Witches of the Wheel

by Lindsay Merbaum

In her metaphysical mystery Witches of the Wheel, Lindsay Merbaum weaves a spellbinding tale of mythology, bartending, and queer belonging.

Gold grows up knowing only a few things about herself: something lets her see ghosts and read her neighbors' secrets, and her mother seems to hate her. But when she strikes out on her own, she stumbles into a job at The Wheel, a literally-underground lesbian bar where a coven gathers every Thursday and each entrance requires a painful sacrifice. It feels like the first place she's belonged.

But the bar, its patrons, and its history are more complicated, and more dangerous, than Gold ever realized. As she entangles herself in her new community, she learns more about herself than she wanted to know—and attracts an ancient goddess’s deadly attention.

Praise for Witches of the Wheel:

“Oh, what a world Lindsay Merbaum has created. With her words, she’s woven a spell that blooms then burns bright, unveiling a realm of ancient and unending magic. I only wish the novel was as eternal as its characters. My advice to the novice—grab a cocktail, find a cozy, candle-lit alcove, and let the witches and goddesses take the Wheel.” —EV Knight, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Fourth Whore and Three Days in the Pink Tower

“In this intoxicating blend of magical realism, where fairy tales and ancient myths bleed into modern queer life, Gold must navigate a world where bartending is a sacred calling, sacrifice opens doors, and the gods themselves walk among us with their own agendas. As she’s pulled deeper into Babylon’s hidden magical underworld, she discovers that being chosen by a goddess is not a gift but a transformation—one that will demand everything she has and reshape her into something altogether more powerful and more terrifying than human.

For fans of Circe and The City We Became, Witches of the Wheel weaves mythology and desire into a darkly enchanting tale of a young woman discovering that her greatest power lies not in controlling her magic, but in surrendering to what she’s always been meant to become.” —Tracy Cross, author of Rootwork and A Gathering of Weapons

Genres: Queer, LGBT, Lesbian, Fantasy, Horror, Fiction

261 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 22, 2026

About the author

Lindsay Merbaum is a queer feminist author, the leader of Pick Your Potions’ Study Coven, and a high priestess of home mixology. A 2021 Foreword Indies Finalist, The Gold Persimmon was her first novel with Creature Publishing. Her second book, a smutty horror-comedy novella called Vampires at Sea, was also a Foreword Indies Finalist and a LibraryReads Bonus Pick. Lindsay lives in Michigan with her partner and cats.

Reviews

[Krystal · Rating 1 out of 5]

Narrated by Rylie Jackson
Presented by Dreamscape Media

Honestly this was a horrendous, weird lil lesbian orgy from start to finish and I spent most of it waiting for an actual plot of any kind while generally feeling uncomfortable.

Also there's just, like, an unnecessarily high frequency of the word 'butch' and other various stereotype terms. So much cringe.

The story begins with our protagonist copping abuse and being used by her mother, and is generally horrible. Gold tends to go along with it because what else can she do? But this book also has dumb moments like multiple references to 'reading' people (i.e. psychically) and then our main character being like, 'huh? why is she asking about what books I read?' BRUH.

So we're not dealing with a smart book here.

Gold finds herself at an underground lesbian bar, and from there it just gets weirder and nastier while moving no further.

I won't go into details - safe to say it was not my cup of tea.

There didn't seem to be a lot of plot beyond multiple love interests and some weak ideas around powerful goddesses. Honestly? I tuned out a lot because there's so much vulgarity. But most of the book takes place at or around the bar so there's not a lot of variety here at all.

I could forgive the book if it had a strong story, or some powerful women doing impressive things, but this is mediocre people and weak characters being used as an excuse to go into smutty details of sexual debauchery.

Not for me, folks, and not one I can really recommend, though queer readers might appreciate it a little more than I did.

With thanks to NetGalley for an audio ARC

[Becky Spratford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review appeared on Booklist Online in June of 2026 and is on the blog here: https://raforall.blogspot.com/2026/07... (link live 7/9/26 at 7am central)


Three Words That Describe This Book: conversational storytelling, atmospheric, lesbians/goddesses/ witches

I know that last one is three words but they go together.

Other words, immersive, strong sense of place, coming of age, single pov, compelling (but not fast), dark fantasy

Gold had a tough childhood, her mother was borderline abusive, but once her mother realized that Gold had the power to talk to the dead, she used her daughter to make money. But even before her mom monetizes her powers, Gold knew one of the spirits that visited her was older and stronger than the more common ghosts.

After her mom dies suddenly while Gold is still a teenager, she finds shelter, friendship, and a purpose at The Wheel, a lesbian bar, hidden underground, and guarded by an old magic.

Taken in a taught the ways of The Wheel, readers join Gold as she takes it all in. Learns about the ancient history of the bar, the dark and serious power it holds over those in charge, and the coven who meet there weekly. Gold yearns to be accepted. She is looking for a place to belong, a family to be a part of, but she also holds more power than anyone realizes. And her connection to an ancient goddess has the potential to put everything her new friends hold dear at risk. But also, it could save them all.

Gold is forced to make tough choices as she embraces her magic, her connection to the ancient goddess who has been visiting her since she was a child, shakes of her trauma and decides how she is going to live her adult life.

With the conversational storytelling narration from Gold, readers will be immersed in the world and encouraged to sit back and take it all in.

Dark fantasy, queer, witchy feminist vibes, ancient evil, and coming of age story collide in a place (The Wheel) that readers will not soon forget, and wish they could actually visit.

A perfect choice for readers who like Cackle by Harrison, Queen of Teeth by Piper, and Goddess of Filth by Castro. It really is a great mashup of the best of all three of those excellent books.

[lorenzodulac · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was really not for me, but I didn’t hate it. I was on board most of the time. Things got ridiculous from time to time, it’s like having too much of a good thing.
Witches and lesbian bars. Lesbian witches in magical bars. In what world could that possibly be something I find boring? None, because it wasn’t boring in this one. It, however, got too much. Goddesses, witches, queerness, all good. But I found the way this book was structured to be tiring. The way things happened, the way situations were described in way too much detail.
Which brings me to the writing itself. I liked it being quick and easy, I thought it made the book even more fast-paced. The way the author incorporates all these different myths, all the divinities, etc. I did like that. But there’s no need to go overboard. The book’s quite short too, you can’t pack all that into a book this length. Next.
The main character’s inner monologue was exhausting. I did not like her. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t an interesting character. She is. And she’s exhausting. Two things can be true at once.
As for the side characters, it’s not that I wasn’t a fan, it’s that I barely noticed them we were so focused on Gold. And as it should be, she’s the main character! But I would’ve liked some more development on that front.
It was a quick and fast-paced book, atmospheric, perfect for the upcoming spooky season. I was mostly interested in what was going on, and while it has all the bones to be my type of book, it ultimately wasn’t, not really. From the main character, to the writing, to the overarching plot. It wasn’t all that. It was what I was expecting, more or less, but I anticipated liking it more.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Izzy⁷♡•° · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you do much to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for providing an ALC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

I was so down for this plot however the execution was incredibly lacking.

