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Spellbound: Book Two
It's here!
Winter tightens its grip on Ciderbrooke—and so does the magic.
With the Council drawing closer and old protections beginning to fail, Eliza Lakeland is no longer just a witch trying to keep her town intact. She’s standing at the edge of a legacy she never asked for, carrying power that doesn’t come with instructions—or mercy.
As secrets buried for generations surface, Eliza is forced to confront what was hidden to protect her… and what was sacrificed instead. The Grimoire is awakening. The ridge is listening. And the cost of magic is no longer abstract—it’s personal.
Between a best friend who refuses to leave her side, a love that demands honesty she’s never been good at giving, and a dangerous newcomer whose arrival shifts the town’s balance, Eliza must decide who she trusts, what she’s willing to lose, and whether love can survive when the storm finally breaks.
Book Two is the second book in a slow-burn, emotionally grounded witch fantasy series—full of sisterhood, forbidden magic, and the quiet terror of realizing you were always meant for more.
Winter tightens its grip on Ciderbrooke—and so does the magic.
With the Council drawing closer and old protections beginning to fail, Eliza Lakeland is no longer just a witch trying to keep her town intact. She’s standing at the edge of a legacy she never asked for, carrying power that doesn’t come with instructions—or mercy.
As secrets buried for generations surface, Eliza is forced to confront what was hidden to protect her… and what was sacrificed instead. The Grimoire is awakening. The ridge is listening. And the cost of magic is no longer abstract—it’s personal.
Between a best friend who refuses to leave her side, a love that demands honesty she’s never been good at giving, and a dangerous newcomer whose arrival shifts the town’s balance, Eliza must decide who she trusts, what she’s willing to lose, and whether love can survive when the storm finally breaks.
Book Two is the second book in a slow-burn, emotionally grounded witch fantasy series—full of sisterhood, forbidden magic, and the quiet terror of realizing you were always meant for more.
201 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 12, 2025
12 people are currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
Kathryn James
2 books2 followersSpellbound Book Two is out now—and yes, Ginny and Eliza are back at it.
I write stories about complicated people doing their best—something Ginny would argue absolutely counts as character growth.
If you’ve met Ginny and Eliza, you already know they have opinions. If you haven’t yet, they’re waiting for you—along with found family, quiet (and not-so-quiet) magic, and moments of change that tend to arrive when no one feels ready for them.
I’m an indie author, which means every reader who shows up matters. Truly. So thank you—for taking a chance, for turning pages, for leaving reviews, and for choosing stories told outside the big, shiny publishing machine.
When I’m not writing, I’m usually at home in Minnesota with a cup of coffee, watching the snow fall, wandering cozy bookstores, gardening, painting, or consulting as a nurse.
If you’d like to follow along and see what Ginny, Eliza, and the rest of this world get up to next, you can find updates on my Amazon Author Page.
Thanks for being here. And thanks for reading indie.
I write stories about complicated people doing their best—something Ginny would argue absolutely counts as character growth.
If you’ve met Ginny and Eliza, you already know they have opinions. If you haven’t yet, they’re waiting for you—along with found family, quiet (and not-so-quiet) magic, and moments of change that tend to arrive when no one feels ready for them.
I’m an indie author, which means every reader who shows up matters. Truly. So thank you—for taking a chance, for turning pages, for leaving reviews, and for choosing stories told outside the big, shiny publishing machine.
When I’m not writing, I’m usually at home in Minnesota with a cup of coffee, watching the snow fall, wandering cozy bookstores, gardening, painting, or consulting as a nurse.
If you’d like to follow along and see what Ginny, Eliza, and the rest of this world get up to next, you can find updates on my Amazon Author Page.
Thanks for being here. And thanks for reading indie.
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December 27, 2025
Acquired Kindle edition when offered free on Amazon.
CLIFFHANGER WARNING
Book Three Coming Spring 2026
Review coming; will be posted here when I stop being angry. . . . .
. . . . . .A few hours later, I'm still angry about this book, and about Spellbound: Book One, but I'm going to write this review anyway. I may never not be angry about them.
