The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic

I have so many thoughts on this book. I want to start by saying I had such high hopes for this book. I wanted this book to be amazing so badly. What drew me into this book initially was it was marketed as Practical Magic meets Gilmore Girls. And quite literally every single post the author made stated this. That is essentially all that was given to us unless you read the synopsis on Goodreads or a retail website. To this point, the book missed the mark. The book encompasses magic in a small town, which seems to be the only necessary criteria for this categorization.

The story itself was messy. The writing felt all over the place and at times I had a hard time following. There was simply far too much detail for things that didn't serve a purpose. I don't need to know what every herbs magical property in in every baked good in the cafe. There were things that took me out of the story. At one point the main character says she feels like Elsa. Also, I doubt witches would use young living thieves essential oils... are we promoting an MLM or reading a fall witchy novel?

The plot lines felt extremely under developed. The romance plot was hard to get invested in. There wasn't a lot of interaction between the main characters. We're told there was a falling out of sorts a decade ago but never given detail. Some of the plot points felt very cliche - grandma has cancer and the heroine does whatever she can to cure it, love interest's fiancé faked a pregnancy. I also did not like the religious elements but that may just be a me preference.

Onto the main character Sadie... overall she was just extremely unlikable. She came across as thinking she can do no wrong and is better than everyone else. Also she steals a dog and never gives it back? I'm sorry what?

Overall this book felt poorly edited (ex. “...being normal is an oxymoron.”) and structured (I.e. incomplete sentences). The concept of a witchy small town book is great but this completely missed the mark and should have gone back to the plotting stage.