We follow Gold from her childhood into her teens and I know that there is a lot of magical realism here and a lot of this plot felt very fever dream ish however, we are talking about a 17 year old, a very traumatised and insecure 17 year old and the way everyone around her treated her, in what felt like should be a warm and embracing community, made me feel really icky. She is also a really frustrating character to follow because she is full of contradictions, which fair, but there is no growth whatsoever in this book and that just makes me wonder what even was the point.

The side characters were very flat, we knew nothing about them because Gold knew nothing about them. Characters were introduced left and right and had no fleshed out arcs they were either so flat or rushed.

I didn't even really like the writing that much because the way we jumped from scenes was so weird. There was literally a scene were everyone was leaving the bar and the scene after Gold was still in the bar and there were people there.

I enjoyed the beginning of this book but after a quarter I started to lose interest and the ending last quarter was quite messy. I don't have a burning hate for this book, but honestly it's kind of a skip in my opinion.

[Lady Olenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book was well written. The mythology was woven through intricately supporting the primary story in a well choreographed manner. I especially love the beginning part when the MC still lived in the dilapidated house because everything was so vivid - the squalor, the two supporting characters, the MC’s inner thoughts and dialogue.

The fantastical part was interesting and showcased the author’s vivid imagination. The scenes they painted were complex and original.

However, the jumping from one scene to the next (in the general story) was what made me pause for a bit because sometimes it wasn’t clear that the scene has already moved on. Otherwise, it was a colourful, interesting story.

[The Blog Without a Face · Rating 3.75 out of 5]

All the Gods Come to Babylon, and Nobody Does the Dishes

TL;DR: A psychic teenager, a mother who sells pills through the kitchen window, a coven that can’t outshout a car alarm, and a Sumerian goddess with no table manners. Lindsay Merbaum’s Witches of the Wheel is grotesque, very funny, and cold in the right places. Pull up a stool. Bring something to sacrifice.

The bottles at The Wheel refill themselves, provided nobody breaks one. The bathroom has three stalls and never a line, whatever is going on in there, and when the bartender is asked how, they say, “I don’t believe in lines.” Back rooms open in the rock as the crowd grows and close again when it thins, taking some of the glassware with them. There is one house rule, NO SMOKING, chalked up by the register. There is no dishwasher. The seventeen-year-old who narrates Lindsay Merbaum‘s Witches of the Wheel notices this over a bin of dirty glasses and calls it cruel. She’s right.

The Wheel is a lesbian bar at the bottom of a brick tunnel in a broke Midwestern town called Babylon. On her first night Gold cries on her barstool because nobody in the room is laughing at anybody and nobody has thrown a thing. The door wants a sacrifice. Brenda, who runs the place, hands her an old dagger and mentions that some people come in naked. Gold takes a fistful of her own curls and cuts. “Wow. Ok,” Brenda says. “I’ve just never seen anyone do it that fast.”

She has had practice. Gold grew up in a farmhouse with her mother, Barb, who sells painkillers and EpiPens out the window over the kitchen sink and calls the sagging back porch “the service entrance.” Barb is pink and pasty, with fingernails of yellow horn and teeth “all different sizes and colors, like flint corn.” She wears T-shirts with kitties and hearts on them, “clothes for a giant child.” Unlabeled boxes wall the hallways to the ceiling, a second house built of trash. When the girl turns out to have the sight, Barb puts her to work at the kitchen table reading for strangers, tells her she is a good earner, not as good as pills, and starts calling her Gold. Her given name is Esther, which to Gold sounded like mothballs and medicine. The nickname, she tells us, felt good in her mouth. Years later, if Gold drifts toward a truth that might lose a repeat customer, Barb grips her shoulder and tells the client, “Ope, she’s getting another signal.”

Barb’s best friend is Lottie, who wears pajama bottoms as pants on the grounds that she has buried three husbands. Asked to mind the little girl, Lottie shuts her in a closet full of clothes and bugs, calls it hide-and-seek, and leaves her there all day. That night Barb asks if she fed the child. “Of course I did,” Lottie says. “I’m practically her father.” The television goes quiet. Nobody chews. Earlier that day Lottie hollered back at a man on television who was yelling about sin and sodomy: “Takes one to know one, asshole!” When Gold is nearly grown, Barb sits on the porch one night glaring at the rainbow flag two men have hung across the street, “disgusted yet slightly awed.” Gold points out that Barb has Lottie. “So?” says Barb. “That’s different.”

Where I come from, a woman like Barb gets called a character, which is what a town calls a woman after it has decided not to call the county. She is the best monster in this book, and there is a goddess in it.

The goddess first turns up in that closet, and Gold, having plenty of ghosts already, takes her for one more. This one is a naked brown girl with animal horns and a voice like old machinery. “Child, what does the axe have to fear?” she says, and then, “Amuse me. Tell me your tales.” So the child tells fairy tales in the dark, and the horned girl hums “like a fly, like the stories were delicious.” On the day Gold gets her first period, in the bathroom of a library that smells like pee and beef stew, the girl appears beside her laughing, tips a black scorpion out of her cupped hands as a present, and says she would like to taste the blood and be the shepherd of the sheepfold. Gold, lining her underwear with toilet paper, has questions. “Taste how? Like, with her tongue?” And: “What the fuck? What shepherd?”

Gold is funny exactly where a horror narrator is supposed to go solemn, and the laugh shows you how little air was in the room. The sentences are plain and short, and now and then a simile walks in sideways, as when snow falls “like the heavens were shearing their sheep.” The epigraph gives away the goddess’s name long before Gold works it out. Inanna has had a long second career in feminist spirituality, and goddesses in that line of work tend to get sanded down to fit on a tote bag. This one squeezes a pomegranate over her open mouth, lets the juice run down her neck, and belches. Over a barroom filling with black water she announces, in capitals, THEY ARE SPARROWS. I AM THE FALCON. Hela, who leads the Thursday coven, tells Gold, “It’s not a blessing to be chosen.”

Several of the regulars are named for gods, and Gold will tell you which. Iris’s hair is a new color every time she comes in, and when Gold finally notices, well past the halfway mark, that it is working through the rainbow, she says, “It was a pun on her queerness. How clever.” The pun is fine. Gold explaining it is the trouble, and she explains a great deal. When she wants to know more about what has been visiting her, she looks the name up at the library and the novel prints the entry. By the time the goddess recites her own myths in full, late on, I knew the goddamn myths. Merbaum admits in her acknowledgments that she spent nearly a decade on it and that it “suffered and benefited both from way too much research.” The visions are vivid one at a time, but in the back half they come so often they stop being visitations and become weather. Gold meets each one with the same questions and the same tears, and though she is seventeen and has every right to them, the repetition wears.