First and foremost: I believe it is unconscionable for a writer to put out a book that doesn't really end and NOT inform readers beforehand that the saga continues and they will have to buy more books. Whether the books are published at the same time or there is a gap of a week, a month, a decade, writers owe it to readers to let them know there's a "to be continued" before they start reading.
For that reason alone, this book would get a one star rating. So be warned: If you thought Spellbound: Book Two was going to resolve the whole story, you were misled, as was I.
Some minor spoilers may follow.
At 200 pages, I don't consider this a novella at all. It's a rather short but still full-length book, whether it ends satisfactorily or not. A novella also, whether part of a continuing series or not, should be complete in and of itself, which this is not.
With that stuff out of the way, let's get to the meat of this review. And if you'd like to see my review of Spellbound: Book One, it's here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
So, Book Two is now out, and I picked up the freebie copy when it popped up on Amazon. I figured I wasn't out anything, except maybe some time. I don't even know what its listed retail price is, though I noticed Book One is now listed at just $0.99 US.
I read Book One back in September, about three months ago, and I thought that was recently enough to just start in with Book Two. It wasn't. Within a few pages, I was completely lost, unable to link this new segment that starts with a scene in which Eliza is looking forward to a pleasant Christmas, to the previous one that ended right after Halloween and Thanksgiving. I should have just given up at that point and saved myself some misery. But no, I dutifully re-read Spellbound: Book One in its entirety to anchor myself securely in the plot.
It didn't help. All the rereading did was to emphasize the flaws I'd seen and add awareness of more. From 300 highlighted issues on the first read, the total jumped to over 500 after the second.
One of the issues I'd had with Book One was the lack of background information provided for most of the characters. I even singled out Agnes Fuller in my original review. Who was she? What was she? The reread of that book did provide me with some additional information, though not much. I realized I had apparently missed that information on the first read because I was so distracted by the shitty writing . . . or perhaps the author had added it and revised the Kindle book sometime during the three months since my first reading. I'll never know. None of the missing background on the other characters had been provided, however. How old are the characters? Where is the town of Ciderbrooke? What is Ginny's background? And so on.
Interestingly, when I began to read Book Two, the Kindle for PC app opens it to Chapter One, skipping over the "Prologue." It was only after I had reread Book One, and returned to Book Two that I discovered this "Prologue."
Please note: Clicking on "Go to Beginning" did NOT take me to the "Prologue." I had to page-scroll back to it. . . or page-scroll from the cover. There is no linked Table of Contents. It's as if you need magic to find the effing Prologue! (I have not yet checked to see how this works on my Kindle Fire.)
So the reread gave me a little more information, but not much, and certainly not enough to make a lot of the events of Book Two any more comprehensible.
Now, having read both books in quick succession -- I began the second one literally right after finishing the first, and completed it in two days -- I still have no clear clue what the fuck is going on.
Nor, at this point, do I care. I don't care about the characters, any of them. The author hasn't created characters that I am even remotely interested in, and I certainly do not care about them.
The basic plot is nothing new. Eliza Lakeland is a witch who does magic badly in this little town of Ciderbrooke. Her mother abandoned her for reasons unknown, she was raised by her grandmother, and she has inherited her grandmother's house. The house also does magic, and there is a grimoire. Eliza goes through various crises in Book One that sort of help her get her magic skills a little better controlled.
She has joined forces with her love interest Simon Sterling and her best friend Ginny. Simon has inherited his father's bookstore. That's all we know about him. We know nothing about Ginny, other than she lives by herself in her house.
Some threatening force has been aroused/awakened by the end of the first book, and so the reader is left to presume that force will be dealt with in the sequel.
Part of this threatening force is in fact destroyed, or at least defeated, in Book Two, but not all of it. Hence. . . . the forthcoming Book Three. But as I remarked in the previous review, author James doesn't tell the reader how many parts are yet to come, so when will this whole business end? We don't know. And without characters to care about, do we care when or how or if the whole business will end? I don't.
