* for those books that have the "special something" and this book is well deserving of the full 5 stars! Marilyn Messik has a unique writing style, each character has its own tone and the book was a delight from start to finish!

Witch Dust is a brilliant book, so different to what I normally read but I loved it and thoroughly recommend it!

The old saying "You can pick your friends but you can't pick your relations" is given a delicious twist in this jolly tale of witches and warlocks.
30 year old Sandra is the daughter of magicians Adam and Ophelia. Sandra's view of her parents' magic shows was radically altered when, as a young girl, she saw her mother actually disappear during one of their performances. Since then, Sandra has tried to live a "normal" life and be the sensible one in her family. But, all that changes when her father is unfaithful once too often. Ophelia storms out saying the marriage is over. She goes to Sandra, asking her to take her to see her family. This request comes as a shock - as Sandra always believed Ophelia was an orphan. Reluctantly she drives her mother to the family home where she meets a bunch of relations she never knew she had - and then things start to get really weird. Sandra is persuaded to use her organisational abilities to resurrect her new family's fortunes, turning their hotel business into a haunted house experience.
But the harder she tries, the more obstacles are put in her path. There's the chef trying to channel famous TV chefs, but the spirit of Sitting Bull keeps getting in the way. There's a housemaid who hanged herself and a TV documentary crew seeking a sensational story.
I don't want to give away any more of the plot, so I'll just say this was a story that made me smile a lot and even laugh out loud. The action gets bogged down here and there, but overall it's fun read. A book to raise the spirits, if you'll pardon the pun!