Merbaum spent four years in Ecuador writing a novel about witches and volcanoes, then abandoned it. In San Francisco she worked as a live-in cook for what she told the Washington Independent Review of Books was a “boundary-challenged” couple on a raw-food diet, and lived in an unheated room off their garage, “bringing in men and forbidden foods, like dumplings and non-organic produce.” That room gave her the idea for The Gold Persimmon: “a hotel to cry in.” That same year she told The Rumpus her next book would be about “a magical Midwestern queer bar, where witches and goddesses converge.” Vampires at Sea, a smutty novella about emotional vampires on a cruise, got there first, in 2025. She founded Pick Your Potions, which her author bio calls “a consortium of mixology and witchery,” and behind the bar is the one place in this novel where she never seems to be checking her notes. Gold can name a stranger’s drink before they order it, and she keeps trying to talk the regulars into a Hanky Panky. No takers. In the acknowledgments Merbaum thanks a writing group called the Study Coven and calls herself its “leader/High Priestess.”

The funniest scene in the novel is a coven failing. On the night of a blue moon Gold crouches uninvited in Hela’s bushes and watches the circle shiver in white shifts around a makeshift altar. A car alarm drowns out the chant. Hathor, a baby-faced butch in a dress too small for her that still hangs like a potato sack, raises her arms, and for a moment they are two golden horns with the moon cradled between them. Then the light turns out to be a police helicopter. Gold writes the whole thing off as milquetoast witchcraft. I laughed at the helicopter. Hela started this coven on purpose, for witches with “little to no inborn ability,” and the novel never once laughs at them for wanting the moon.

Shortly after Barb dies, a woman named Sharon finds Gold passed out in front of a synagogue and has her sons carry her home. Sharon is short and plump, with a handshake that could snap a chicken’s neck, and she talks three times faster than she walks. Later she rents Gold the little apartment under her front steps and waves off the subject of rent: “It’s crass to talk about money.” One morning Gold comes home to find that Sharon has been in, because she could see through the window that the place was filthy. Then Sharon pulls on yellow rubber gloves and teaches her to clean. Every book dusted separately, since “dusty books turn rotten, which is a sin against literature.” A long-handled brush for the toilet: “Under the rim, and don’t forget the base.” Then, by way of benediction, “Now, just make it a ritual, and your home will be a home.” Gold says she has to work. The next day there is a bucket of cleaning supplies on her step, and in a dish towel, wrapped in paper towels, a slice of buttered challah, still warm.

Gold had already turned down every invitation to dinner. “I refused to play the orphan at Sharon’s table,” she says.

- Review by Odessa Fenn

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

A dark, witchy, lesbian fantasy with huge potential and minimal payoff. Based on the description, I was sure this would be an easy 4-5 stars. Unfortunately, it failed to deliver.

Gold is a child with a rough past. Her mother and her mother’s lover are cruel and abusive. While being forced to work for her mother, Gold finds out she can commune with the dead and begins to be visited by a naked ghost girl. When her mother dies, Gold leaves home and somehow comes across a bar called The Wheel, where she meets more surly, disappointing lesbians and grows into her own identity as a surly, disappointing lesbian. Supernatural stuff happens.

Have you ever had a conversation with a member of the older generations in which the person proceeded to inform you of the race of every person they mention in passing, even when this detail is completely irrelevant? Thats what it’s like to be introduced to everyone in this book. The character development left much to be desired, but by golly, you will know the race of every character you encounter no matter how minor or insignificant they are to the plot. Incredibly off-putting.

Overall, I found this to be exactly the opposite of what I thought it would be. Instead of empowering, it felt like it just demonized women who love women, which kinda feels the same as demonizing women BECAUSE they love women. I had a hard time sympathizing with or connecting to any of the characters and could not follow most of the plot. I found the narrator’s voice to be flat and ineffectual, making it even more difficult to keep track of what was going on. It’s very difficult to tell a bad story with a concept like “witchy lesbian bar” but, alas, here we are.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ALC in exchange for my honest review.

[BookishKB]

🕯️🌙 Witches of the Wheel 🌙🕯️

📖 Bookish Thoughts

My full review will be shared closer to the publication date.

✨ What to Expect
• Queer Fantasy
• Witches
• Ancient Goddesses
• Ghosts
• Found Family
• Magical Bar
_ _ _

📅 Pub Date: September 22, 2026
Thank you to Creature Publishing and NetGalley for the advanced copy.

[Ryleigh Whitfield · Rating 1.5 out of 5]

The best part of this book was the cover. If you enjoyed Nettle and Bone by T Kingfisher you might like it, it was written in a very similar way. It felt like it was written for children yet there was so many pointless sexual themes you could drown in them.
Only giving it 1.5 stars because plus size queer representation is hard to come by.

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Liquor Refills Itself, but Somebody Still Has to Mop: Lindsay Merbaum’s “Witches of the Wheel”
A gloriously unruly queer fantasy understands that even the most enchanted sanctuary comes with closing shifts, emotional labor, territorial goddesses, and questions about who actually gets to leave.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | September 4th, 2026

Dangerous things happen to sanctuary once it acquires an appetite. Lindsay Merbaum’s “Witches of the Wheel” begins with one kind of captivity and gradually invents another. Gold, born Esther, grows up in a hoarded Midwestern farmhouse where Barb, the woman she believes is her mother, turns the child’s ability to see ghosts and pry loose other people’s secrets into income. After Barb dies, Gold wanders into The Wheel, a secret lesbian bar sunk beneath Babylon and protected by generations of witchcraft. Here, at last, are work, queer company, desire, and a vocabulary for her strangeness. The refuge is no fraud. The Wheel really does save Gold. It also learns to need her.

Everything Gold knows about love has first passed through usefulness. Barb’s interest sharpens once customers will pay for her daughter’s gift, and even the nickname she gives her eventually reveals another theft: Gold’s biological mother was Vera Goldsztajn, from whom Barb took both a child and a history. Merbaum lets that knowledge gather instead of dropping it whole. A ghost mutters that she was tricked. Lottie, Barb’s longtime lover and fellow keeper of secrets, blurts out part of the truth. Gold finds a birth certificate. Much later, Vera speaks for herself. By then the revelation has reached backward through the book. Even “Gold,” the prettier name Esther once preferred, has changed meaning.

Merbaum gives Gold the sort of first-person voice that can keep a goddess from becoming too pleased with herself. She is funny without being breezy, profane without sounding upholstered in attitude, and alert to the bodily inconvenience of nearly everything. Gods smell. Sex is sweaty. Magic leaves dirt under the nails. A supernatural bar can refill its liquor bottles but apparently draws the line at washing glassware. Inanna, the ancient goddess who has visited Gold since childhood, never gets the shelter of ceremonial hush. She is erotic, terrifying, obscene, vain, violent, generous, manipulative, and magnificently uninterested in anyone else’s comfort.

Even the strangest images retain some grit under the fingernails. Scorpions recur as warning and signature; pomegranates carry blood, appetite, underworld knowledge, and sex; willows hold worship, destruction, and return. More persistent still are doors. Gold leaves Barb’s house, moves into Sharon’s basement apartment, descends into The Wheel, crosses stranger thresholds, watches a bar turn into a temple, then eventually asks for that basement apartment again. The pattern is visible, perhaps deliberately so. What matters is the pressure behind it. A door is never merely a door if you grew up unsure whether you were allowed to leave.

