Synopsis:
Esme McLeod is a high-flying lawyer in London, but her life isn’t as perfect as it might seem. She is estranged from her family, in a toxic relationship with a married man, and she’s a part-time witch.
As a teenager, Esme discovered that her meddling mother had cast a love spell on Esme’s boyfriend, Jamie. Mortified, she fled her hometown in the Scottish Highlands, cutting ties with her mum, Jamie and magic. Well, nearly all magic – sometimes getting served at a bar or finding a space in a busy car park without magic is just too much of a drag.
When Esme’s aunt becomes ill, she reluctantly returns home to help out. What she doesn’t expect is for her aunt’s doctor to be Jamie. As Esme tries to repair her family relationships and master her unpredictable magic, could it be that sparks are flying between Jamie and her for real this time?
Review:
And just like that another book joins the DNF pile. I made it to the halfway point before deciding Like a Charm wasn’t for me. This book is horrifically mismarketed. There is no romance and there’s hardly a fantasy element to it either. Yes, they are witches, but it didn’t feel magical in the slightest.
From the get-go I found Esme to be one of the most unlikeable characters I’ve ever read. You learn in the first chapter she’s in a relationship with a married man and she only seems to feel a little ashamed about it when other people call her out. Before this, she feels no remorse. She actually tries to make the reader feel sorry for her because “I’m so sad, he’ll never choose me over his wife”. How are you supposed to root for this character? The easy answer is you don’t.
I’d assumed that Brent, the new American in town, was going to be the love interest as that is usually how these books go. But around halfway you’re introduced to Esme’s childhood boyfriend Jamie and are now supposed to want them to get back together despite, spoiler alert, her mom used a love spell on him to make him like Esme. This might not be entirely true as I didn’t finish Like a Charm, but it’s the source of tense between Esme and her mom.
I skipped to the last chapter and gave it a quick skim to see how this ended and apparently, Esme and Jamie ended up together despite them not evening having a full conversation before the halfway point.
Apparently, Brent is the big bad of the whole book, but I got 50% in and nothing ‘bad’ had happened yet – other than Esme’s aunt being sick.
The constant and repetitive character descriptions got old very quickly. Chloe, Esme’s childhood best friend, was described in the exact same way about five times before the halfway mark – bear in mind this book is less than 250 pages long and you don’t meet her straight away.
I want to find something positive to say about Like a Charm but I’m struggling to find anything. I did read the first half pretty quickly and it would be a quick read to finish but this book was not my cup of tea.
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