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Magic and Murder
220 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 15, 2026
About the author
Sheri Lewis Wohl
110 books42 followersFrom the author's website: A reader since I could pick up a book, my goal in grade school was to read every book in the library. I didn't quite make it through every book, but I came darn close, and thus my love of literature was born. I started writing in high school and have continued through today. I didn't follow my muse to college, at least not at first. Instead, I floundered around and managed to complete a degree with concentrations in Psychology, Communications and Women's Studies at Eastern Washington University. But, the pull of the written word wasn't done with me yet, and I went back to school to complete a Masters in Humanities through California State University. With a thesis on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's vampire tale "Carmilla", it was a gothic writer's dream come true.
Today, I'm still writing and reading a ton of books. With the advent of electronic publishing I can carry any number of books in my Kindle. I'm never without a touch of fiction. I'm a member of Romance Writers of America, the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, Team Blaze (a local triathlon group), and a local K9 search & rescue team.
Today, I'm still writing and reading a ton of books. With the advent of electronic publishing I can carry any number of books in my Kindle. I'm never without a touch of fiction. I'm a member of Romance Writers of America, the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, Team Blaze (a local triathlon group), and a local K9 search & rescue team.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 15, 2026
I received an ARC copy of this book from the Publisher via Netgalley and voluntarily leaving my review.
Brooklyn is a detective who is investigating a murder of man name Rodney that has her at a stand still because things aren’t making sense. She visit her friend Joe who is retired police officer to get some insight and he point to her Reggie who runs a magic shop in town but she is more then meets the eye. Brooklyn is skeptical she doesn’t believe in magic but she is willing to listen when the case collides with what Reggie sworn to protect it’s a race to not only to stop a murder but help save the world and keep it safe. This was a good mystery with magic in a romance enjoy Reggie with her siblings Brooklyn and Reggie have chemistry. Can’t wait for next mystery book can I make a suggestion both characters gets visions but one sees it from the victim while other sees it through the killer one a detective and other a single mother who a professor who teaches criminology 🤷🏽♀️
Brooklyn is a detective who is investigating a murder of man name Rodney that has her at a stand still because things aren’t making sense. She visit her friend Joe who is retired police officer to get some insight and he point to her Reggie who runs a magic shop in town but she is more then meets the eye. Brooklyn is skeptical she doesn’t believe in magic but she is willing to listen when the case collides with what Reggie sworn to protect it’s a race to not only to stop a murder but help save the world and keep it safe. This was a good mystery with magic in a romance enjoy Reggie with her siblings Brooklyn and Reggie have chemistry. Can’t wait for next mystery book can I make a suggestion both characters gets visions but one sees it from the victim while other sees it through the killer one a detective and other a single mother who a professor who teaches criminology 🤷🏽♀️
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Salt Circles, Service Weapons, and Other Signs the Date Is Going Well: Reading Sheri Lewis Wohl’s “Magic and Murder”
A skeptical homicide detective falls for a magical guardian while the bodies pile up, the talismans disappear, and ordinary police procedure develops several unexpected amendments.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | September 4th, 2026
Doors crowd Sheri Lewis Wohl’s “Magic and Murder.” They are locked, disguised, blown apart, coaxed open, guarded by dogs, hidden behind walls, buried beneath shops. The most consequential opens onto Reggie Scot’s repository, where magical objects too dangerous to pass freely from hand to hand sit under guard. Bringing homicide detective Brooklyn Timmons down its hidden stairs is therefore not casual hospitality. Reggie has spent her life deciding what must remain inaccessible. Nathan Jacobs, the mage moving toward Spokane, has organized his around the opposite conviction: if something is locked, rare, beautiful, useful, or powerful enough, it ought eventually to be his. Brooklyn enters this world another way. Someone lets her in.
Early on, Brooklyn’s problem seems agreeably ordinary. Rodney McAndrews is dead, an ugly old “coin” has vanished from his collection, and Spokane homicide has run out of usable leads. Her retired mentor sends her to Reggie, a magic-shop owner with an unofficial history of helping police when ordinary methods stall. The coin is, inevitably but efficiently, not a coin at all. It belongs to a set of six talismans whose combined powers could make the wrong person nearly impossible to stop. Soon there are murdered protectors, a stolen grimoire, psychic residue, repositories and a secret order descended from Charlemagne’s knights. And Nathan, a wealthy mage with the temperament of a man who could reach paradise and ask whether his room had been upgraded.
Most novels that splice murder mystery and paranormal romance eventually have to decide which genre is paying the rent. “Magic and Murder” lets suspense sign the lease and romance move in. Wohl gives Nathan his own point of view early, which means the novel cannot preserve much interest in the question of who is doing the killing. We know. We also know, because Nathan keeps us generously informed, how much he prizes his own cleverness. Suspense comes instead from distance: another body, another talisman, Nathan farther west. The reader waits for collision, not unmasking. Reggie and Brooklyn have to work out what he is assembling before he reaches the one piece Reggie has kept hidden beneath Spokane.
Even before he arrives, another accumulation has begun. Brooklyn learns what Reggie is, then what she guards, then what her family has lost. Reggie learns how closely Brooklyn’s competence is tied to stubbornness, and how much pain sits behind both. Nathan takes things. Reggie stores them. Brooklyn keeps being shown things that almost nobody outside the Paladin order is permitted to see. She starts with a murder victim’s office and ends up beneath Reggie’s shop, in rooms built to keep the dangerous and desirable apart. Reggie initially knows her as an attractive skeptic with a badge, an unsolved murder, and a knack for staring at nonsense until it starts behaving like evidence. By degrees, secrecy becomes disclosure.
Touch keeps changing jobs. At first it is simply attraction rendered in the familiar weather of heat and sparks. Then Brooklyn steadies Reggie during a psychic vision. The contact is no longer decorative. Reggie trusts Brooklyn with the repository; a crystal ball that has never answered Reggie responds violently to Brooklyn. Later, touch is how Reggie treats Brooklyn’s injury, and still later it becomes part of the spellwork that keeps them alive. Wohl is not inventing a new vocabulary for desire, but she is unusually persistent about making that vocabulary useful. The same warmth that signals romantic interest eventually has work to do.