The Wheel remains stubbornly bar-like even as its magic expands. Its rooms multiply when crowded and disappear when empty. The entrance refuses those the place does not want. Generations of queer longing and danger seem to have soaked into the walls. Merbaum gives the refuge labor conditions. Brenda, its bartender and keeper, cannot simply quit. Gold, desperate to belong somewhere that does not recoil from her, moves from barback to bartender to the person capable of keeping the whole unruly place going. When Brenda disappears and leaves her the bar, ownership initially resembles recognition. It does not stay flattering for long. The gift has teeth.

Responsibility becomes intimate before Gold knows enough to call it a trap. She has been trained since childhood to read usefulness as proof of love, so The Wheel’s dependence on her can feel almost tender. She works until work is no longer something she merely does there. Stay away long enough and her body hurts. Patrons come to The Wheel precisely because it is not the rest of their lives; Gold wakes up to find that it has become nearly all of hers. The red history she inherits is less enchanted on this subject than she is: the place can shelter its people and ruin its caretakers, which is why its burden was meant to be divided rather than carried alone. Somebody, after all, still has to mop.

If The Wheel is a house that wants something, Sharon’s basement offers Gold the unnerving possibility of a home that does not. Sharon finds her unconscious near a synagogue, feeds her, later rents her an apartment, teaches her how to keep it, worries, nags, cooks, and cleans with the persistence of someone whose love language is leftovers under foil. Gold is suspicious because Sharon asks so little in return. There is no prophecy attached to the spare linens. No one bursts into flame over the security deposit. Sharon’s care can look almost comically small beside Inanna’s spectacle, which may be precisely why Gold has trouble recognizing it.

Power becomes harder to resist once Gold can finally name some of it. Her childhood “Queen” is Inanna; witches can perceive the divine; Gold herself can do far more than read a stranger’s hidden sorrow. Hela, who leads the coven gathering at The Wheel, sees how much ability Gold possesses and how poorly equipped she is to live with it. Then Seraph arrives, a priestess Gold has already glimpsed in broken visions, carrying Inanna’s presence with alarming ease. Everyone seems to know what Gold is before Gold does. Reader. Witch. Owner. Warrior. Consort. Initiate. King. Eventually the pile of nouns begins to look less like identity than recruitment.

A refuge can reproduce some of the pressures outside it without becoming worthless. That distinction is easy to flatten, and Merbaum usually does not. The Wheel shelters people and extracts from its keepers. The coven offers Gold a community while withholding knowledge from her. Inanna can release Gold from shame while treating her as raw material for an old sacred pattern. Seraph eventually gives Gold access to Vera’s story by channeling the dead woman publicly, a revelation Gold needs and did not consent to receiving that way. Hela’s fate is knottier still: she knowingly takes the sacrificial place meant for Gold, an act of devotion performed inside a system that makes devotion lethal. Later Gold visits Hela’s empty house, notices the garden and the chickens she never got to meet, and leaves rosé and purple flowers at an altar. Transcendence has to account for the missing chores.

Prose saves these scenes from turning into diagrams. Cosmic seduction gives way to bartending irritation. At Hela’s memorial, Gold can be devastated and still privately object to somebody’s shade of purple. Temples smell not only of incense and juniper but of wine, bodies, and people who have been dancing too long. Gold jokes when fear or shame grows too large for the room, and the jokes usually reveal more than they disguise. Merbaum can push an image one beat past its useful life, but the book’s quick changes of register keep grandeur from settling into solemnity. It is difficult to become a plaster saint when someone nearby still needs another vodka tonic.

Abundance is less helpful when the mythology begins circling material the reader has already absorbed. Gold studies Inanna’s descent into the underworld, experiences variations on it, watches Seraph travel its pattern, and later receives more interpretation from the people and deity involved. Some recurrence is essential: the wheel ought to turn, and Gold’s whole life is partly about discovering an old arrangement in a new room. But several visionary sequences arrive at nearly the same emotional destination. By then the reader may understand the bargain before Gold has finished seeing it illustrated.

Delayed knowledge has more bite. The distressed ghost becomes Vera. The curly-haired woman glimpsed long before her arrival becomes Seraph. The naked girl becomes Inanna. Gold’s own nickname becomes evidence. These discoveries alter earlier chapters rather than simply furnishing later ones. Persephone changes in much the same fashion. Gold first understands her as the girl taken underground, a figure through whom she can read captivity. Near the end, she recognizes that coercion does not exhaust the story. Persephone also eats, returns, reigns. Nothing about the abduction improves. The person inside the myth becomes larger than what was done to her.

Its uneasiest problem is therefore not solved by the ending, nor should it be. Gold does not need to become friendless, godless, or invulnerable in order to claim more of her life. Yet she remains Seraph’s initiate and keeps a place within Inanna’s temple. The distinction between chosen attachment and beautifully furnished submission is not always stable here. Gold has more leverage than she once did, more ability to refuse, more than one place to go. Whether that constitutes freedom or simply a better bargain remains slightly troublesome. Good.

Merbaum does not need to turn The Wheel into a topical symbol for its pressures to feel familiar. Lesbian bars have long been places to drink, flirt, organize, hide, appear, remember, and find people one might otherwise never meet. The Wheel concentrates those functions until the building itself seems to remember them. But refuge still needs a lease and a closing shift. Somebody owns the building. Somebody cleans the bathroom. Somebody pays the rent. In the epilogue, Seraph’s magic makes Babylon newly desirable; outsiders arrive, houses become investments, and longtime residents are squeezed. Apparently even enchantment can improve the comps.

In N. K. Jemisin’s “The City We Became,” accumulated urban history acquires supernatural agency on a metropolitan scale. Merbaum compresses something related into one basement bar and, more pointedly, into the person stuck closing it. Rivers Solomon’s “Sorrowland” offers another point of contact: escape there, too, fails to erase the habits captivity has written into a person. What distinguishes Merbaum’s version is its attachment to the menial. She makes a bar into something close to a creature and still keeps an eye on who is holding the mop.

The emotional force rises as the divine machinery recedes. Gold learns the truth about Vera, grieves Hela, confronts Seraph, then gives up the red book containing The Wheel’s history. She no longer has to be the owner through whom everybody else’s sanctuary passes. Inanna, naturally, still has administrative ideas for her mortal: a weapon, a role, a new name. Gold’s answer is only a question. What if she chooses her own? Better still, what if choosing does not require throwing Esther away?

Reconsidering Esther changes more than choosing between two labels. Gold, the name she once found beautiful, was bestowed by Barb and lifted from Vera’s surname. Esther, associated in her mind with mothballs and medicine, begins to disclose older resonances of concealment, queenship, and survival. Neither name emerges as the secret authentic self waiting beneath the counterfeit one. What changes is jurisdiction. Gold has spent her life learning definitions from whoever held more power in the room. Now she can decide what an inherited name is allowed to mean.

