Not Your Crush’s Cauldron (Supernatural Singles #3) by April Asher review

Olive Maxwell much prefers teaching about the supernatural world to taking part in it and leaves the magical shenanigans to her two sisters―the Prima-Apparent and Bounty Hunter-In-Training. But after assigning her college students a project designed to nudge them outside their comfort zones, Olive realizes that she’s never once stepped a toe over her own…and it’s about time that changed. Her first trip into the unknown? Moving in with her long-time crush―and friend…tattooed, motorcycle-riding, and pleasantly pierced, Baxter Donovan.

Bax Donovan, Guardian Angel not-so-extraordinaire, has acquired so many black marks on his record it looked like a scantron sheet. He’s given one last chance to keep his Guardian wings intact, a high-profile Assignment he knows all too well. Olive is usually as low-risk as it got. Hell, she wrote the safety manual. But something landed her on the Guardian Affairs radar and his guess was it had something to do with the heart-pounding stunts she’s determined to check off her Dare I Docket list.

Keeping Olive out of trouble is about to be his toughest assignment yet, and not because he’s forced to shake the dust off his feathers and embrace his inner aerialist. He’s at real risk of shattering the only Guardian Angel Code of Conduct Rule he’s yet to Don’t fall in love with your Assignment. And he isn’t so sure that’s a bad thing.

If love didn’t play by the rules, why should they?

Not Your Crush’s Cauldron gets published February 13th, 2024!

DID NOT FINISH at page 75 (20%)

Is it me? Am I the problem?

Having read the first two books in the Supernatural Singles series, I was sure Not Your Crush’s Cauldron was going to be an easily enjoyed book. Returning to this world was sure to be fun, and I had already expressed my interest in reading Olive’s story!

Unfortunately, I started having problems with this book from the very first page.

Maybe I’ve changed. Maybe my tastes have shifted within the last few years and I just no longer enjoy these types of books. Because Not Your Crush’s Cauldron immediately opened up to the same “hilarious”, horny writing I was kind of expecting from this series… and I wasn’t here for it.

There’s something about friends to lovers that just makes me think that immediately being attracted to each other and so obviously wanting to have sex with the other person doesn’t fit the vibes of the story we’re trying to tell here. Despite the fact that Olive and Bax have been background characters in the first two books and we therefore vaguely know what to expect from them, the book immediately opening with Olive receiving a dildo from her sister and Bax needing to leave the room before she notices that he has a boner was not making me want to continue reading.

I was also confused by the humor in this book. Maybe I’m forgetting the writing style of the first two books, but the writing in this book carried that cringy, “boomer”-esque humor that felt like it would fit in better in a Facebook photo post with a Minion in the background. At one point, Olive reveals to her friends(/family) that she’s anxious about an important presentation coming up, to which everyone decides the best remedy is to crank up the music (in the middle of a bar) and dance to Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off.

We might as well slap a medication’s name over this scene and list possible side effects, because it felt exactly like one of those commercials.

The last thing that bothered me in this book was the setup to the plot/Olive’s personal conflict. Olive works as a teacher in a magical college, where she’s getting bullied by her fellow teachers for being boring and never stepping out of her comfort zone. While this is the push she needs to begin experimenting and finding new joy in her life, I’m also questioning everyone’s maturity and age in this book. We’re college-level teachers, and yet we’re still forming cliques and bullying our peers? Just a few chapters ago, we were describing a dildo in the shape of a tentacle, and now we’re falling back on overused teenage plots our characters should be past by this point in their lives?

I tried to stay with this book until the conflict was fully introduced and the beginning was past us, but at 75 pages in, I got to the beginning of a new chapter and realized I could not sit through another word of this book.

Not The Witch You Wed (Supernatural Singles #1) by April Asher | A Review

Magic-less witch Violet Maxwell wants nothing to do with alpha wolf shifter Lincoln Thorne—the man who broke her fragile, teenage heart. But when the two of them are forced by arcane Supernatural Laws to find mates, Violet and Lincoln agree to fake-date their way to a fake-mating in order to conjure themselves some time.
The joke’s on them. When old feelings make a reappearance—along with Violet’s magic—they both realize there’s nothing fake about their feelings. But there are old secrets and looming threats that could snatch away their happily ever after, again. One thing’s for sure: magic doesn’t make dating and love any easier.

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

I love a good fake-dating between enemies, so I was really excited to hop into this book and see the banter turn into love.

Except this book didn’t really give me the banter I wished for.

To be fair, there was a bit of banter in this story. But this was definitely more of a one-sided-feelings story than it was an enemies-to-lovers kind of story, which wasn’t exactly what I signed up for.

One thing I really liked about this story was how the author works with a world full of supernaturals in New York City. Rather than having a story where witches and werewolves are secret, April Asher instead creates a version of NYC where the supernaturals live in plain sight of humans. I always love books that take basic concepts like this and give them a little twist, so I enjoyed seeing this aspect in Not The Witch You Wed.

However, I didn’t like this book. It was a bit boring, with nothing really interesting happening, and most of the book was obvious to anyone who has read a story like this before. A few things seemed like they were only there for plot convenience, not really making sense, such as the main conflict dividing these two characters from true love.

I also was very surprised to find that this book wasn’t that spicy. For a book that jumpscared me on page 11 with the word “vibrator” and whose writing style and humor reminded me of The Brown Sisters trilogy by Talia Hibbert, the sex scene was just kinda “meh”.

I am so sorry for the people out there who think “werewolf” is a kind of spice all by itself, but it isn’t.

All in all, I was disappointed in this book. And, most unfortunately of all, I have an ARC copy of the sequel.

I hope I like Violet’s sister better than I like Violet.