Reggie and Brooklyn have also built unusually sturdy ways of keeping need at a distance. Brooklyn is the cop who gets back up. Eighteen months after being shot, she still lives with severe nerve pain, has returned to work too quickly and conceals how much hydrocodone she is taking, including pills she has not always obtained through the pharmacy. Reggie’s defenses look healthier because they are healthier: family, a successful shop, inherited responsibility, work she believes in. But Paladin duty has also been capacious enough to fill the space where a private life might have gone. Neither woman is pretending to be useful. That is what makes usefulness such good cover.
In Brooklyn’s pain, the novel slows enough to become exact. She has withdrawn from friends and family, refuses to appear weak in front of other detectives and judges herself by the same unforgiving standards she once applied to other people who relied too heavily on medication. The injury has become physical fact, professional secret and private shame. Reggie recognizes the concealment before Brooklyn is ready to call it what it is. Their later admission that work has swallowed most of their lives gives the romance something firmer than attraction to stand on. Each woman has met someone whose competence looks familiar enough to expose what it has been hiding.
Pain is also where Wohl’s generosity becomes expensive. Reggie places her hands on Brooklyn’s back, calls on magic, and the chronic pain disappears. The scene works beautifully as romantic wish fulfillment: Brooklyn lets Reggie touch the precise place where her body failed her, relief arrives, and relief breaks open desire. But Wohl has made the injury more interesting than damaged nerves. It has reorganized Brooklyn’s friendships, professional behavior, medication use and sense of herself. Once the pain vanishes, much of that complication goes with it. Magic does not so much help Brooklyn recover as remove the condition around which recovery would have had to occur.
A paranormal romance is entitled to miracles. “Magic and Murder” simply has a great many of them on call. Reggie’s intuition points in useful directions; visions reveal inaccessible scenes; the crystal ball hands Brooklyn a lead; protection can be worn around the neck or poured in a circle on the floor. Tara, though dead, identifies Brooklyn as “the one.” Aryn later receives his own supernatural confirmation. By the climax, the Athena crystal has joined the chorus. A story whose strongest subject is trust occasionally makes trust easier by letting the universe submit supporting documentation. The pleasure remains, but some uncertainty drains away.
Prose in “Magic and Murder” is built to clear the path. Wohl writes in a close, colloquial third person, with plenty of dialogue, fragments, corrections, rhetorical questions and profanity. Brooklyn converts the occult into the language of procedure and equipment. Reggie can move from Charlemagne to dog food without changing registers. Nathan’s interior monologue is essentially a long rehearsal of his superiority, interrupted by travel, murder, wine and irritation that other people have not yet recognized his proper place in the cosmos. The plainness keeps a crowded mythology from becoming homework. Ancient magic is rarely allowed to become ceremonious for long.
At times the narration is too attentive to whether everyone has arrived at the meaning. Brooklyn processes another supernatural revelation after the scene has already persuaded us. Nathan revisits his height, tastes, appetites and entitlement after those traits have been established beyond appeal. He is funny because his self-image keeps outgrowing the room; the return diminishes once we have measured that room several times. The same habit appears in smaller emotional moments, where a feeling is shown and then named. Wohl rarely leaves a reader behind. Occasionally she circles back to collect one who was never lost.
Deep in its structure, the novel is quieter and, often, better. A historical prologue plants the talisman conflict decades before Brooklyn’s murder case; 24 numbered chapters alternate among investigation, intimacy and Nathan’s approach; a six-month-later epilogue changes the chase into ceremony. Because Nathan’s role is known, the crosscutting creates anticipation rather than concealment. More important is what those strands are doing while they alternate. Nathan’s case fills with talismans. Reggie and Brooklyn’s shared knowledge fills with things each once kept private. His route ends in Spokane. Theirs keeps going downward, through the shop and into the repository. Both routes terminate underground.
Inside that repository, the novel’s moral distinction is easiest to see without naming it. The Paladins keep extraordinary objects precisely so that nobody, themselves included, can casually use them. Nathan cannot imagine an object of value that should remain outside his reach. He treats magical protections, private property and other people’s resistance as variations of the same inconvenience. Yet Wohl complicates Reggie’s confidence in her own guardianship through Elaine, the employee she trusts for years and fails to recognize as Rodney’s killer and the thief of a grimoire. Closed doors are not enough. Nor is good intuition. One danger comes from the person already holding a key.
Moving Brooklyn through these spaces, Wohl avoids turning her into a smaller copy of Reggie. She is not born into the Paladin order. She gets access because Reggie trusts her judgment, because she proves useful under pressure and, yes, because she turns out to possess considerable magical ability of her own. First comes Reggie’s confidence, then the supernatural explanation for Rodney’s murder, then the repository, magical sight, Reggie’s private life and finally the Court of Charlemagne. That last ceremony does not manufacture belonging. It formalizes what the novel has been doing for hundreds of pages: moving Brooklyn from the chair outside the room toward a place inside it.
If Wohl has a useful neighbor on the shelf, it is Sarah Gailey’s “Magic for Liars,” another novel in which investigative logic enters a magical world and finds that its usual rules no longer cover every fact. Gailey is more suspicious of belonging and more interested in the humiliation of wanting access to a world that may never want you back. Wohl is warmer. Her hidden world opens, sometimes almost eagerly. The comparison clarifies the particular pleasure here. Brooklyn is not asked to abandon the habits that made her a detective; she is given more kinds of evidence to contend with.
The climax puts that coexistence under useful pressure. Nathan, having gathered five talismans and mistaken possession for invulnerability, is killed not by Reggie or Brooklyn but by his twin sister Natalie, who knows the loophole in his protections and arrives carrying the means to exploit it. His final clue points Reggie toward the Athena crystal. Natalie takes his talismans. Reggie and Brooklyn stay inside their salt circle, hold on to one another and work out what remains possible. Reggie strips away Natalie’s magical defense. Brooklyn draws the gun the novel has repeatedly told her will not help. Then the bullet enters.