Objects frequently understand the novel before its explanations do. The bar needs too much. The ghost wants to speak. The red book passes from keeper to keeper. A willow grows from sacrifice. Gold leaves Sharon’s apartment because undramatic care looks, to her, like insufficient devotion. Against these things, some of the late divine pageantry feels annotated past necessity. The problem is not that Merbaum has too much imagination. Thank goodness she has too much imagination. The trouble comes when an already potent image receives another ceremonial object, another correspondence, another explanation, as though the goddess might otherwise be mistaken for underdressed.

Perhaps the ending works because the volume finally drops. Gold does not destroy The Wheel, conquer Inanna, renounce Seraph, or uncover an untouched self beneath everything that happened to her. She changes the arrangement. The Wheel may become a temple without remaining workplace, bedroom, obligation, and proof of worth all at once. She can go there and leave. She can care about people without becoming the beam holding up their ceiling. For a heroine repeatedly told to know her place, the achievement is finally having more than one.

Only then is a rating especially useful: 85/100, or 4/5 stars. “Witches of the Wheel” has a narrator with a real pulse, a setting whose magic grows convincingly from the human needs concentrated inside it, and the nerve to complicate queer refuge without dismissing its necessity. What holds it below the next tier is mostly repetition. Its finest images do not require as much interpretive supervision as they receive. Still, the excess belongs to the book’s temperament too. The same appetite that overfeeds several scenes gives it sex, menace, jokes, strange tenderness, and a welcome refusal to behave itself.

Ultimately, Merbaum’s most convincing magic is domestic. After goddesses, blood, pomegranates, scorpions, sacred trees, vanished rooms, erotic rites, dead women, and one very demanding bar, Gold returns to Sharon and asks for the basement apartment back. She imagines bookshelves, a chair, maybe a couch. She can lock the door, put the key in her pocket, head to the temple, and come home when she chooses. Sharon, who has been carrying the key all along, presses it into Gold’s hand. In a novel crowded with divine weapons, freedom is the small metal object that opens a door without insisting she stay.

[Pujashree · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know what I was expecting from this when I requested it on Netgalley, but witchy lesbian bar seemed it would at least be subversive and fun. And this was a fever dream trip that was a lot of intense things, but I can't say it was fun, and subversive? Maybe. It starts out grim, much in the way of YA stories where the kid who is different resents their abusive environment and one way or the other has escaped and fallen into a new situation that becomes a healing community of sorts. Except, in this, Gold doesn't escape as much as outlives her emotionally abusive parent/guardian, and THEN runs away and finds herself in a mysterious and mystical lesbian bar. So far, so good. Except very quickly you realize that this isn't going to be the kind of "I've found my people and my safe space" narrative that these things usually are. In fact, quite the opposite -- there's an undercurrent of menace and entrapment and eldritch horrors, which should have been directed at something like the cisheteropatriarchy, but it increasingly feels like a metaphor for "the dark and unsavory side of lesbianism" rhetoric, frankly, peddled by homophobes. I don't know if it's because of the narrator's choice of tone or not, but it did not seem to delight in a community of women loving women. Instead, it created a world where everything from female nudity and desire is painted as something of a slippery slope to she-devil/lusty goddess orgies, and NOT in an empowering way. I kept waiting for the story to take a turn and find its footing in owning and cherishing divine femininity and/or sapphic safe spaces, but nope, the protagonist just ends up going back to the "safety" of an intrusive adopted parental figure. So yeah, not sure who the intended audience is, but it sure wasn't me, because I'm hella annoyed. I really should have DNF-d but I simply couldn't believe until the very end that an author could take a lesbian bar premise and use it as an internalized homophobic scolding, wagging finger. Narrator was fine, I guess, given I did finish it. But Ugh. Such a shame because this could have been SO good, with all the same witchy and mythological elements.

[Avery · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this more but it felt like a lot of random unexplained visions and not much actual plot or explanation. It was fine.

[Sapphiclit club · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Creature Publishing for the opportunity to read this ARC via NetGalley.

This one started out strong. I really liked Esther/Gold as the first-person narrator of her story. I was interested in the mystery surrounding her birth and burgeoning witchcraft. I felt like things started going off the rails at about the 80% point. Much of the writing felt like the descriptions of a long, meandering dream or nightmare. I don't like listening to other people's dreams, so I certainly don't want to read them either. I also felt like this should have been longer so the reader could fully understand the outcome of the story. I was really confused at the end about what happened to certain characters and even Gold's fate. Was I meant to study and know about certain goddesses before reading this to have more context? I'm not sure.

Overall, it wasn't an unpleasant read, but I don't need to read this again, and I'm not sure who I can recommend it to. Fans of vibes and witches might enjoy this more than me (though I do like both sometimes). This had some spice, but it wasn't very explicitly described (though a few orgies did happen around the main character more than once).

[Loren · Rating 3 out of 5]

First thoughts; sweet baby jesus can we please stop talking about penises.

End thoughts; penises still being mentioned too much. That might be a me problem though.

This book started off so, so strong. The characters stood on their own, the scenery was beautifully described, sometimes so acutely that I felt like I could feel the sticky bar top and smell the whiskey being poured. But at some point around three quarters of the way through the story, that acuity disappeared and was replaced with this sense of confusion where reality was slippery and flip flopped around back and forth. There were parts where I couldn’t tell if what was happening on the page was actually happening, or if they were happening in Gold’s mind. Similar to a nonlinear narrative, but also not? The execution was kind of wild.

I drew particular issue with the way time progressed in the narrative. We know that Gold is underage (17) when she first finds The Wheel, and that is literally the only explicit mention of Gold’s age, and it’s also the only clue we’re given about how much time has passed since we opened the book. How old is she at the end of the book? No idea. How long had she been at The Wheel? No idea. How old was Gold when she had her first sexual encounter? Also no idea. Didn’t like that. How old was everybody else? Who knows! Everyone else was just kind of ageless. It was alluded to that Hela was older than most of the other patrons, but that was it.

Even by the end, I didn’t really feel like much of the overarching plot was wrapped up. This character, who had only really just appeared but had been talked about maybe twice previously, has now become completely central to the primary plot and Gold isn’t shouldering all the responsibility anymore, and like good for her on that front, but it really felt like it came out of nowhere.

Also, all of the characters were named after various goddesses, but the only time that’s mentioned is in regards to Gold’s birth name. That’s never explained. Is it coincidence? Dunno. Did they choose their own names? Who knows?

I feel like a lot of information wanted to be implied, but the context clues just weren’t there.

The author gave us a few great deep dives into various ancient gods and practices, all of which read as well researched and put together. Very informative. Really liked that.

Lastly, Gold had such a hard time connecting with literally everyone, and that’s not totally on her obviously; she had some pretty severe trauma from her upbringing. But everyone around her who could have helped her and explained what was happening to her and around her just kept talking in riddles and half truths or just avoided talking altogether instead of just giving Gold the information she needed to know. If I was Gold, I would have started throwing bricks.