Ginny is now a witch, along with Eliza. Not sure about Simon, though he has some things he got from his father that are kept in a secret room/compartment of the bookshop. (Yeah, lots of questions there.) Ginny and Simon move into Eliza's house, which formerly belonged to her grandmother who was also a witch. They are now the self-styled Coven of Three. How Simon became a witch/warlock/magician isn't explained. He got burned in Book One and that somehow magically mated/tied him to Eliza, but none of that is explained either. Oh, and by the way, by the middle of Book Two, Simon and Eliza have apparently not yet had sex. This may or may not be important, but why they haven't, even though they apparently share a bedroom and even a bed, hasn't been explained.
Eliza's grandmother had a grimoire. Eliza saw it, Eliza uses it, and another character Daniel also saw it. I don't know what happens to this grimoire. Is it the one that ends up at Agnes's house? If so, it wasn't made clear.
Agnes, who we learn from the "Prologue" is 179 years old, dies. She, too, has a grimoire, or Grimoire. (Author James isn't always consistent about these things.) I don't know if this is the same grimoire that belonged to Eliza's grandmother or not. This should be made clear, shouldn't it?
However, it's eventually revealed that "the Council" – the power/force/organization that is threatening Eliza, Ginny, and Simon along with all of Ciderbrooke – wants this grimoire. There are supposedly three of these books in existence, and the Council has two of them. If they acquire the third, they will have unlimited power to rule the world. (Three Grimoires - One Ring?)
Agnes's grimoire is in a cellar. Then somehow it ends up in a greenhouse that is somehow attached to Agnes's house. Eliza, Ginny, and Simon move into Agnes's house, with all the folks in Ciderbrooke helping to move their possessions from Eliza's grandmother's house.
Apparently Ginny is the one responsible for moving the grimoire from the cellar to the greenhouse. I have no clue how she does this. She claims it's to keep the Council from getting it, but that makes no sense.
The grimoire is protected by seven "sanctions." What these are isn't exactly clear. Maybe they are spells of some sort that manifest as little objects that orbit around the grimoire? There's no real description of these objects, just that they seem to break with rather explosive results. Eliza, Ginny, and Simon seem to want the sanctions to break and are actively trying to break them, but I'm not sure why. Are the sanctions – which apparently Agnes put in place before she died, or maybe Eliza's grandmother did? – to protect the grimoire from the Council getting it? Or to keep Eliza from using it? Eliza has used it in the past, but now she's not supposed to?
As I wrote in the previous review, there's a lot about the beginning of the first book that's reminiscent of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," with Eliza's spell to get Simon to notice her backfiring and every male except Simon falls in love/lust/crush with her. But at this later point in the second volume, there are odd similarities to The One Ring in The Lord of the Rings. The difference is that Gandalf in LotR knows what the Ring is capable of and what must be done to destroy its power. There's no one like that in the Spellbound books; it's as if everything is being made up as the story goes along, with no internal consistency.
Magic, like characters, has to be internally consistent. Ginny is presented in the first book as the sensible one, the grounded one. She's the best friend forever who keeps Eliza and her magic more or less under control, or at least helps get Eliza out of trouble when the magic goes wrong, which it always does. Then when Ginny gets some magical powers – or did she always have them? – she becomes the Too Stupid To Live character. (We do learn, however, that Ginny is 32 years old. Nothing about Eliza's age, or Simon's, though Simon does have some grey hair. Ginny's hair is red and curly . . . and long.)
Enter the character of Julian Warde. Incredibly handsome. Gorgeously dressed. Exotic/erotic accent. Ginny falls head over heels in insta-lust/love. Every reader with two sentient brain cells knows Julian is Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with B for bold text. Readers do, but apparently Eliza and Simon and everyone else just thinks Julian is a cool guy who has waltzed into Ciderbrooke and announced just before Christmas that he's going to renovate the old Ridge Street Inn and have it open for a big New Year's Eve ball. ("The Ridge" is a geological feature that somehow delineates the town of Ciderbrooke from its surroundings. There are woods, too. And a lake. No map.)
Eleanor raises her hand. “This gentleman here,” she announces, beaming, “is Ciderbrooke’s newest resident, Julian Warde! He’ll be restoring the Ridge Street Inn!” A wave of chatter ripples through the room.
The Ridge Street Inn sits boarded on the ridge. Hester’s old house stays dark behind it.