Rarely is Wohl better than when she lets those actions sit beside one another. Brooklyn does not graduate into fantasy by giving up evidence, tactics or marksmanship. Reggie does not discover that magic was superstition waiting to be corrected by a firearm. The gun has been useless because the supernatural protection was real; once Reggie removes that protection, ordinary physics returns to the room. The spell makes the bullet possible; the bullet gives the spell consequence. For a novel inclined to explain, the choreography is gratifyingly sufficient.
Only after that does Wohl resume making reassurance comprehensive. Six months later, the depleted Paladin ranks have been restored, Brooklyn’s pain is gone, the pills are gone and she stands in a hidden chamber in Germany to be inducted as a warrior of the Court of Charlemagne. Reggie inherits duty through blood; Brooklyn enters it by choice. More important, Brooklyn does not have to trade her old competence for her new one. She keeps the badge, the practical mind and the lingering impulse to find a salt circle faintly ridiculous. Magic has enlarged her working theory of the world rather than erased it.
Professional toughness gives the fantasy its clearest ordinary pressure point. Brooklyn has used work to hide injury; Reggie has used honorable work to make loneliness seem tolerable. Neither profession is mocked, and neither woman needs to discover that her life’s work was secretly empty. The recognition is smaller and better than that. A vocation can be meaningful and still become somewhere to hide. You can become excellent at protecting other people and remain surprisingly practiced at keeping yourself inaccessible.
On a 100-point scale, I land at 77/100, corresponding to 3/5 stars under my rubric. The chemistry works, the pursuit moves, the repository gives the book a memorable center, and the final spell-and-bullet solution pays off more groundwork than its apparent neatness suggests. What keeps it below the next tier is cumulative rather than disastrous: prose that often explains twice, Nathan’s overextended interiority, magical interventions that arrive just as resistance becomes interesting, and emotional problems solved more cleanly than they were introduced. Wohl is a generous host. Sometimes she clears the difficult dish before we have quite finished tasting it.
Ultimately, Nathan and Brooklyn enter Reggie’s hidden world by opposite means. Nathan attacks gates, overrides protections, blows open doors and calls possession victory. Brooklyn gets there because Reggie decides to show her the stairs. Later, a larger community makes the same decision. Nothing about that admission is spectacular compared with the novel’s crystals, incantations and resurrected dead, which may be why it lingers. Someone is on the other side of the barrier and chooses to open it. The difference between breaking a door and hearing it unlock for you is where “Magic and Murder” finds its strongest enchantment.
A skeptical homicide detective falls for a magical guardian while the bodies pile up, the talismans disappear, and ordinary police procedure develops several unexpected amendments.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | September 4th, 2026
Doors crowd Sheri Lewis Wohl’s “Magic and Murder.” They are locked, disguised, blown apart, coaxed open, guarded by dogs, hidden behind walls, buried beneath shops. The most consequential opens onto Reggie Scot’s repository, where magical objects too dangerous to pass freely from hand to hand sit under guard. Bringing homicide detective Brooklyn Timmons down its hidden stairs is therefore not casual hospitality. Reggie has spent her life deciding what must remain inaccessible. Nathan Jacobs, the mage moving toward Spokane, has organized his around the opposite conviction: if something is locked, rare, beautiful, useful, or powerful enough, it ought eventually to be his. Brooklyn enters this world another way. Someone lets her in.
Early on, Brooklyn’s problem seems agreeably ordinary. Rodney McAndrews is dead, an ugly old “coin” has vanished from his collection, and Spokane homicide has run out of usable leads. Her retired mentor sends her to Reggie, a magic-shop owner with an unofficial history of helping police when ordinary methods stall. The coin is, inevitably but efficiently, not a coin at all. It belongs to a set of six talismans whose combined powers could make the wrong person nearly impossible to stop. Soon there are murdered protectors, a stolen grimoire, psychic residue, repositories and a secret order descended from Charlemagne’s knights. And Nathan, a wealthy mage with the temperament of a man who could reach paradise and ask whether his room had been upgraded.
Most novels that splice murder mystery and paranormal romance eventually have to decide which genre is paying the rent. “Magic and Murder” lets suspense sign the lease and romance move in. Wohl gives Nathan his own point of view early, which means the novel cannot preserve much interest in the question of who is doing the killing. We know. We also know, because Nathan keeps us generously informed, how much he prizes his own cleverness. Suspense comes instead from distance: another body, another talisman, Nathan farther west. The reader waits for collision, not unmasking. Reggie and Brooklyn have to work out what he is assembling before he reaches the one piece Reggie has kept hidden beneath Spokane.
Even before he arrives, another accumulation has begun. Brooklyn learns what Reggie is, then what she guards, then what her family has lost. Reggie learns how closely Brooklyn’s competence is tied to stubbornness, and how much pain sits behind both. Nathan takes things. Reggie stores them. Brooklyn keeps being shown things that almost nobody outside the Paladin order is permitted to see. She starts with a murder victim’s office and ends up beneath Reggie’s shop, in rooms built to keep the dangerous and desirable apart. Reggie initially knows her as an attractive skeptic with a badge, an unsolved murder, and a knack for staring at nonsense until it starts behaving like evidence. By degrees, secrecy becomes disclosure.
Touch keeps changing jobs. At first it is simply attraction rendered in the familiar weather of heat and sparks. Then Brooklyn steadies Reggie during a psychic vision. The contact is no longer decorative. Reggie trusts Brooklyn with the repository; a crystal ball that has never answered Reggie responds violently to Brooklyn. Later, touch is how Reggie treats Brooklyn’s injury, and still later it becomes part of the spellwork that keeps them alive. Wohl is not inventing a new vocabulary for desire, but she is unusually persistent about making that vocabulary useful. The same warmth that signals romantic interest eventually has work to do.