[Moth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Witches of the Wheel is an interesting trip. And I do mean trip because about sixty precent into this book things really go off the deep end. And for that first part, it’s interesting, but not exactly exciting. Gold goes through hell. She’s traumatized from a young age by her mother and mother’s friend, but add a strange naked woman who appears only to her. Not a single person is kind to her, leaving her traumatized. The only person who is happens to be an older white woman, who she doesn’t trust. Not even other people of color she meets are kind to her, keeping her at a distance. And I’m gonna be real, is extremely unrealistic. This book wanted to do a lot of things, but only managed to do it in halves. As someone who has read this author before, sadly, they seem to struggle with endings. I hoped it was because it was a novella, but sadly this also happened with this book, what plot there was just ended and they quickly tried to tie up ends even if it didn’t make sense. Seraph’s story was contradictory and didn’t make sense. Vera’s story was rushed and made no sense. Hela’s story was flat and didn’t make sense. Gold as a character didn’t grow and was constantly contradicting herself from moment to moment. And the worst part is, some of it could have worked if the author had aged Gold up to her twenties. But instead, she’s 17 for the majority of the book but everyone treats her like she’s in her twenties. It’s totally fine a 17 year old who legally can’t drink now is the owner of a bar. Totally fine that adults are kissing her and having sex with her and giving her booze. She holds the weight of the world on her shoulders but the communities Gold is part of fails her again and again. She’s a person of color (though the book refuses to say her heritage) and is possibly queer (even though Gold doesn’t fully know because she’s 17 and isn’t given a chance to know herself). And the moments when she freaks out and lashes out, most of the people just act like it didn’t happen. One second she’s screaming at them to leave the bar and the next the book says there are still people there. And these people keep coming back again and again and never ask if she’s okay. The world is shit, but there’s SOMEONE out there who will ask and it’s not just one older woman who is almost creepy about it. All in all, this book is a mess and could have used with simplification. Maybe then the characters story arches would have worked and had the desired effect. It was a badly done white feminist take on witchcraft, people of color, and queer communities. And sadly, that showed.

[Calitchi]

I will be providing a fully rated review after publishing.

[mika · Rating 4 out of 5]

[many thanks to netgalley, the publisher and the author for the e-arc!]

if i find a book about lesbians, goddesses and witches, i read it and that is that.

what i enjoyed the most about this novel is its atmosphere. it was both overwhelming and gently dreamy, if that makes any sense at all. the author's writing and descriptions just brought me in effortlessly, and it felt both like drowning and floating. the world the author built around many different existing myths felt believable and i loved how there is so much detail and how the information is scattered throughout the story. that may not be for everyone but it worked for me at least!

i think the setting of the wheel (the lesbian witchy bar where basically the whole thing takes place) really had a play in that, since it's so closed-off but also open to both the world of the living and that of the dead (and the in-between, too). i particularly loved how the place was a character in itself!

the cast of characters was overall enjoyable. hela and brenda were my favourites, along with the wheel of course. there are no men whatsoever, at least none that are named and important parts of the story, and i can't help but love that.
however, i admit i sort of hated gold (the main character and narrator). she starts off as a little girl who finds herself full of paranormal powers, and therefore who's being taken advantage of by her mother. understandably, she feels both self-pity and self-loathing, and nothing more. she's more or less a recluse, at any rate, so she doesn't get to learn how society works nor to feel empathy for others. so i guess her behaviour during the rest of the novel, after she finds the wheel and her lesbian witchy colleagues, can be somewhat excused. however, although i did pity her, i couldn't help but wonder why she was so self-centred. she really did not think of anybody else but herself, even when she was longing for love and connection. i find it disappointing that she ends up unchanged, even though so many things happened to her and should have changed her, at least in some ways. plot-wise, her destiny felt inevitable, so the ending was predictable, but still i finished the book satisfied.

in that regard, i think gold should have been much older. there was quite a lot of sexual "action" and imagery throughout the novel, which didn't strike me much at first but became a bit overwhelming at times, most likely because gold is still a child. so, even if the imagery worked, it felt really out of place considering the story resembles a coming-of-age. it feels even less necessary to make gold so young since she hasn't grown by the end of the novel, and also since she didn't feel much like a child at any point except the very beginning.

so overall, that was quite a great book! i would definitely recommend if you're into all-women, all-queer, all-witchy, all-mythology reads! it was a story more centred on atmosphere and background more than literal action, so the pace can feel quite slow, but it is very immersive and addictive for that exact reason.

i am now going to need to read the author's other books asap

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and RB Media for the advance listening copy in exchange for an honest review.

I went into Witches of the Wheel expecting an adventure and got something much quieter and more interesting instead — my bad for assuming, the blurb never actually promised that. This is really a self-discovery story: Gold, our first-person narrator, has had a genuinely rough upbringing, and the matter-of-fact way she talks about it somehow makes it more sympathetic instead of less. That same unremarkable-ness carries into the magic system too — she can see ghosts and just assumed she was weird, because nobody ever told her the world had a hidden side.

The worldbuilding is where this book really shines for me. It leans into non-Greco-Roman mythology — Inanna, Hathor, some Norse touches, a Babylonian backbone (the city's called Babylon, turns out to be Midwestern America rather than the Babylon, but the allusion is clearly intentional and never quite pays off). The goddesses are actual goddesses, not softened into pretty inspirational figures, and the lore gets drip-fed as Gold herself discovers it rather than dumped on you. As someone who's a bit of a mythology nerd, getting the Inanna payoff after knowing who she was going in felt genuinely satisfying.

What didn't work as well: I got really confused a few times. Gold's mother (Barb) and the Wheel's head bartender (Brenda) are two very different characters who share a similar enough name that I kept mixing them up. Later on, it's often unclear whether someone is an actual goddess or just a person who happens to share a goddess's name — and in a world where that distinction genuinely matters, I wanted it sharper. There's also a weirdly persistent focus on breasts throughout that never really resolves into meaning anything. And the ending felt rushed, almost like a different book, tying everything up in a bow when I honestly would have preferred something more open — not sequel-bait, just something that trusted me to imagine the rest.

Heads up for anyone who wants it: there are several graphic, sex-adjacent scenes near the end. Not sexy, just very in-your-face — worth knowing going in if that's not your thing.

Rylie Jackson's narration is a clean, straightforward read that suits the book's understated tone well.

3.5 stars. Genuinely torn on this one — the lore and worldbuilding are excellent, but you really have to pay close attention, and the naming confusion tripped me up more than once. Recommend for urban fantasy fans who like their mythology a little more obscure and don't mind a slow, interior build.

[Sara Mishkind · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you, NetGalley, for this ARC!!

