Published by Ink Spark Press

Synopsis:

Every witch knows the rules: Stick to your own kind. Never reveal your powers to outsiders. Take a consort from the witching families or kiss your magic good-bye forever.

For years I’ve been quiet, obedient Rose Hallowell. I accepted the man my stepmother chose for me. But I never stopped missing my long-ago friends.

Now we’re back on my childhood estate to arrange my marriage. The boys I grew up with? They’re still in town—and they haven’t forgotten me either. And damn if they haven’t grown up well.

They’ve got no magic, no place in my life. But they’re charming and sweet and infuriatingly hot, and I can’t seem to stay away. The more I try to resist, the more secrets I uncover about my family, my betrothal, and everything I thought was true about the witching world.

I’ve been lied to. I’ve been betrayed. So to claim my magic and my happiness, I’ll break every rule there is—and then some.

Don’t mess with this witch. Every rose has thorns.

I really enjoyed this book, it was very easy to read and was very character driven, which I love.

After reading this book, I learnt what a ‘reverse harem’ was – which is always interesting! In this book, the heroine gets to skip the angst of deciding which preternaturally hot man she’s going to keep and just keeps all of them. Each man has his own distinct personality and style, so they’re not all generic ‘sexy love interest’ and they have their own ways of interacting with each other and Rose, the heroine.

Rose is a witch in a world where only women from witching families have magical powers,  these powers can only be ignited when the woman binds herself with a man who will then essentially fuel her power source. This isn’t something I’ve come across before and I was intrigued with the idea of only the women having power and how the gender dynamics would work. She’s intelligent and capable, she needs help from the men in her life in order to save herself rather than taking a backseat and letting them do all the rescuing. The only issue that I had with her was that she refused to simply step away from all her issues because she would otherwise lose her magical and financial inheritance… I couldn’t help but think she was being pretty selfish in her motives.

This book has some fairytale elements to it as well, the evil stepmother whisked her away from her childhood friends when she was a teenager and has arranged her marriage to someone who is clearly not right for her.

The majority of the story is Rose getting reacquainted with her boys, but with a thread of mystery throughout which felt like it finished in a bit of a rush but was still very enjoyable! I think there’s a good chance I’ll be reading the rest of this series.