Reggie and Brooklyn have also built unusually sturdy ways of keeping need at a distance. Brooklyn is the cop who gets back up. Eighteen months after being shot, she still lives with severe nerve pain, has returned to work too quickly and conceals how much hydrocodone she is taking, including pills she has not always obtained through the pharmacy. Reggie’s defenses look healthier because they are healthier: family, a successful shop, inherited responsibility, work she believes in. But Paladin duty has also been capacious enough to fill the space where a private life might have gone. Neither woman is pretending to be useful. That is what makes usefulness such good cover.
In Brooklyn’s pain, the novel slows enough to become exact. She has withdrawn from friends and family, refuses to appear weak in front of other detectives and judges herself by the same unforgiving standards she once applied to other people who relied too heavily on medication. The injury has become physical fact, professional secret and private shame. Reggie recognizes the concealment before Brooklyn is ready to call it what it is. Their later admission that work has swallowed most of their lives gives the romance something firmer than attraction to stand on. Each woman has met someone whose competence looks familiar enough to expose what it has been hiding.
Pain is also where Wohl’s generosity becomes expensive. Reggie places her hands on Brooklyn’s back, calls on magic, and the chronic pain disappears. The scene works beautifully as romantic wish fulfillment: Brooklyn lets Reggie touch the precise place where her body failed her, relief arrives, and relief breaks open desire. But Wohl has made the injury more interesting than damaged nerves. It has reorganized Brooklyn’s friendships, professional behavior, medication use and sense of herself. Once the pain vanishes, much of that complication goes with it. Magic does not so much help Brooklyn recover as remove the condition around which recovery would have had to occur.
A paranormal romance is entitled to miracles. “Magic and Murder” simply has a great many of them on call. Reggie’s intuition points in useful directions; visions reveal inaccessible scenes; the crystal ball hands Brooklyn a lead; protection can be worn around the neck or poured in a circle on the floor. Tara, though dead, identifies Brooklyn as “the one.” Aryn later receives his own supernatural confirmation. By the climax, the Athena crystal has joined the chorus. A story whose strongest subject is trust occasionally makes trust easier by letting the universe submit supporting documentation. The pleasure remains, but some uncertainty drains away.
Prose in “Magic and Murder” is built to clear the path. Wohl writes in a close, colloquial third person, with plenty of dialogue, fragments, corrections, rhetorical questions and profanity. Brooklyn converts the occult into the language of procedure and equipment. Reggie can move from Charlemagne to dog food without changing registers. Nathan’s interior monologue is essentially a long rehearsal of his superiority, interrupted by travel, murder, wine and irritation that other people have not yet recognized his proper place in the cosmos. The plainness keeps a crowded mythology from becoming homework. Ancient magic is rarely allowed to become ceremonious for long.
At times the narration is too attentive to whether everyone has arrived at the meaning. Brooklyn processes another supernatural revelation after the scene has already persuaded us. Nathan revisits his height, tastes, appetites and entitlement after those traits have been established beyond appeal. He is funny because his self-image keeps outgrowing the room; the return diminishes once we have measured that room several times. The same habit appears in smaller emotional moments, where a feeling is shown and then named. Wohl rarely leaves a reader behind. Occasionally she circles back to collect one who was never lost.
Deep in its structure, the novel is quieter and, often, better. A historical prologue plants the talisman conflict decades before Brooklyn’s murder case; 24 numbered chapters alternate among investigation, intimacy and Nathan’s approach; a six-month-later epilogue changes the chase into ceremony. Because Nathan’s role is known, the crosscutting creates anticipation rather than concealment. More important is what those strands are doing while they alternate. Nathan’s case fills with talismans. Reggie and Brooklyn’s shared knowledge fills with things each once kept private. His route ends in Spokane. Theirs keeps going downward, through the shop and into the repository. Both routes terminate underground.
Inside that repository, the novel’s moral distinction is easiest to see without naming it. The Paladins keep extraordinary objects precisely so that nobody, themselves included, can casually use them. Nathan cannot imagine an object of value that should remain outside his reach. He treats magical protections, private property and other people’s resistance as variations of the same inconvenience. Yet Wohl complicates Reggie’s confidence in her own guardianship through Elaine, the employee she trusts for years and fails to recognize as Rodney’s killer and the thief of a grimoire. Closed doors are not enough. Nor is good intuition. One danger comes from the person already holding a key.
Moving Brooklyn through these spaces, Wohl avoids turning her into a smaller copy of Reggie. She is not born into the Paladin order. She gets access because Reggie trusts her judgment, because she proves useful under pressure and, yes, because she turns out to possess considerable magical ability of her own. First comes Reggie’s confidence, then the supernatural explanation for Rodney’s murder, then the repository, magical sight, Reggie’s private life and finally the Court of Charlemagne. That last ceremony does not manufacture belonging. It formalizes what the novel has been doing for hundreds of pages: moving Brooklyn from the chair outside the room toward a place inside it.
If Wohl has a useful neighbor on the shelf, it is Sarah Gailey’s “Magic for Liars,” another novel in which investigative logic enters a magical world and finds that its usual rules no longer cover every fact. Gailey is more suspicious of belonging and more interested in the humiliation of wanting access to a world that may never want you back. Wohl is warmer. Her hidden world opens, sometimes almost eagerly. The comparison clarifies the particular pleasure here. Brooklyn is not asked to abandon the habits that made her a detective; she is given more kinds of evidence to contend with.
The climax puts that coexistence under useful pressure. Nathan, having gathered five talismans and mistaken possession for invulnerability, is killed not by Reggie or Brooklyn but by his twin sister Natalie, who knows the loophole in his protections and arrives carrying the means to exploit it. His final clue points Reggie toward the Athena crystal. Natalie takes his talismans. Reggie and Brooklyn stay inside their salt circle, hold on to one another and work out what remains possible. Reggie strips away Natalie’s magical defense. Brooklyn draws the gun the novel has repeatedly told her will not help. Then the bullet enters.