I enjoyed this book. The writing was clean, and the inner monologue was very relatable and realistic. I liked the characters and was able to follow the story for the most part, though I had some trouble understanding the more complex fantastical descriptions. There were a lot of magical hallucinations, strange dreams, and descriptions of goddesses doing weird things. On one hand, it's really cool to read a book written by someone with such a great imagination; on the other hand, struggling to piece together such a bizarre picture is kind of frustrating. Doing it repetitively for the last fourth of the book is even more frustrating, cause it felt like I was just constantly trying to picture these crazy descriptions rather than actually understanding what's going on.
The lore was a bit shaky at times, probably because it stems from real-life myths, which I love, but it makes it harder to work it into a story cause you're kind of trying to bend an already established magic system to fit something new. For the most part, the author did a great job modifying the magic system, but it was a bit hard to grasp at times.
I don't really think there was like a singular conflict. It felt more like a magical coming-of-age than a true fantasy novel, which I didn't mind. Also, most of the book happens at the "Wheel", which is the magic bar, so keep that in mind. This is not like some epic fantasy. Which I actually really liked because I feel like people don't understand that not every fantasy book is a high fantasy, epic fantasy, or contemporary fantasy. Like, yes, give us some variety, please.
Also, I love sexual symbolism as a literary fiction fan, but I just could not get behind the sexual references in this book. It just gets to a point where it feels gratuitous, especially since the main character is an underage teenager illegally working at a bar. All her bar friends are older than her. They're all like real adults who have jobs. In my opinion, the coming-of-age themes read very YA, so the graphic descriptions just feel kind of out of place and unnecessary. I know it's supposed to be her coming into her sexuality, but there are some parts where it's obvious the sexual stuff isn't her choice, really, it's just goddesses messing with her, and that's when it feels like it's just for shock value, which kind of undermines any semblance of "discovering her sexuality". It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

All in all, I liked the book, I liked the lesbian and lgbtq rep, and I hope people give this book some love!

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley, Creature Publishing, and the author for an ARC for this book in exchange for my honest review!

I like to go into a book blind and find my way into the world the author builds, and this one hit me like a freight train, but... I liked it? Witches of the Wheel was definitely a surprise!

I didn't expect as much horror as there was, but I appreciated it and found that it echoed the old myths in many ways. I really loved the trancey dream sequences that echoed the themes, imagery, and pace of the myths that the author draws upon. These dream sequences gave the book added creep factor and also just threw me off-kilter enough to keep me on my toes. The gods of the Ancients were fierce, selfish, and often even brutal, and the world that our protagonist, Gold, inhabits, mirrors that.

In the novel, The Wheel is a lesbian bar / site of magic power where Gold starts to work at age 17 and is a character itself. Much of the book takes place at or near this bar and the author does a great job of keeping this single location interesting. The bar honestly sounds like heaven. I mean there are auto-refilling alcohol bottles, ghosts, it's a magic hotspot, and it's full of sapphic witches. This is what we deserve.

All that said, I was (and still am) a bit unsure if this took place in a semi-dystopian future, or some alternate universe, or if it is meant to be taking place in the not too distant past. However, this doesn't really change my enjoyment of the story, it was just something I would think about from time to time. It was especially confusing to me at the beginning of the book when I considered her mom's "job" of selling medicines like inhalers or Epi-pens. Like, where would you live where these things weren't readily accessible? But then I thought, oh... right. LOLBCI

Look, at the end of the day, if a book gives me lesbians, goddesses, and magic, I'm there.

[Kira Rosemarie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review of Advance Copy Received from NetGalley

“All the gods come to Babylon.”

This is less a coming-of-age story (though the main character fits the bill) and more a story of coming into one’s own power. After years under the thumb of a greedy and controlling mother who used Gold’s powers to make money, Gold is lost and confused. A witchy lesbian bar takes her in, and its magic is a powerful foil to her own. Gold has to find out what her true story is and how to use her power as strange magic and goddesses mingle in the city of Babylon.

I loved the strangeness of this book. Some scenes are fantastical and mythic, while other times, the main character’s voice reminds you how young she is and how badly her childhood destroyed her sense of self and confidence. I grew to love some side characters and detest others, but even the ones who aren’t talked about much make an impact. The plot held me, but dragged a bit in the middle, which is why I kept this review to four stars.

If I compared this to any other piece of media, it would be the video game, “The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood.” Both their titles reference wheels, which makes sense—their stories follow fates that can’t be changed and characters with more power than they understand.

I recommend this book to readers who enjoy bizarre prose, mythological tales, and queer, witchy characters.

This may not be for you if you prefer storylines firmly grounded in reality, aren’t into magic or the supernatural, and prioritize a likable main character.

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

[Alexandria Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, wild, and wonderfully strange!!

Witches of the Wheel is beautifully written, wildly imaginative, and genuinely unlike anything I’ve read before. Merbaum’s prose is gorgeous! Lush, sensual, strange, and filled with imagery that will stay with me for a long time.

Gold is messy, powerful, emotionally immature, and often just as confused by what’s happening to her as the reader is (in a good way). Her journey moves through witchcraft, goddesses, desire, grief, identity, power, and a deep longing for belonging, all wrapped in a wonderfully surreal and psychedelic world. In so many ways I found it relatable too, which I absolutely loved.

I’m also normally a reader who likes to emotionally understand a character’s progression as I go, so there were moments when I felt genuinely disoriented. But something really interesting happened after I finished: I kept thinking about it. Things that had puzzled me began clicking into place, connections emerged, and I found myself appreciating the story even more the longer I sat with it. Thank you for that, Lindsay.

This is definitely a book that rewards readers who love mythology, symbolism, riddles, and stories that don’t immediately explain themselves. There are layers here that I suspect would make a second reading an entirely different experience.

Beautiful, queer, sensual, witchy, mythic, psychedelic, and wonderfully strange. Merbaum has created something that feels completely her own, and a story that continues unfolding after the final page.


Love, love, love!

[Alma Washington · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance reader copy in exchange for my review.

Gold is a witch of sorts. She grows up with no one and no love until she comes upon The Wheel, a mysterious bar with unique employees and patrons. As she draws deeper The Wheel, she discovers herself and the world around her.

This book started off really strong for me, but lost me toward the end.

THE PROS:
- I was captivated to the very end. This is an easy book to get into. Gold is an interesting, if not sad, character. You want to root for her, you want her to win. And then, you start to wonder. Because there’s a bit of nastiness in her, a bit that takes pleasure in pain. However, I love a terrible character!
- This book is weird and metaphorical and metaphysical and it’s so fun! The author takes some big swings, and I admire how much she just went for it with this book.

THE CONS
- The book meanders a lot. In between the major plot events, I found the book a bit lacking. I tend to go for more plot focused books, though, and there is definitely character growth happening along the way. I just wish there was more with it.
- This book is weird and metaphorical and metaphysical and it got to be too much for me! The last 25% goes off the rails in a way that I did not enjoy. A last minute character has an outsized effect on the novel, which I did not enjoy.

Overall, this was a fun and quick read! There’s a lot of creativity on the pages, and Gold and her powers will stay with me for some time.

[Max · Rating 2 out of 5]

[W]hy was I so... weird? I wanted to know myself, and call it home. To be at home, in myself. But I had no idea how to get there.

Right from the start, I hated the audiobook narrator. She was so dull, and sounds far too old to voice a 17 year old. She has exactly 3 possible cadences: Dry sarcasm, minor surprise, and a question. Every sentence narrated follows one of these to the T, never changing inflection.