(James, Kathryn. Spellbound: Book Two (A Winter Paranormal Novella) (p. 21). Kindle Edition.)
Eleanor is the town clerk, or something. I have no idea who or what "Hester" is.
But right after that . . .
Ginny looks seconds from fainting.
“He’s fucking with me,” she whispers.
(James, Kathryn. Spellbound: Book Two (A Winter Paranormal Novella) (p. 22). Kindle Edition.)
No shit, Sherlock.
Ginny and Eliza go to the vintage consignment shop and buy elaborate outfits for this ball.
They also conjure up a whole bunch of magic shit, including a magical tramway of sleighs to transport the guests from beautiful downtown Ciderbrooke up to the old Ridge Street Inn, which has been completely restored in what, a week? Ginny does most of this, so I guess she's acquired a whole lot of magical power and the ability to use and control it.
Eliza, meantime, is sort of learning how to . . . fly.
At the ball on New Year's Eve, Ginny hooks up with Julian. Over the next few days and nights – or maybe just during the ball -- she blabs every single "secret" about Eliza's magic, the grimoire (or grimoires), Agnes, the Council, everything, to Julian, this total stranger she already knows is fucking with her. She has sex with him (twice, I think), and believes they are meant for each other and he's going to take her home to meet his mother . . . in Croatia.
As should have been obvious to just about everyone, Julian was indeed fucking with her, literally and figuratively. He dumps her.
The whole time line for this isn't clear, because it all comes to a head at the ball, even though some things happened after the ball??? I'm not sure.
Did Eliza see this coming? No, she did not. Not even when Ginny said out loud "He's fucking with me." So much for Eliza's vaunted magic. Did Simon recognize how hinky this Julian guy is? Guess not. He didn't say anything either. But seriously, it came as no surprise. Eliza even admits it later.
My fury fumes beneath the skin. I’m angry at Ginny for trusting him. Angry at Julian for using her. Angry at myself for not knowing.
(James, Kathryn. Spellbound: Book Two (A Winter Paranormal Novella) (p. 72). Kindle Edition.)
So now here come the Council, all five or six of them. Ginny, in her rage and humiliation over Julian, conjures up a massive blizzard. From this blizzard arise snowmen.
Snowmen? Are you kidding me?
No, not kidding.
Shapes rise from the yards. Snowmen. Dozens of them. They climb out of the drifts, slow and deliberate, shoulders squared like soldiers. They glow faint blue, faces half-formed, eyes dark holes that burn faint light. They aren’t built by hand—they happen. Ginny’s grief is building them, her fury carving them from the snow. Every betrayal shapes another. He broke her clean in half. Her magic doesn’t need spells; it’s sadness in motion.
(James, Kathryn. Spellbound: Book Two (A Winter Paranormal Novella) (p. 73). Kindle Edition.)
The snowmen are conjured to guard the house.
Snowmen. With carrot noses.
Conjured by Ginny.
There are thirty of them. But then later there are twenty-three, with no explanation for what happened to the other seven. Bad editing? And seriously, if you're looking out a window into a blizzard at night, how can you count whether there are thirty or twenty-three anyway?
Most of the rest of the book is about this epic battle in the snow with the snowmen, the Council, the blizzard, Daniel, Julian, and the Lucasian revelation of who/what is behind it all, sort of. If author James intended the snowmen to be comedic, she failed, at least for this reader. They were just dumb. They made no sense in the Ciderbrooke universe. The destruction of the sanctions guarding (?) the grimoire made no sense. Nothing made any sense. Even in fantasy, things have to make sense within the context of the created universe.
At some point, there's a break in the "war" between the Coven of Three (plus a resurrected human Daniel and town clerk Eleanor, or whatever she is. She always has a clipboard.) and the Council, during which Ginny and Simon team up to build Eliza a flying broom. (Harry Potter rip-off?) Simon, who used to be the quiet, sensible bookshop owner, is also a super duper handyman who ignores all the warning signals that his truck's battery is dying and refuses to let Eliza use magic to keep the vehicle running. But he has time and, presumably, the specialized skills to make her a flying broom. Riiiiiight.
