Summary:

What the hex is going on?

Life at Cardinal Woolsey’s knitting and yarn shop is about as smooth as shop owner Lucy’s knitting. In other words, lumpy, tangled and prone to disaster. Much like her spell-casting. But things get worse when her cousin and shop assistant Violet shows alarming symptoms of a hex. Who would do such a thing? Was it the guy from Witch Date she blew off? Or is Lucy the real target?

Meanwhile, Lucy’s dating a much older man. Like five hundred years older. The gorgeous vampire Rafe wants to marry her, but there’s more keeping them apart than an age gap. Can they make a May-medieval marriage work? Or will they say goodbye forever.

When someone dies, either the hex is to blame or there’s a murderer on the loose in Oxford.

Goodreads

Thoughts:

This series continues to be a blast! Honestly these cozy mysteries featuring vampires have become some of my favorite comfort reads over the last couple of years and I’m always happy when a new book comes out. This latest in the series has a lot of overarching things in it so I was quite pleased with that.

Last book left Lucy pondering a rather big question from her boyfriend, 500 year old vampire Rafe. She spends a lot of this book debating the pros and cons of her relationship with Rafe. I’m really glad that she’s thinking about these things. Often times in these stories where a mortal and an immortal are in a relationship they don’t really think too much about the long term or it’s sort of glossed over or there is always some sort of ‘solution’ like the immortal becoming mortal or vice versa. I feel like this one deals with the conflict one might feel being in this type of relationship in a good way and I’m glad that it was something that was such a struggle for Lucy to decide. It’s not a light decision after all. Rafe continues to be very Rafe-like and while it does sometimes still annoy me how she gives him passes for being so controlling at least she’s thinking about it. The whole explanation of ‘he’s worried because he loves you’, while it may be true, doesn’t really excuse his behavior sometimes though! Ah, Rafe. I do love him though because I admit I have a thing for handsome vamps. Look, we all have our weak spots. 😉

I enjoyed the mystery in this one. I thought having a hex was really fun to solve and also gave Lucy a chance to work on her witch skills. I think it’s important that the series continue to develop this part of Lucy’s character especially as it looks like she’s expected to rise to a high position within the local witches one day. She needs to get better at her magic. But back to the mystery. I was surprised the murder happened so late in the book but that was kind of a good surprise! I hate that so often you can usually tell exactly when the murder is going to occur. I also like that it gave us more time to get to know some of the ‘guest’ characters this time around. I do think the mystery was solved super easily though. Lucy basically had a light bulb moment and presto! But I had totally forgotten about that character so I have to say that I did not figure this one out while reading. I guess also because this one had a lot of other stuff going on so I was a bit distracted, in a good way.

So like I said, other stuff going on. The author continues to develop some of the side characters in this as well and this time around William, Rafe’s butler, and Violet, Lucy’s cousin who helps her out at the shop, were featured pretty heavily. I do love that they might be forming a bit of a romance. I also thought the vampires featured nicely in this one. They weren’t front and center but they were involved. The bad feelings between Lucy and Sylvia were brought up and I’m glad that wasn’t something that was just glossed over.

Overall this was another fun installment! This one advanced a lot of the overarching storyline and also had a pretty fun mystery to solve. There was a good balance of all the elements, including the knitting. 4.5/5 stars.