Rarely is Wohl better than when she lets those actions sit beside one another. Brooklyn does not graduate into fantasy by giving up evidence, tactics or marksmanship. Reggie does not discover that magic was superstition waiting to be corrected by a firearm. The gun has been useless because the supernatural protection was real; once Reggie removes that protection, ordinary physics returns to the room. The spell makes the bullet possible; the bullet gives the spell consequence. For a novel inclined to explain, the choreography is gratifyingly sufficient.
Only after that does Wohl resume making reassurance comprehensive. Six months later, the depleted Paladin ranks have been restored, Brooklyn’s pain is gone, the pills are gone and she stands in a hidden chamber in Germany to be inducted as a warrior of the Court of Charlemagne. Reggie inherits duty through blood; Brooklyn enters it by choice. More important, Brooklyn does not have to trade her old competence for her new one. She keeps the badge, the practical mind and the lingering impulse to find a salt circle faintly ridiculous. Magic has enlarged her working theory of the world rather than erased it.
Professional toughness gives the fantasy its clearest ordinary pressure point. Brooklyn has used work to hide injury; Reggie has used honorable work to make loneliness seem tolerable. Neither profession is mocked, and neither woman needs to discover that her life’s work was secretly empty. The recognition is smaller and better than that. A vocation can be meaningful and still become somewhere to hide. You can become excellent at protecting other people and remain surprisingly practiced at keeping yourself inaccessible.
On a 100-point scale, I land at 77/100, corresponding to 3/5 stars under my rubric. The chemistry works, the pursuit moves, the repository gives the book a memorable center, and the final spell-and-bullet solution pays off more groundwork than its apparent neatness suggests. What keeps it below the next tier is cumulative rather than disastrous: prose that often explains twice, Nathan’s overextended interiority, magical interventions that arrive just as resistance becomes interesting, and emotional problems solved more cleanly than they were introduced. Wohl is a generous host. Sometimes she clears the difficult dish before we have quite finished tasting it.
Ultimately, Nathan and Brooklyn enter Reggie’s hidden world by opposite means. Nathan attacks gates, overrides protections, blows open doors and calls possession victory. Brooklyn gets there because Reggie decides to show her the stairs. Later, a larger community makes the same decision. Nothing about that admission is spectacular compared with the novel’s crystals, incantations and resurrected dead, which may be why it lingers. Someone is on the other side of the barrier and chooses to open it. The difference between breaking a door and hearing it unlock for you is where “Magic and Murder” finds its strongest enchantment.
September 22, 2026
the synopsis promises exactly the kind of book i should be eating up: magic, murder, mystery, and the sort of seasonal atmosphere that makes you want to curl up somewhere cozy and investigate a suspicious death while pretending you have any idea what you're doing. unfortunately, magic and murder never quite manages to bring those ingredients together in a way that feels convincing, because so much of the execution is undermined by the writing itself.
the dialogue is probably where i noticed this the most, because almost none of it sounds like something an actual person would say. there is a constant sense that the characters are speaking because the author needs them to communicate information rather than because they are genuinely having a conversation, and the result is dialogue that feels clunky and strangely constructed. i kept reading exchanges and thinking that i could understand what the scene was trying to accomplish, but i couldn't actually hear a human being saying those words out loud. and when you're reading a mystery with magical elements, where so much of the enjoyment depends on becoming invested in the people investigating the weirdness around them, that artificiality makes it much harder to settle into the story.
the characterization didn't help either, particularly because i spent a surprisingly long time being completely wrong about how old these people were supposed to be. when i started the book, i assumed the main character was somewhere in her mid-twenties and that her younger brother was maybe around twenty, because that was how they came across to me in both their personalities and the way they behaved. then the second chapter casually reveals that this man is pushing forty, which means that the main character herself must be somewhere around her mid-forties, and suddenly i was forced to reconsider basically every impression i'd formed of them.
and honestly, it made everything more confusing rather than more interesting, because these characters simply don't behave like people their age. obviously, there is no single correct way for someone in their forties to act, and people can be immature, impulsive, eccentric, chaotic, or just generally weird at any age, but there needs to be some sense of consistency between the characters' ages, their life experiences, and the way they're written. here, it felt like they had been written as younger characters and then given older ages afterward, without the personalities being adjusted to match. i kept thinking that if they were actually twenty-something, so many of their decisions and interactions would make much more sense, but knowing they were pushing forty made the same behavior feel bizarre rather than charming.
it also unfortunately made it harder for me to connect with the romance, which is especially tragic considering i am basically always standing outside the romance section of a bookstore with a little sign begging authors to give me more romance. i want the romantic subplot. i will find the romantic subplot even when the book is doing everything possible to hide it from me. but i genuinely felt no chemistry between these two leads.
and it's not that i needed them to immediately be declaring their undying love for each other or spending every chapter making heart eyes across a room. i would've been perfectly happy with a slow burn, awkward attraction, tension, reluctant partnership, literally anything that made me believe there was something happening between them beyond the plot requiring them to interact. instead, if someone had told me that these were simply two women who happened to meet, helped each other through a strange situation, and would eventually go their separate ways without ever developing a romantic relationship, i probably would've believed them. that's how little romantic energy i felt between them.
which is particularly unfortunate because the combination of a magical mystery and romance should have been incredibly easy to sell me on. i am already predisposed to enjoy this kind of story, and the premise has enough potential to make for a really fun seasonal read, but potential can only carry a book so far when the dialogue feels unnatural, the characters don't feel like the ages they're supposed to be, and the central relationship never develops the chemistry necessary to make me care about it.
so unfortunately, magic and murder ended up feeling much more like a collection of things i should have enjoyed than a story that actually made me enjoy them. the magic is there, the murder is there, the possibility of romance is definitely there, but i kept waiting for all of those pieces to click together, and they never really did.