I don't know what the significance of the lake is. It's thawing, but so what? Doesn't it thaw every spring? It would help if James had provided some context for . . . everything. But there's some connection between the lake -- I don't think it has a name -- and Eliza's being "a Lakeland."
Eventually, the twenty-three snowmen – or maybe they were joined by hundreds more? – contribute to the defeat – even if temporary – of the Council. Agnes's house is partly blown to smithereens, but the Council doesn't get its/their hands on the grimoire, though I'm not sure how that happened. And then it's all . . . To be continued.
The only improvement from the first volume was the incredible decrease in the number of similes in the prose. Where Book One was told in mostly first person past tense with a few exceptions, the second book reverted to present tense, which made no sense. (Will the next book be in future tense?) At the tail end there were a few lapses into third person where Eliza was referred to by her name rather than a personal pronoun. I highlighted them but will try to grab some screen shots in case they and some other typographical errors get corrected later.
This error,however, had me almost throwing the new computer against the wall.
Simon works, checking the perimeter every few minutes. The snowmen outside—hundreds—stand in disciplined rows, heads angled East again.
Daniel sorts shattered brick into piles, muttering apology spells he knows won't work. He knows this really accomplish's nothing except giving his hands somewhere to be.
(James, Kathryn. Spellbound: Book Two (A Winter Paranormal Novella) (pp. 173-174). Kindle Edition.)
That's a reference to the additional snowmen,but "accomplish's" was unforgivable.
After most of the second volume consisted of this epic battle which would have been fine if there had been sufficient explanation for . . . anything, it's suddenly six weeks later and everyone is getting ready for Valentine's Day as if nothing ever happened.
I truly hated this book. The lack of internal consistency was maddening. Then to reach the final page and find out, "Ha ha, I fooled you! Now you gotta wait until 'spring' to read the next book and maybe that'll be the end but I'm not promising anything!"
One star, for reasons.
CLIFFHANGER WARNING
Book Three Coming Spring 2026
Review coming; will be posted here when I stop being angry. . . . .
. . . . . .A few hours later, I'm still angry about this book, and about Spellbound: Book One, but I'm going to write this review anyway. I may never not be angry about them.
First and foremost: I believe it is unconscionable for a writer to put out a book that doesn't really end and NOT inform readers beforehand that the saga continues and they will have to buy more books. Whether the books are published at the same time or there is a gap of a week, a month, a decade, writers owe it to readers to let them know there's a "to be continued" before they start reading.
For that reason alone, this book would get a one star rating. So be warned: If you thought Spellbound: Book Two was going to resolve the whole story, you were misled, as was I.
Some minor spoilers may follow.
At 200 pages, I don't consider this a novella at all. It's a rather short but still full-length book, whether it ends satisfactorily or not. A novella also, whether part of a continuing series or not, should be complete in and of itself, which this is not.
With that stuff out of the way, let's get to the meat of this review. And if you'd like to see my review of Spellbound: Book One, it's here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
So, Book Two is now out, and I picked up the freebie copy when it popped up on Amazon. I figured I wasn't out anything, except maybe some time. I don't even know what its listed retail price is, though I noticed Book One is now listed at just $0.99 US.
I read Book One back in September, about three months ago, and I thought that was recently enough to just start in with Book Two. It wasn't. Within a few pages, I was completely lost, unable to link this new segment that starts with a scene in which Eliza is looking forward to a pleasant Christmas, to the previous one that ended right after Halloween and Thanksgiving. I should have just given up at that point and saved myself some misery. But no, I dutifully re-read Spellbound: Book One in its entirety to anchor myself securely in the plot.
It didn't help. All the rereading did was to emphasize the flaws I'd seen and add awareness of more. From 300 highlighted issues on the first read, the total jumped to over 500 after the second.
One of the issues I'd had with Book One was the lack of background information provided for most of the characters. I even singled out Agnes Fuller in my original review. Who was she? What was she? The reread of that book did provide me with some additional information, though not much. I realized I had apparently missed that information on the first read because I was so distracted by the shitty writing . . . or perhaps the author had added it and revised the Kindle book sometime during the three months since my first reading. I'll never know. None of the missing background on the other characters had been provided, however. How old are the characters? Where is the town of Ciderbrooke? What is Ginny's background? And so on.
