Series: Wardwell Witch Cozy Mysteries #1 Find the Author: Website, Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon, Instagram
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Reading Challenges: All booksMost Wardwell witches are forces of nature. Mari is more of a natural disaster.
After losing her job, her boyfriend, and her apartment in one fell swoop, thirty-six-year-old journalist Marigold Wardwell finds herself doing the one thing she swore she'd never do: moving back to Duskboro, Vermont – the magical small town she fled at eighteen.
The thing about descending from a line of powerful witches is that everyone expects you to live up to the family name. Her mother can control the weather. Mari? She once tried to light a candle and set her own eyebrows on fire.
The plan is simple: survive the summer, and escape back to Boston by fall.
Except Wardwell Manor itself is unraveling. The protective wards are failing, the house is misbehaving, and the family grimoire – her only hope for fixing any of it – is missing.
When other grimoires start disappearing and strange anomalies plague Duskboro, Mari becomes a prime suspect. Everyone knows she’s the Wardwell who is terrible at magic. What better motive could someone have?
Alongside her dead grandmother’s judgemental talking cat, an elderly psychic aunt whose visions are becoming increasingly unreliable, and a cast of quirky locals (including the handsome mortician she’s trying not to notice), Mari must find the thief and save the town before Duskboro descends into disaster.
Spellbooks Behaving Badly
Sometimes you need a book filled with magic, mystery, a little chaos, and enough quirky characters to make you smile—and Grimoires Gone Wild delivered exactly that.
Marigold Wardwell is having what can only be described as a spectacularly bad run of luck. Losing her job, boyfriend, and apartment would be enough to send anyone into hiding, but returning home brings a whole new surprise: magic, secrets, and a mystery that definitely isn’t going to solve itself.
I really enjoyed the cozy, witchy atmosphere of this one. It had that comforting small-town feel I love in a cozy mystery, but with enough magical mischief and intrigue to keep things interesting. Throw in pixies, gnomes, mysterious missing grimoires, and a bit of humor, and I was happily along for the ride.
Marigold was such an easy character to root for. I loved watching her navigate everything being thrown at her as she tried to figure out exactly where she belongs. The magical elements were fun without becoming overly complicated, and the mystery kept me curious about what was really going on.
Grimoires Gone Wild was a charming, lighthearted start to the Wardwell Witch Cozy Mysteries series. It’s the kind of book you reach for when you want something magical, entertaining, and just a little chaotic—which, let’s be honest, is often exactly what I’m looking for.
I’m definitely curious to see what magical trouble Marigold gets herself into next!
About Cleo Frost
Cleo Frost has been dreaming of being a witch since she was a little girl, but since that didn’t work out, writing about them is the next best thing. She writes paranormal cozy mysteries with quirky casts, talking cats, and lots of small town whimsy.
Cleo lives in the mountains of Upstate New York with her husband, a menagerie of cats, some aquatic snails, and a handful of chickens. When she’s not holed up at her desk in her historic (but hopefully not haunted) home office, she can be found wandering local trails, visiting craft breweries, and supporting her local music scene.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