the dialogue is probably where i noticed this the most, because almost none of it sounds like something an actual person would say. there is a constant sense that the characters are speaking because the author needs them to communicate information rather than because they are genuinely having a conversation, and the result is dialogue that feels clunky and strangely constructed. i kept reading exchanges and thinking that i could understand what the scene was trying to accomplish, but i couldn't actually hear a human being saying those words out loud. and when you're reading a mystery with magical elements, where so much of the enjoyment depends on becoming invested in the people investigating the weirdness around them, that artificiality makes it much harder to settle into the story.
the characterization didn't help either, particularly because i spent a surprisingly long time being completely wrong about how old these people were supposed to be. when i started the book, i assumed the main character was somewhere in her mid-twenties and that her younger brother was maybe around twenty, because that was how they came across to me in both their personalities and the way they behaved. then the second chapter casually reveals that this man is pushing forty, which means that the main character herself must be somewhere around her mid-forties, and suddenly i was forced to reconsider basically every impression i'd formed of them.
and honestly, it made everything more confusing rather than more interesting, because these characters simply don't behave like people their age. obviously, there is no single correct way for someone in their forties to act, and people can be immature, impulsive, eccentric, chaotic, or just generally weird at any age, but there needs to be some sense of consistency between the characters' ages, their life experiences, and the way they're written. here, it felt like they had been written as younger characters and then given older ages afterward, without the personalities being adjusted to match. i kept thinking that if they were actually twenty-something, so many of their decisions and interactions would make much more sense, but knowing they were pushing forty made the same behavior feel bizarre rather than charming.
it also unfortunately made it harder for me to connect with the romance, which is especially tragic considering i am basically always standing outside the romance section of a bookstore with a little sign begging authors to give me more romance. i want the romantic subplot. i will find the romantic subplot even when the book is doing everything possible to hide it from me. but i genuinely felt no chemistry between these two leads.
and it's not that i needed them to immediately be declaring their undying love for each other or spending every chapter making heart eyes across a room. i would've been perfectly happy with a slow burn, awkward attraction, tension, reluctant partnership, literally anything that made me believe there was something happening between them beyond the plot requiring them to interact. instead, if someone had told me that these were simply two women who happened to meet, helped each other through a strange situation, and would eventually go their separate ways without ever developing a romantic relationship, i probably would've believed them. that's how little romantic energy i felt between them.
which is particularly unfortunate because the combination of a magical mystery and romance should have been incredibly easy to sell me on. i am already predisposed to enjoy this kind of story, and the premise has enough potential to make for a really fun seasonal read, but potential can only carry a book so far when the dialogue feels unnatural, the characters don't feel like the ages they're supposed to be, and the central relationship never develops the chemistry necessary to make me care about it.
so unfortunately, magic and murder ended up feeling much more like a collection of things i should have enjoyed than a story that actually made me enjoy them. the magic is there, the murder is there, the possibility of romance is definitely there, but i kept waiting for all of those pieces to click together, and they never really did.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I really wanted to like this a lot more than I did. I'm always looking for a good mystery with a sapphic romance, but this one just didn't do it for me.
First off, I hated the sections with Nathan. Like absolutely hated them. He was just a narcissistic manchild and entirely unpleasant to have to read. I also didn't think they added anything. Quite the opposite. I felt like the story came to a screeching halt every time we got to his POV. After a while, I just started skipping them entirely unless it seemed like something important was happening. I really think that space could have been used to get to know Reggie and Brooklyn better or to add more between them. Because as it was, I felt zero chemistry. To the point that I didn't even know if the author was going to attempt to do a romance between them because there was just nothing there. And I never thought I would say this about a sapphic book, but I really think they would have been better off as staying platonic with the way it was written.
Also, to be a book called magic and murder, I didn't find either particularly compelling. The magic was...well, not very magical, and I wish we'd been able to go into it a bit more or at least been shown what Reggie was capable of beyond what we were given. And I thought the murder mystery was lackluster. The McAndrews murder feels oddly ignored for much of the book even though it was the reason Reggie and Brooklyn came together in the first place. Because of this, I didn't even care who did it, which is kind of good because I thought that reveal was lackluster.
The main characters were fine, though they felt a bit flat to me. I just would have liked to have gotten to know about them beyond the basic things we got. Maybe then the romance also would have worked better for me. I just think the book either needed to exclude the parts with Nathan to flesh out the other characters, romance, and plot, or it could have been longer to do the same since it was quite short. I still would have hated the Nathan bits, but at least I probably would have enjoyed the rest of it more.
Thank you NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for the ARC. All opinions are my own.
First off, I hated the sections with Nathan. Like absolutely hated them. He was just a narcissistic manchild and entirely unpleasant to have to read. I also didn't think they added anything. Quite the opposite. I felt like the story came to a screeching halt every time we got to his POV. After a while, I just started skipping them entirely unless it seemed like something important was happening. I really think that space could have been used to get to know Reggie and Brooklyn better or to add more between them. Because as it was, I felt zero chemistry. To the point that I didn't even know if the author was going to attempt to do a romance between them because there was just nothing there. And I never thought I would say this about a sapphic book, but I really think they would have been better off as staying platonic with the way it was written.
Also, to be a book called magic and murder, I didn't find either particularly compelling. The magic was...well, not very magical, and I wish we'd been able to go into it a bit more or at least been shown what Reggie was capable of beyond what we were given. And I thought the murder mystery was lackluster. The McAndrews murder feels oddly ignored for much of the book even though it was the reason Reggie and Brooklyn came together in the first place. Because of this, I didn't even care who did it, which is kind of good because I thought that reveal was lackluster.
The main characters were fine, though they felt a bit flat to me. I just would have liked to have gotten to know about them beyond the basic things we got. Maybe then the romance also would have worked better for me. I just think the book either needed to exclude the parts with Nathan to flesh out the other characters, romance, and plot, or it could have been longer to do the same since it was quite short. I still would have hated the Nathan bits, but at least I probably would have enjoyed the rest of it more.
Thank you NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for the ARC. All opinions are my own.
September 18, 2026
Thank you to Bold Strokes Books, Inc and Netgalley for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway.
TW/CW Murder | Violence | Poison
When I saw this appear on Netgalley it immediately grabbed my attention because I do like a good murder mystery with a side of fantasy and magic. However I'm not sure if I truly got that in Magic and Murder.
