Book Review: Hex in the City

Title: Hex in the City

Author: Kelly Garcia

Date: 2025

ISBN: 979-8-9914518-5-0

Quote: "Something about losing his job the year he turned forty had transformed my once decent husband into a snake."

When Bella married a classmate from law school, she knew he was not bound by anything like a healthy human conscience. She just never expected him to turn on her in the way he does. At the beginning of this novel her long bound "magical" psychic powers are warning her of a threat to her or her daughter in his office. Sure enough, she's  been locked out of his bank account. And it won't be long before her own private bank account's been drained, and she's been locked out of her home with a restraining order; Bella doesn't drink or gamble much, but her husband's been hitting the casino with a black-haired beauty (Bella is blonde), and he's set up the most vicious divorce case he can imagine. 

If it's true that today's young men hesitate to get married because they're afraid their wives will cheat on them, the fear undoubtedly has something to do with the fact that most young women know somebody who's been through a messy divorce, had her money embezzled and her character defamed, just because her husband craved the novelty of having sex with a different body. A man's carnal pleasure depends almost entirely on his own physical condition and self-control, but most men seem to need to pick up diseases by sleeping around before they can admit this. 

With some help from friends, one of whom is described as a demon in the shape of a  Chicago businessman, Bella reclaims her powers. She still has to do everything an ordinary wronged wife has to do in a spiteful divorce process, but her magic seems to boost her confidence to the point where she can do that. 

This is a relatively wholesome and helpful teaching story about what wives can do if they find that they have "made a mistake and kissed a snake," though the descriptions of Bella finding her courage in the woods at midnight in a circle of salt, her old school friend being a demon, her dream house being haunted by the ghost of a long-gone lawyer, and so on, might arouse satanic panic if found by someone with the appropriate belief system.