I really wish I'd read the reviews before diving into this one. I would have sworn that the author was male based on the way this female protagonist is written, but apparently the author is a "loud and proud Essex girl" which is fair enough; my family is from Essex so I'm well aware of the stereotype and applaud any woman who aims to beat it. However, the author doesn't seem to have a clue whether she's actually trying to prove the stereotype right or wrong. On the one hand, she introduces a really interesting hypothesis about the hysteria of witches gradually becoming the modern-day stereotype of 'Essex Girls' (a quick google shows that the author has published an opinion piece on this). However, it isn't the female protagonist that introduces this - it's a male character. It's a male character that is portrayed as being the intellectual one while the protagonist is the out of her depth dimwit.

And it only gets worse from there. As soon as she meets this man, who is, of course, gorgeous she's talking about her breasts and how a girl "always" needs a generous amount of bounce. Umm, what??? Then begins the constant thoughts of her jumping into bed with him. This all before page 124.

I'm sure there's probably a terrible sex scene at some point, and I was prepared to skip over it because the plot intrigued me. What I couldn't overlook was the protagonist's blatant bigotism. The protagonist is a Benefits Fraud Officer who delights in hunting down people receiving benefits and 'catching them in the act' because, of course, everyone on benefits is just scheming the government in some way. The way the protagonist's comments come across leaves me in no doubt of the author's political persuasion put it that way.

The final straw came on page 124 when snide remarks were made about an old woman, a total stranger, which the protagonist and her intellectual companion approached as part of their investigation. There was absolutely zero reason for the following description other than being callous:

" [...] although I had a hunch that she had been cursed with the kind of face that probably looked old in her teens. "

And let's not forget the follow up judgemental comment: "We’d interrupted her enjoying a rare pleasure: the thin, white book in her hand could have been a Mills & Boon. Or something that was fifty shades more fruity."

The author had already made a point of referring to the couple as "Enjoying their baby-boomer retirement, sucking the life out of the NHS and the government pension pots".

Yep. After all that I decided that as interesting as the plot was, I didn't have the stomach for more of the judgemental bollocks. I can get enough of that IRL, I don't need it in something I read for pleasure. ( )

Nice premise that isn't delivered upon. The book is oddly repetitive and slowly paced, and the will they, won't they-dynamic that feels as if it's supposed to drive a lot of the tension is juvenile and soulless, with no real chemistry between the characters (petty bickering is not the same as witty repartee).

Also, the main character's motivations are unclear and muddled: she repeatedly states that she doesn't belive in magic, but seems to have no problem with discussing the ramification of curses and hauntings as a matter of facts

The end result is something of a mess. Best avoided. ( )

I wanted to like this more than I did, but I just didn’t fall in love with the characters. Also, a little too many cringy pre-romantic moments, and the magic wasn’t compelling to me. It could very well take off in the next book as the magical system is revealed, but not quite my cup of tea. ( )

Both the titles and the covers of these books grabbed me, and as they were part of a 40% off sale, and I've been looking for new mystery series, I couldn't resist grabbing #'s 1 and 2.

I'm glad I did, although book 1 and I got off to a rocky start, when cracking it open the other night in bed, I read the prologue, featuring a comatose little boy suddenly 'waking up' speaking in Early English and rising up out of bed, floating in the crucifix position. NOT what I want to read about right before turning out the lights and going to bed, thanks.

Fortunately, none of the rest of the book is nearly as scary as the prologue. Spooky fun, yes, a tad creepy at times, but mostly fun. Rosie has inherited her estranged grandfather's Essex Witch Museum, which she plans on selling as soon as possible. Except while she's there a plea for help comes along that she can't refuse, and she and the curator, Sam (cue romantic tension) find themselves on a race to locate the remains of the original Essex Witch.

It's a good story - an excellent story. My only beefs with it were the slightly forced tone of the will-they-won't-they romantic tension, and Rosie's character, to a certain degree. The former is just personal taste, but the latter is, I think, a lack of micro-cultural understanding. Rosie is a strong, very intelligent and independent woman, but has a chip on her shoulder about being an Essex girl - and I don't know what that means. As the book progressed I got the feeling it's sort of like an American redneck, but my lack of confidence meant Rosie came across paranoid, or at least carrying an aggressive inferiority complex.

Possibly related, her internal dialogue's habit of noting every time a man looked at her breasts/body got super tedious, super fast. Yes, men look at women's bits; sometimes they are so distracted by them they lose sight of the fact women have faces. Yes, it's tiresome, Yes, it's deplorable. Don't care. Don't want to hear about it in my murder mystery, it's beyond irrelevant and lent a rather shallow tone to an MC that wasn't.

Note though that these were minor annoyances; if I understood the Essex thing better, I'm guessing they would have lent authenticity to her character, and her accounting of leers received didn't happen more than 2 or 3 times, and it's a personal tic. The majority of the story was, as I said, excellent: fast-paced, well plotted, and my favorite literary device: based on the history of a real woman tried and hung for witchcraft, Ursula Kemp. In the acknowledgements, the author outlines at what point the fiction diverges from the reality, and both make for compelling storytelling. Also, people throughout history have been appalling. Truly appalling.

I'm so glad I already have book 2 in hand, and I believe book 3 is scheduled for publication any day now, which means if I like Strange Sight as much as I enjoyed Strange Magic, I'll only have to wait as long as the postal service to find out what happens next. ( )

In "Strange Magic" Rosie Strange inherits the Essex Witch Musem from her estranged grandfather and finds herself involved in pulled into skullduggery involving violent occult practitioners, a race against time to save a young boy's life and a gruesome treasure hunt.

This is light, fast, often funny read that draws much of its humour and most of its originality from the fact that Rosie Strange is an Essex Girl from generations of Essex Girls.

Essex Girls were invented in the UK in the 1980s, a decade when much humour on television was thinly disguised misogyny and racism presented with an "only joking, luv" passive aggressive veneer. The basic premise was that Essex girls where dumb, blonde, working class and promiscuous eand therefore deserved be treated with disdain and abuse in the name of wholesome fun. This stereotype and even some of the alleged jokes survive to the present day.

Syd Moore, gives Rosie the working class background and estuary accent of the Essex girl. She also makes her smart, independent, irreverent, stubborn, curious, sexually liberated and brave. It becomes clear that Rosie is an archetype of generations of strong women from Essex and that those women explain the disproportionately large number of witches murdered in Essex during the various purges.

"Strange Magic" is gentle fun, easy on the ear but with a grit beneath the surface that lifted it into something distinctive.

I recommend the audiobook version because accents are an important part of the characterization. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear an example.

[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/340842100" params="color=#ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true" width="100%" height="300" iframe="true" /]

In the interview below, Syd Moore talks about the Essex Girl stereotype, its impact and how it got her started on writing this series.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM-v0KhYa8Y?rel=0&w=560&h=315] ( )