Brooklyn is a detective and she has a hard homicide. When her old mentor suggests maybe taking a paranormal route by asking a local magic shop owner, she is hesitant. But once she steps in, there is no stepping out.
Like I said, the big selling point in the synopsis was the murder mystery in combination with magic for me. However there wasn't much mystery surrounding the murders. We follow the murderer alongside our two main characters so we know what is happening from that end right away. It takes away from the mystery. It didn't really feel like there was a mystery from us as reader. Other things that were suppose to be 'surprises' were done so heavy handed that the very first hint told it all.
Had the murderer been more compelling that might have been one thing. But he felt pretty one dimensional. Adding in his preference for sex kinks didn't add any depth to his character.
Having said that, I did enjoy the world. The idea that there are keepers all over the world that keep dangerous magical items from us and I see a lot of potential in the world. From what I can tell, there isn't anything announced yet, but I would still be interested in reading that.
Our two main characters, Brooklyn and Reggie were fine characters to follow. I'm not sure I truly felt their quick relationship. But outside of that they were fun characters. It was an average read. Which is a shame because it could have been so much more.
TW/CW Murder | Violence | Poison
When I saw this appear on Netgalley it immediately grabbed my attention because I do like a good murder mystery with a side of fantasy and magic. However I'm not sure if I truly got that in Magic and Murder.
Brooklyn is a detective and she has a hard homicide. When her old mentor suggests maybe taking a paranormal route by asking a local magic shop owner, she is hesitant. But once she steps in, there is no stepping out.
Like I said, the big selling point in the synopsis was the murder mystery in combination with magic for me. However there wasn't much mystery surrounding the murders. We follow the murderer alongside our two main characters so we know what is happening from that end right away. It takes away from the mystery. It didn't really feel like there was a mystery from us as reader. Other things that were suppose to be 'surprises' were done so heavy handed that the very first hint told it all.
Had the murderer been more compelling that might have been one thing. But he felt pretty one dimensional. Adding in his preference for sex kinks didn't add any depth to his character.
Having said that, I did enjoy the world. The idea that there are keepers all over the world that keep dangerous magical items from us and I see a lot of potential in the world. From what I can tell, there isn't anything announced yet, but I would still be interested in reading that.
Our two main characters, Brooklyn and Reggie were fine characters to follow. I'm not sure I truly felt their quick relationship. But outside of that they were fun characters. It was an average read. Which is a shame because it could have been so much more.
September 17, 2026
I really enjoyed Magic & Murder. The worldbuilding was one of the biggest highlights for me. The magical elements felt well developed and immersive, and I enjoyed learning more about the world as the mystery unfolded rather than feeling lost in the mechanics of it.
I also really liked both female protagonists, separately and together. They each felt like fully developed characters with their own strengths, personalities, and roles within the story, which made their interactions and growing connection much more satisfying. Neither woman felt like she existed simply to complete the other's storyline.
The supporting cast was another strength. The secondary characters helped make the world feel populated and lived-in rather than functioning solely as pieces of the mystery.
I especially enjoyed getting glimpses from the antagonist's perspective. Being allowed inside that side of the story added another layer to the suspense without taking away from the mystery, and it made the danger feel more immediate.
And the suspense really worked for me. The story maintained enough tension to keep me invested in figuring out what was happening while still giving the characters and world room to develop. I wanted answers, but I also genuinely enjoyed spending time with these characters along the way.
This was my first book by Sheri Lewis Wohl, but it definitely won't be my last. Between the immersive worldbuilding, compelling female protagonists, strong supporting characters, and suspense, I'm looking forward to exploring more of her work.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an advance copy of Magic & Murder in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
I also really liked both female protagonists, separately and together. They each felt like fully developed characters with their own strengths, personalities, and roles within the story, which made their interactions and growing connection much more satisfying. Neither woman felt like she existed simply to complete the other's storyline.
The supporting cast was another strength. The secondary characters helped make the world feel populated and lived-in rather than functioning solely as pieces of the mystery.
I especially enjoyed getting glimpses from the antagonist's perspective. Being allowed inside that side of the story added another layer to the suspense without taking away from the mystery, and it made the danger feel more immediate.
And the suspense really worked for me. The story maintained enough tension to keep me invested in figuring out what was happening while still giving the characters and world room to develop. I wanted answers, but I also genuinely enjoyed spending time with these characters along the way.
This was my first book by Sheri Lewis Wohl, but it definitely won't be my last. Between the immersive worldbuilding, compelling female protagonists, strong supporting characters, and suspense, I'm looking forward to exploring more of her work.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an advance copy of Magic & Murder in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
September 27, 2026
I received an ARC of “Magic and Murder” in exchange for an honest review.
I didn’t take many notes while reading, so I’ll keep this short.
The book is an easy read, and parts of it are genuinely engaging. I liked the premise and got into it easily enough, but it never quite became a book I couldn’t put down. The constant POV switches may have been part of the problem: just as I was getting invested in one storyline, the book would jump to another, and the story would lose momentum. As I read on, I kept feeling that I’d expected something a little different.
The ending bothered me most. Nathan is built up as the main antagonist for almost the entire book, only for Natalie to take him out in a matter of moments. She then becomes the final villain herself—and is defeated almost as quickly. The climax feels like two rushed finales back to back.
As for the epilogue... I honestly would’ve been happy if Brooklyn had simply stayed Brooklyn: a detective who now knows magic exists and chooses to stay with Reggie. Making her a warrior of the Order felt unnecessary, though I can’t quite put my finger on why. Maybe it’s because the romance was already so tied up with the idea of “fate.” This made it feel as if Brooklyn had to be completely absorbed into Reggie’s world. I can see why the story went in that direction; it just didn’t work for me.
It’s not a bad book. I liked the beginning, and there were moments I really enjoyed. By the end, though, I’d realized I was hoping for a different kind of story.