Interestingly, when I began to read Book Two, the Kindle for PC app opens it to Chapter One, skipping over the "Prologue." It was only after I had reread Book One, and returned to Book Two that I discovered this "Prologue."
Please note: Clicking on "Go to Beginning" did NOT take me to the "Prologue." I had to page-scroll back to it. . . or page-scroll from the cover. There is no linked Table of Contents. It's as if you need magic to find the effing Prologue! (I have not yet checked to see how this works on my Kindle Fire.)
So the reread gave me a little more information, but not much, and certainly not enough to make a lot of the events of Book Two any more comprehensible.
Now, having read both books in quick succession -- I began the second one literally right after finishing the first, and completed it in two days -- I still have no clear clue what the fuck is going on.
Nor, at this point, do I care. I don't care about the characters, any of them. The author hasn't created characters that I am even remotely interested in, and I certainly do not care about them.
The basic plot is nothing new. Eliza Lakeland is a witch who does magic badly in this little town of Ciderbrooke. Her mother abandoned her for reasons unknown, she was raised by her grandmother, and she has inherited her grandmother's house. The house also does magic, and there is a grimoire. Eliza goes through various crises in Book One that sort of help her get her magic skills a little better controlled.
She has joined forces with her love interest Simon Sterling and her best friend Ginny. Simon has inherited his father's bookstore. That's all we know about him. We know nothing about Ginny, other than she lives by herself in her house.
Some threatening force has been aroused/awakened by the end of the first book, and so the reader is left to presume that force will be dealt with in the sequel.
Part of this threatening force is in fact destroyed, or at least defeated, in Book Two, but not all of it. Hence. . . . the forthcoming Book Three. But as I remarked in the previous review, author James doesn't tell the reader how many parts are yet to come, so when will this whole business end? We don't know. And without characters to care about, do we care when or how or if the whole business will end? I don't.
Ginny is now a witch, along with Eliza. Not sure about Simon, though he has some things he got from his father that are kept in a secret room/compartment of the bookshop. (Yeah, lots of questions there.) Ginny and Simon move into Eliza's house, which formerly belonged to her grandmother who was also a witch. They are now the self-styled Coven of Three. How Simon became a witch/warlock/magician isn't explained. He got burned in Book One and that somehow magically mated/tied him to Eliza, but none of that is explained either. Oh, and by the way, by the middle of Book Two, Simon and Eliza have apparently not yet had sex. This may or may not be important, but why they haven't, even though they apparently share a bedroom and even a bed, hasn't been explained.
Eliza's grandmother had a grimoire. Eliza saw it, Eliza uses it, and another character Daniel also saw it. I don't know what happens to this grimoire. Is it the one that ends up at Agnes's house? If so, it wasn't made clear.
Agnes, who we learn from the "Prologue" is 179 years old, dies. She, too, has a grimoire, or Grimoire. (Author James isn't always consistent about these things.) I don't know if this is the same grimoire that belonged to Eliza's grandmother or not. This should be made clear, shouldn't it?
However, it's eventually revealed that "the Council" – the power/force/organization that is threatening Eliza, Ginny, and Simon along with all of Ciderbrooke – wants this grimoire. There are supposedly three of these books in existence, and the Council has two of them. If they acquire the third, they will have unlimited power to rule the world. (Three Grimoires - One Ring?)
Agnes's grimoire is in a cellar. Then somehow it ends up in a greenhouse that is somehow attached to Agnes's house. Eliza, Ginny, and Simon move into Agnes's house, with all the folks in Ciderbrooke helping to move their possessions from Eliza's grandmother's house.
Apparently Ginny is the one responsible for moving the grimoire from the cellar to the greenhouse. I have no clue how she does this. She claims it's to keep the Council from getting it, but that makes no sense.
