Secondhand Spirits by Juliet Blackwell

Lily Ivory is not your average witch. Her spell-casting powers tend to draw mischievous spirits while keeping normal humans at a distance. But now her vintage store could give her a chance to make friends in San Francisco.

Lily hopes for a normal life when she opens Aunt Cora's Closet. With her magical knack for vintage fashion—she can sense vibrations of the past from clothing to jewelry—her store becomes a big hit. 

But when a client is murdered and children start disappearing from the Bay Area. Lily may be the only one who can unravel the crime. She tries to keep her identity a secret while investigating, but it's not that easy—especially under the spells of sexy "myth buster" Max Carmichael and powerful witch Aidan Rhodes. Will Lily's witchy ways be forced out of the closet?

Secondhand Spirits (Witchcraft Mystery, book one) by Juliet Blackwell

Start date: Friday, July 25, 2014

End date: Sunday, July 27, 2014

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars 

First things first, I love the cover of this novel. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t pay much attention to the cover of a book when deciding whether to read it and that was the case when I decided on Secondhand Spirits. However, it would be wrong of me not to point out that the cover has glitter. Raised, sparkly mist surrounds the woman in pink to imply an overflowing amount of magic within her. But now that I’m looking at it again, I could see how someone might confuse the wispy smoke with a bad odor or extremely nasty gas.

Still. Glitter.

Undead and Unwed by MaryJanice Davidson

From Just-Laid-Off Secretary to Queen of the Undead… 

It's been a helluva week for Betsy Taylor. First, she loses her job. Then, to top things off, she's killed in a car accident. But what really bites (besides waking up in the morgue dressed in a pink suit and cheap shoes courtesy of her stepmother) is that she can't seem to stay dead. Every night she rises, with a horrible craving for blood. She's not taking too well to a liquid diet. 

Worst of all, her new friends have the ridiculous idea that Betsy is the prophesied vampire queen, and they want her help in overthrowing the most obnoxious, power-hungry vampire in five centuries—a badly dressed Bela Lugosi wannabe, natch. Frankly, Betsy couldn’t care less about vamp politics, but they have a powerful weapon of persuasion: designer shoes. How can any self-respecting girl say no? But a collection of Ferragamos isn’t the only temptation for Betsy. It’s just a lot safer than the scrumptious Sinclair—a seductive bloodsucker whose sexy gaze seems as dangerous as a stake through the heart…

Undead and Unwed (Queen Betsy, book one) by MaryJanice Davidson

Start date: Tuesday, July 8, 2014

End date: Friday, July 11, 2014

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

            When the novel begins, Elizabeth "Betsy" Taylor is already (un)dead. The day before her death unfolds in that she is late for work, fixes the copy machine for her incompetent coworkers, and chases after her cat who is stuck in snow on the other side of the road. A truck hits her while she crosses the street and her body slams into a tree, killing her. She wakes up in a funeral parlor dressed in a tacky, pink power suit and her stepmother's last year, knock-off designer shoes. It's her mission to recover her designer shoes from her stepmother, which she does within the first forty pages, and then the rest of the novel is focused on other vampires mixing her up in their politics.