(The Mythical Mates of Arcane Cove, #1) Witches and Wine by Carly Spade Arc review

 

Witches and Wine by Carly Spade
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars
🌶️🌶️🌶️ 3 Spice

This was a fun, cosy, small-town monster romance with a very cool mythology spin that I haven't seen in my usual monster romance books.

Thank you to the author and BookSirens for providing me with an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own and given honestly.

Now, going into this book, we are introduced to Dion, aka Dionysus. I love his clear Jake the Lad feel; it's clear how everyone who knows him sees him as carefree, brash, all about pleasure and less about responsibility. Honestly, while reading this book, he was totally the life and fun of the book. More than once, he had me laughing, but you totally see a massively different side to him that he clearly is not used to.

Chelsea is our FMC. She has just moved to Arcane Cove and is restarting there. She comes across as someone who is put together and tightly wound, who struggles to let her hair down.

Getting into this book was pretty easy, honestly. The writing style is smooth and has a great flow to it, covering dual POVs. There is a very clear storyline from start to end with a clear progression. I would say the speed of the story is fast due to the book not being huge, so some events have less weight and depth, and the reactions are shorter. Showing the events' effects on a character does not seem long enough or just seems too short overall. I would have loved a little more reaction from our FMC to one of these events.

That being said, this also means you are not stuck in a bind of misunderstanding or groaning about being stuck in a moment for too long; everything kept moving.

I loved the fun lightness of the book, the direction the book went in and the sprinkling of drama, but what this book had a lot of was spice. Clearly descriptive and fun spice! It was a little more on the vanilla side, and only one spice scene was a little more adventurous, but I love my warmer, fun spice when inside my cosy town monster romance books, so I was totally all in for it. It was clear and fitting and also did not totally take over the book.

I liked the ending, but I was surprised to feel that the ending was fun, yet it might have left a little open-ended part. So I am not sure if that will follow into the next book, but that really left me excited too.

Overall, a small-town monster romance hit for me!! Magic, wine and horns all the way, thank you very much

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