The grimoire is protected by seven "sanctions." What these are isn't exactly clear. Maybe they are spells of some sort that manifest as little objects that orbit around the grimoire? There's no real description of these objects, just that they seem to break with rather explosive results. Eliza, Ginny, and Simon seem to want the sanctions to break and are actively trying to break them, but I'm not sure why. Are the sanctions – which apparently Agnes put in place before she died, or maybe Eliza's grandmother did? – to protect the grimoire from the Council getting it? Or to keep Eliza from using it? Eliza has used it in the past, but now she's not supposed to?
As I wrote in the previous review, there's a lot about the beginning of the first book that's reminiscent of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," with Eliza's spell to get Simon to notice her backfiring and every male except Simon falls in love/lust/crush with her. But at this later point in the second volume, there are odd similarities to The One Ring in The Lord of the Rings. The difference is that Gandalf in LotR knows what the Ring is capable of and what must be done to destroy its power. There's no one like that in the Spellbound books; it's as if everything is being made up as the story goes along, with no internal consistency.
Magic, like characters, has to be internally consistent. Ginny is presented in the first book as the sensible one, the grounded one. She's the best friend forever who keeps Eliza and her magic more or less under control, or at least helps get Eliza out of trouble when the magic goes wrong, which it always does. Then when Ginny gets some magical powers – or did she always have them? – she becomes the Too Stupid To Live character. (We do learn, however, that Ginny is 32 years old. Nothing about Eliza's age, or Simon's, though Simon does have some grey hair. Ginny's hair is red and curly . . . and long.)
Enter the character of Julian Warde. Incredibly handsome. Gorgeously dressed. Exotic/erotic accent. Ginny falls head over heels in insta-lust/love. Every reader with two sentient brain cells knows Julian is Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with B for bold text. Readers do, but apparently Eliza and Simon and everyone else just thinks Julian is a cool guy who has waltzed into Ciderbrooke and announced just before Christmas that he's going to renovate the old Ridge Street Inn and have it open for a big New Year's Eve ball. ("The Ridge" is a geological feature that somehow delineates the town of Ciderbrooke from its surroundings. There are woods, too. And a lake. No map.)
Eleanor raises her hand. “This gentleman here,” she announces, beaming, “is Ciderbrooke’s newest resident, Julian Warde! He’ll be restoring the Ridge Street Inn!” A wave of chatter ripples through the room.
The Ridge Street Inn sits boarded on the ridge. Hester’s old house stays dark behind it.
(James, Kathryn. Spellbound: Book Two (A Winter Paranormal Novella) (p. 21). Kindle Edition.)
Eleanor is the town clerk, or something. I have no idea who or what "Hester" is.
But right after that . . .
Ginny looks seconds from fainting.
“He’s fucking with me,” she whispers.
(James, Kathryn. Spellbound: Book Two (A Winter Paranormal Novella) (p. 22). Kindle Edition.)
No shit, Sherlock.
Ginny and Eliza go to the vintage consignment shop and buy elaborate outfits for this ball.
They also conjure up a whole bunch of magic shit, including a magical tramway of sleighs to transport the guests from beautiful downtown Ciderbrooke up to the old Ridge Street Inn, which has been completely restored in what, a week? Ginny does most of this, so I guess she's acquired a whole lot of magical power and the ability to use and control it.
Eliza, meantime, is sort of learning how to . . . fly.
At the ball on New Year's Eve, Ginny hooks up with Julian. Over the next few days and nights – or maybe just during the ball -- she blabs every single "secret" about Eliza's magic, the grimoire (or grimoires), Agnes, the Council, everything, to Julian, this total stranger she already knows is fucking with her. She has sex with him (twice, I think), and believes they are meant for each other and he's going to take her home to meet his mother . . . in Croatia.
As should have been obvious to just about everyone, Julian was indeed fucking with her, literally and figuratively. He dumps her.
The whole time line for this isn't clear, because it all comes to a head at the ball, even though some things happened after the ball??? I'm not sure.
Did Eliza see this coming? No, she did not. Not even when Ginny said out loud "He's fucking with me." So much for Eliza's vaunted magic. Did Simon recognize how hinky this Julian guy is? Guess not. He didn't say anything either. But seriously, it came as no surprise. Eliza even admits it later.
My fury fumes beneath the skin. I’m angry at Ginny for trusting him. Angry at Julian for using her. Angry at myself for not knowing.
