[Book Review] Hex You by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast & Sisters Coffee Sisters Blend

Title: Hex You
Series: Sisters of Salem #1
Author: P.C. Cast, Kristin Cast
Publication date: January 31st 2023
Page Count: 287 pages
Age Range: YA (blood, violence, death)
How I got my hot little hands on it: received a review copy
Publisher’s page: Hex You

Twin sisters, Mercy and Hunter are witches, direct descendants of the Goode family, the founders of their town. After the murder of their mother at the hands of a foul demon, they have become the protectors of the Gates to different underworlds–ancient portals between their world and realms where mythology rules and the darkest of creatures exist.

Mercy and Khenti are trapped in the Ancient Egyptian Underworld and need Hunter’s help to escape. But while Hunter searches for a way to save them, other evil threatens Goodeville. Amphitrite is still looming–and she wants vengeance against Hunter. With the gates rapidly weakening, Amphitrite lures out a deadly creature and sets it free on the residents of Goodeville. It will take everything in Mercy and Hunter’s power to stop the goddess and seal the gates once and for all.

My Review

Hex You is the final book in the Sisters of Salem series following twin sister witches Mercy and Hunter, protectors of the gates to the underworld. On the eve of coming into their powers on their 16th birthday, the gates begin to weaken and rot and a demon gets through, murdering their mother. Now the twin sisters, new witches on the Path, must figure out how to heal the gates and stop any more demons from getting free into their world.

I think where I went wrong with this book is not reading the first two books in the series and then jumping into Hex You with a bag of preconceived expectations. I looked up reviews about the series and saw that one of the main character twin sister witches is straight and the other is gay and I thought that sounded really interesting – Hunter being gay isn’t even mentioned, let alone shown, once in Hex You. I read the description of “gates to different underworlds” and “mythology” and thought since I love mythology, especially underworld mythology, I’m in! BUT the different worlds and their mythology are barely touched upon in this book. I was excited to see Mercy and Khenti’s adventures in escaping from the Ancient Egyptian Underworld (Ancient Egyptian mythology has always held a special place in my heart) – they’re out within the first 3 chapters; most of the book takes place in small-town Illinois.

I also wasn’t prepared for Xena, the Goode family cat familiar. Outside of her feline form, Xena is most often in her cat-person form, described like an extra from CATS the musical with a wild mane of hair and fur-covered human body. She lounges around eating, talking about eating, and randomly licking people on the face – very catlike, but also very jarring, especially when it happens during high-tension scenes.

It’s not a badly written book, and I especially loved the Buffy references, and if I’d had a stronger connection to the characters the plot would have probably been more of an emotional ride, but I just didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, the authors do a great job of recounting what happened in the previous books so I wasn’t lost plotwise, but the emotional impact was missing for me as a new to the series reader.

Overall, I don’t recommend this as a series to jump into, because the payoff just isn’t there without the emotional connection that comes from following these characters’ journey from the beginning. And, honestly, I didn’t love the ending or the characters enough to want to go back and pick up the series from the beginning to see if it changed my perspective. Not a bad book or series, but just not for me.

Hex You, and the Sister of Salem series as a whole, is, at its heart, about two very different sisters. Sisters Coffee Sisters Blend takes two coffees of different origins, American and African, and blends them together to achieve a new harmonious blend with notes of nature including cedar, thyme, and walnut.