Not Your Ex’s Hexes is light romantic fantasy to the extreme. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, and although it’s cheesy, it’s mostly the good kind of cheesy, and provides a fun ride.

Rose Maxwell is one of the Magic Triad, triplet sisters who are (mostly – oldest sister Violet, heroine of Not the Witch You Wed, was not) gifted with magical powers. Rose is the middle child, a trainee Prima since childhood (think the Supreme and her possibles from American Horror Story: Coven) who will end up heading the Supernatural Council made up of various supernatural creatures (shifters and demons and witches, oh my!) which makes the laws governing the land’s magical creatures. But all of that’s behind Rose; she’s now an ex-Prima Apparent, much to her grandmother’s displeasure.

Rose recently had an assignation with Damian Adams – a veterinarian who also happens to be half-demon. She’s tried to forget about him, but is forced to remember him when she’s sentenced to do community service at his clinic after freeing a group of neglected horses from their stables at an animal sanctuary. Since Rose has absolutely no direction after losing the position she’d been born to, at least now she has a job to go to every single day. Unfortunately, she soon figures out she’s destined to be a Hunter, which takes Damian back to the world he ditched years before.

Rose puts one and one together about Damian, and they decide that the best solution to their problem would be to slip into a friends-with-benefits situation. Damian’s suffering from a hex put on him by a bitter ex, you see; if he falls in love he loses his ability to shift from human to demon. So romance definitely isn’t in the cards for him. Is it?

Not Your Ex’s Hexes is like ordering a big, tall fruity cocktail from your local bar. It’s sweet, it’s fizzy, and sometimes it’ll give you a headache. Rose is a sweetheart, and she and Damian have other things they care about outside of the bedroom, but the sometimes-flat and slangy dialogue will make your head spin.

The good news is that our hero and heroine have a great obstacle to overcome here, and it’s easy to like them and root for them to get out from under their problems.

The conversational level is full of slang to an almost dizzying extent. Everything gets nicknamed; even a vibrator is called Mr. Wiggles! There are also dizzying linguistic terms like bwitch, which is an amalgamation of “bitch” and “witch” but also used in a positive manner. You end up sitting there wondering why the author is straining so hard to make T-shirt slogans instead of giving us dialogue worth reading.

But the spirit and punch of the thing is still admirable, and there’s lighthearted fun to be had. Not Your Ex’s Hexes works just well enough to squeak out a B. We’ll have to see if Olive’s book manages to bring more magic to the table.

Buy it at: Amazon or your local bookshop

Visit our Amazon Storefront