(James, Kathryn. Spellbound: Book Two (A Winter Paranormal Novella) (p. 72). Kindle Edition.)
So now here come the Council, all five or six of them. Ginny, in her rage and humiliation over Julian, conjures up a massive blizzard. From this blizzard arise snowmen.
Snowmen? Are you kidding me?
No, not kidding.
Shapes rise from the yards. Snowmen. Dozens of them. They climb out of the drifts, slow and deliberate, shoulders squared like soldiers. They glow faint blue, faces half-formed, eyes dark holes that burn faint light. They aren’t built by hand—they happen. Ginny’s grief is building them, her fury carving them from the snow. Every betrayal shapes another. He broke her clean in half. Her magic doesn’t need spells; it’s sadness in motion.
(James, Kathryn. Spellbound: Book Two (A Winter Paranormal Novella) (p. 73). Kindle Edition.)
The snowmen are conjured to guard the house.
Snowmen. With carrot noses.
Conjured by Ginny.
There are thirty of them. But then later there are twenty-three, with no explanation for what happened to the other seven. Bad editing? And seriously, if you're looking out a window into a blizzard at night, how can you count whether there are thirty or twenty-three anyway?
Most of the rest of the book is about this epic battle in the snow with the snowmen, the Council, the blizzard, Daniel, Julian, and the Lucasian revelation of who/what is behind it all, sort of. If author James intended the snowmen to be comedic, she failed, at least for this reader. They were just dumb. They made no sense in the Ciderbrooke universe. The destruction of the sanctions guarding (?) the grimoire made no sense. Nothing made any sense. Even in fantasy, things have to make sense within the context of the created universe.
At some point, there's a break in the "war" between the Coven of Three (plus a resurrected human Daniel and town clerk Eleanor, or whatever she is. She always has a clipboard.) and the Council, during which Ginny and Simon team up to build Eliza a flying broom. (Harry Potter rip-off?) Simon, who used to be the quiet, sensible bookshop owner, is also a super duper handyman who ignores all the warning signals that his truck's battery is dying and refuses to let Eliza use magic to keep the vehicle running. But he has time and, presumably, the specialized skills to make her a flying broom. Riiiiiight.
I don't know what the significance of the lake is. It's thawing, but so what? Doesn't it thaw every spring? It would help if James had provided some context for . . . everything. But there's some connection between the lake -- I don't think it has a name -- and Eliza's being "a Lakeland."
Eventually, the twenty-three snowmen – or maybe they were joined by hundreds more? – contribute to the defeat – even if temporary – of the Council. Agnes's house is partly blown to smithereens, but the Council doesn't get its/their hands on the grimoire, though I'm not sure how that happened. And then it's all . . . To be continued.
The only improvement from the first volume was the incredible decrease in the number of similes in the prose. Where Book One was told in mostly first person past tense with a few exceptions, the second book reverted to present tense, which made no sense. (Will the next book be in future tense?) At the tail end there were a few lapses into third person where Eliza was referred to by her name rather than a personal pronoun. I highlighted them but will try to grab some screen shots in case they and some other typographical errors get corrected later.
This error,however, had me almost throwing the new computer against the wall.
Simon works, checking the perimeter every few minutes. The snowmen outside—hundreds—stand in disciplined rows, heads angled East again.
Daniel sorts shattered brick into piles, muttering apology spells he knows won't work. He knows this really accomplish's nothing except giving his hands somewhere to be.
(James, Kathryn. Spellbound: Book Two (A Winter Paranormal Novella) (pp. 173-174). Kindle Edition.)
That's a reference to the additional snowmen,but "accomplish's" was unforgivable.
After most of the second volume consisted of this epic battle which would have been fine if there had been sufficient explanation for . . . anything, it's suddenly six weeks later and everyone is getting ready for Valentine's Day as if nothing ever happened.
I truly hated this book. The lack of internal consistency was maddening. Then to reach the final page and find out, "Ha ha, I fooled you! Now you gotta wait until 'spring' to read the next book and maybe that'll be the end but I'm not promising anything!"
One star, for reasons.
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