3.5 stars ⭐
I didn’t take many notes while reading, so I’ll keep this short.
The book is an easy read, and parts of it are genuinely engaging. I liked the premise and got into it easily enough, but it never quite became a book I couldn’t put down. The constant POV switches may have been part of the problem: just as I was getting invested in one storyline, the book would jump to another, and the story would lose momentum. As I read on, I kept feeling that I’d expected something a little different.
The ending bothered me most. Nathan is built up as the main antagonist for almost the entire book, only for Natalie to take him out in a matter of moments. She then becomes the final villain herself—and is defeated almost as quickly. The climax feels like two rushed finales back to back.
As for the epilogue... I honestly would’ve been happy if Brooklyn had simply stayed Brooklyn: a detective who now knows magic exists and chooses to stay with Reggie. Making her a warrior of the Order felt unnecessary, though I can’t quite put my finger on why. Maybe it’s because the romance was already so tied up with the idea of “fate.” This made it feel as if Brooklyn had to be completely absorbed into Reggie’s world. I can see why the story went in that direction; it just didn’t work for me.
It’s not a bad book. I liked the beginning, and there were moments I really enjoyed. By the end, though, I’d realized I was hoping for a different kind of story.
3.5 stars ⭐
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I feel like this book had a lot of potential. It reads sort of like a cross between Warehouse 13 and the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. However, what really stands out is that the author had far more fun writing the villain's perspective than the heroes.
It's not like you need to tell us someone who "wants world ending devices" is evil, but, just to hammer in the point, we are lovingly taken through each of his crimes and thoughts about people. After a while it gets old and, more to the point, we do not get a similar level of detail for our two heroes. The author narrates events from each of their perspectives as well, even stuff that has happened when they are together so there are repeats. In the end you feel like the attention pie was somewhere around 50% villain and 25% each hero leaving you way too much time with the villain and far too little time with the heroes.
It's not like you need to tell us someone who "wants world ending devices" is evil, but, just to hammer in the point, we are lovingly taken through each of his crimes and thoughts about people. After a while it gets old and, more to the point, we do not get a similar level of detail for our two heroes. The author narrates events from each of their perspectives as well, even stuff that has happened when they are together so there are repeats. In the end you feel like the attention pie was somewhere around 50% villain and 25% each hero leaving you way too much time with the villain and far too little time with the heroes.
September 17, 2026
Magic and Murder by Sheri Lewis Wohl had potential, but unfortunately, it never quite clicked for me.
My biggest issue was Nathan’s POV. His sections felt unpleasant and brought the story to a stop, so I eventually started skipping them. I would have much rather seen that space used to develop Reggie and Brooklyn, whose relationship lacked the chemistry I was hoping for.
The magic also didn’t feel very magical to me. I wanted more world-building and a better sense of what Reggie could actually do. The murder mystery had potential but felt underdeveloped, and by the time the reveal came, I wasn’t particularly invested in the outcome.
The writing was solid, and it was a quick read with some darker emotional moments. Unfortunately, I was left wanting more depth and that extra spark to make the story really stand out.
My biggest issue was Nathan’s POV. His sections felt unpleasant and brought the story to a stop, so I eventually started skipping them. I would have much rather seen that space used to develop Reggie and Brooklyn, whose relationship lacked the chemistry I was hoping for.
The magic also didn’t feel very magical to me. I wanted more world-building and a better sense of what Reggie could actually do. The murder mystery had potential but felt underdeveloped, and by the time the reveal came, I wasn’t particularly invested in the outcome.
The writing was solid, and it was a quick read with some darker emotional moments. Unfortunately, I was left wanting more depth and that extra spark to make the story really stand out.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to NetGalley and the author Sheri Lewis Wohl for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This was a fast read both in space and action. I expected more cozy but it was real and raw especially some of things the FMCs go through with Reggie’s loss and well Brooklyn’s struggle with pain. While the story had a magical storyline, I wished I would’ve felt the magic when reading it, it felt more like facts rather than this world with hidden magic and my imagination did not soar. The writing was good, and I liked the murder mystery part and how intricate that was and all people involved. I was not a fan of Nathan’s POVs, that kind of took away from the story as a whole. Overall, enjoyed the book as a fast read as it was short but just didn’t wow me.
This was a fast read both in space and action. I expected more cozy but it was real and raw especially some of things the FMCs go through with Reggie’s loss and well Brooklyn’s struggle with pain. While the story had a magical storyline, I wished I would’ve felt the magic when reading it, it felt more like facts rather than this world with hidden magic and my imagination did not soar. The writing was good, and I liked the murder mystery part and how intricate that was and all people involved. I was not a fan of Nathan’s POVs, that kind of took away from the story as a whole. Overall, enjoyed the book as a fast read as it was short but just didn’t wow me.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I love fantasy books especially with a magical element, but this one didn't quite do it for me. It was a quick read with plenty of action and darker then I thought it would be. The magic seemed force both between the characters and the story itself. I feel like it could have had better world building the hidden world. The writing was great as usual and the weaving the story was well done, but it was missing that spark. Nathan's POVs took me out of the story rather then adding to it.
It was missing that special something even though the book had potential. I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
It was missing that special something even though the book had potential. I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
September 16, 2026
I’m grateful to have received this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I felt like Magic and Murder had a lot of potential! I was excited for another sapphic read, but I felt like I needed more from the magical world we were supposed to be in. We had a chance to see different POVs, but I couldn’t quite align with them. I think Sheri Lewis Wohl had a good story line and I enjoyed her writing.
I felt like Magic and Murder had a lot of potential! I was excited for another sapphic read, but I felt like I needed more from the magical world we were supposed to be in. We had a chance to see different POVs, but I couldn’t quite align with them. I think Sheri Lewis Wohl had a good story line and I enjoyed her writing.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thanks to NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for the advance copy. I was not a fan of the fact that it was short. I was wanting to read more about it because I felt that it was rushed. I am usually a fantasy book fan but this one was not my favorite. This was short which means that things were rushed and that Nathan’s POVs was not working for me.
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