Book Review: Mystic Brews and Malice

Title: Mystic Brews and Malice

Author: Karen McSpade

Date: May 26, 2026

Quote: "For a second, I thought I heard someone singing."

Samara Snow is just starting to enjoy the second half of her life in Winter Haven, Maine, but doesn't feel really "settled." Her "first perfect feeling" there arrives on a date with Jack. But Jack is a Mundane, a Muggle--isn't he?--and Samara is a psychic witch, as featured in TV sitcoms. How will Jack be able to handle his relative lack of contro?

That'd be telling. Anyway, first things first. They have to find out whether a local politician murdered his campaign opponent, and find and lay to rest the Siren who's been leading ships astray.

Samara doesn't know it for sure yet, but she has "come home" to a town that accepts witches, friends who will become her family, and a Partner for Life. She's even bonded with her familiar, Pumpkin, a cat who speaks English. She enjoys having a tea shop, though she's not learned to bake her own tea cakes yet. And it's lucky that she's a good sailor, because a substantial part of the action in this story takes place in boats.

Not all of it, though. While challenging the wicked witch of Winter Haven, Samra will learn to fly. She learns although that traditional English witches never flew on broomsticks, a broomstick is like training wheels for a beginner...and onto her broomstick and off to the fray she goes. 

If you're going to be an escape fantasy trope, it always helps to be a nice one. Samara is as easy to like as Sidney Grace, the witch in this author's earlier popular series set on Flroida, only at the other end of life and the other end of the United States' Atlantic coast. You'll enjoy the slow steady realistic pace of her relationship with Jack and her willingness to face danger to keep her townsfolk, even the ones she doesn't like much, from being unfairly condemned.