The story itself starts off introducing us to Gold, who is a super neglected kid with ESP. Think Joanna Van Veen's "My Darling Dreadful Thing", then think boring. Gold grows up, is suddenly thrust out into the world, and finds herself working at a lesbian witch bar.

Was this supposed to be a cozy story? A magical slice-of-life? I have no clue. There was lots of nudity thrown in, but seemingly just for shock value.

The characters, aside from Gold - actually, even including Gold - were all extremely one-note and practically interchangeable. They are of no substance whatsoever; no one has a character arc, unless you include "was alive and is now dead but we don't care" a character arc. Really, in this way, the audiobook narrator stayed true to the writing.

I appreciated the fever dream quality to some parts of the book, particularly near the end of the novel. However, whatever symbolism was attempted to be put in place fell flat, because nothing and no one were ever explained in a way impactful enough to stick to one's memory long enough to care.

I honestly could not tell you what this book was trying to convey.

[Biblioteczka Safony · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love weird fantasy - if a book is often said to be too weird, too complicated, I know I'm in for a good time. Sadly, this one didn't land for me, as I found it lacked a cohesive storyline or an overall goal; it was like a witchy slice of life with random characters, almost nothing explained and steadily more nudity and orgies the closer I got to the end.

The first chapters were enjoyable, the ones talking about the childhood, where so many of the storylines were set up, but unfortunately the moment we arrived at the present time it all turned into chaos.

When I read "community" in the book description I interpreted it as "sisterhood" - as "friends" - as "chosen family". Meanwhile what it turned out to mean was "bar customers some of whose names I character know" and later "a cruel goddess and her servants making me do things against my will". The themes of finding the place and the people you belong to were mentioned in the story, however personally I couldn't say they were actually executed.

One more thing I need to mention is that I find the choice to make the main character only 17 years old quite a dubious one... There was nothing that necessitated her being a teenager; she could've been 20 without a change in the story, and I would have been a bit less uncomfortable with all these adult women trying to seduce her and filling her with alcohol.

Thank you to Creature Publishing and NetGalley for the opportunity to read the ARC of this novel. I see potential in the story, but I wish it had been edited more.

[Juniper L.H. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I truly hate to say it, but I didn’t like this novel. I mean that; this novel had a lot of promise and I genuinely wanted to like it.

The vibes are great, the atmosphere of…..everything. I loved the setting of the magical bar that was essentially its own character (until later in the book when I didn’t anymore). There were many neat elements, and the first 1/3 had me flipping pages wanting to know what was next.

The whole book wasn’t very interesting though? The start was too long without much happening, the middle was dull, and the ending third was just somewhat random and disjointed and didn’t match the previous parts of the novel. I simply found that I couldn’t care or get invested in the story.

That ending; was it happy? Sad or something else? The random character showing up near the end and utterly taking over the story was a strange choice, and I still don’t know if it was supposed to be a good thing. Also HOW can a protagonist go through so much and come out the other side with zero character development of any kind?

I'm sad because this was a missed opportunity; if it was simply bad then I would have moved on without really caring nearly as much. I will probably give the author another shot on another novel.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a free ARC. This honest review was left voluntarily.

[Jayla Metzler · Rating 2 out of 5]

⭐⭐

Okay, so… what in the witchy, underground, ghost-seeing, goddess-summoning chaos did I just listen to? 😂🔮

I went into this one thinking I was getting a spooky story with ghosts, witches, a mysterious lesbian bar, and some dark secrets. Sounds promising, right? Well, somewhere along the way, I got lost, confused, and started wondering if I had accidentally skipped a few chapters. 🤦‍♀️

The concept was definitely unique, and I can appreciate an author who isn't afraid to get weird with it. But this one was weird weird. Not the fun, twisty, keep-me-guessing kind of weird, either. More like the what is happening, who are these people, and am I supposed to understand any of this? kind of weird. 😂

I kept listening, hoping things would eventually click into place, but unfortunately, I never really found my footing. Between the supernatural elements, the complicated backstory, and everything else going on, I struggled to connect with the story.

Maybe this book just wasn't for me, and someone else will absolutely love its unusual, dark, witchy vibe. But for me? I was ready to leave this coven and pretend I never found the entrance. Just hopefully without having to make a painful sacrifice on my way out! 🤣🖤

Overall: Interesting concept, definitely unusual, but confusing enough that I spent more time trying to figure out what was happening than actually enjoying the story.

[AJ Sneed · Rating 1 out of 5]

Netgalley ARC

I really wanted to enjoy this book—the premise had so much potential—but the execution just didn’t land for me. The pacing felt drawn out, with excessive detail and backstory that made it hard to stay engaged. Instead of pulling me in, it often felt overwhelming and repetitive, leaning more toward telling than showing.

My biggest issue was the main character, Gold. Whether intentional or not, I found her deeply unlikable and difficult to connect with. Her constant self-pity and lack of meaningful growth made it hard to care about what happened to her, which ultimately affected my overall investment in the story.

There were a few bright spots: some side characters were genuinely interesting, and I found myself wishing the story had focused more on them instead. Unfortunately, the world-building didn’t stand out much either, and as someone familiar with tarot and witchcraft, certain elements felt inaccurate and distracting.

The writing style itself isn’t necessarily bad, but being in first person made Gold’s voice dominate the experience in a way that didn’t work for me. While I can see how this book might appeal to others, it just wasn’t for me, and I can’t recommend it.

[Kai · Rating 2 out of 5]

My biggest problem with this book is that you CANNOT get me to care about Gold. At literally no point in this entire book did I care what was happening to her.
If this we're not an ARC I would have dnf'd it, but unfortunately I did finished the whole thing.
Not all of the characters were bad. Many of them were flat, but a lot of them were genuinely interesting. It's probably the only thing I really liked in here. Honestly I would have preferred reading Lottie's or Brenda's stories to whatever this was.
The world was honestly not that interesting either, and as a practicing witch, some bits of the magic were just a nightmare to read. It should not be that hard to write an accurate tarot reading when you being up tarot cards so much in the book.
The writing style also was annoying to read, but I don't think that's because the author has a bad style; I think it's because Gold was so insufferable and the book is in first person so it kinda bled through.
It's certainly not the worst book ever and someone will surely enjoy this, but I did not like it at all.
(I received a free copy for review)

[Sid · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and Creature Publishing for this ARC! The premise sounded really interesting and I usually love a good witch story, but unfortunately this one just wasn’t for me.

I think this was meant to be a coming-of-age story, but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t connect with Gold as a character. I found her really self-pitying and I kept waiting for some growth that never fully felt like it happened by the end.

I also think the pacing at the start worked against it a little for me. I feel like it could have been more interesting to begin with Gold finding the bar and then weave her backstory in naturally throughout the story, rather than spending the first few chapters on exposition before the plot really got going.

There were things I liked though. Some of the side characters were interesting and I thought the atmosphere was written well. I just never found myself fully invested in the story overall, which was disappointing because the premise had a lot of potential.