An Amateur Witch's Guide to Murder
A Novel
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A wannabe witch tries to break a curse on a clueless client in this laugh-out-loud debut, for fans of queer romantic fantasy by T. J. Klune and Tamsyn Muir.
Mateo Borrero has 99 problems—and all of them hinge on his missing bruja mother and the demon she trapped inside his body.
Mateo's mother forbade him from ever using magic, but now that she’s gone, magic’s his only marketable skill, and he’d really like an exorcism—which costs money he doesn’t have. What’s the harm in making a quick buck by calling himself an Occult Specialist and chanting a few half-remembered spells in his crappy Spanish?
Enter Topher, a naive nepo baby with a curse that keeps killing people around him. Most importantly, he’s rich and too clueless to clock that Mateo—and his (absolutely-not-the-assistant) astral projecting best friend Ophelia—have never actually had a client before. Lifting Topher’s bad luck curse should be simple, but as luck would have it, nothing is simple, and Topher–who Mateo sort of, kind of likes–might be at the center of a deadly magical conspiracy.
To make matters worse, the more magic Mateo does, the stronger the demon inside him grows and the more he wants to eat people. But would caving to the urges of an ancient evil really be that bad if it helps him get a payday?
Legends and Lattes meets A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer in this hilarious and charming queer romantic fantasy readers won’t want to miss.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An air of dark whimsy pervades Valentin's thoroughly entertaining debut. In the five years since Mateo Borrero's less-than-maternal witch of a mother went missing, the 23-year-old has just been trying to get by; not helping matters is the fact that he's possessed by a demon. Working at a print shop barely pays the bills for him and his best friend and roommate, Ophelia De La Garza, who finds it hard to hold on to a job due to her partially involuntary powers of astral projection. Doing magic makes Mateo's demonic possession worse, but it's his best path to earning some fast cash, so he puts up an online ad offering his supernatural services. Enter the wealthy and endearingly naive Topher Nystrom, who hires Mateo to break the bad-luck curse that keeps killing the people around him. As Mateo and Ophelia dig into Topher's life and the magic that's affecting him, Mateo's situation grows worse and they discover things may be more connected than they thought. Valentin puts a light comedic twist on a gripping story filled with dark magic and murder, and a budding romance between Mateo and Topher adds to the fun. Fans of queer romantic fantasy and cozy horror will be delighted.