*Book source ~ A review copy was provided in exchange for an honest review.

Sorceress Ivie McKie is a Kindergarten teacher and, after a bad couple of experiences, has decided to retire from her short-lived foray into the arena of magic. This suits her fiancé, veterinarian Jackson Blake, quite well, but her back-from-the-dead father who wasn’t dead at all, but a dog then a cat, won’t let her just be happy. He’s determined to settle a debt with an archaic practice and he’ll do anything to make sure it happens.

I’m going to start off by saying I loved book 1 in this series, Suddenly Sorceress. It was quirky and funny and quite a fun adventure. Which makes my disappointment in Suddenly Spellbound all the more heartbreaking. Everything I loved in the first book is missing here. The book is well-written, but I can’t get past all of the shitty behavior. Ivie is a Class A moron. She trips along from disaster to disaster with not brain one in her head. Letting her dad rule her life is another thing that irritated me and it’s this daddy thing that leads me to the thing that pissed me off the most.

Ivie’s dad is the one with magic in the family. Because he’s been in animal form for so many years, Ivie makes excuse after excuse after excuse for him every time he does something weird or dangerous. But when he asks her to do a spell and lies about what kind of spell it is and she blindly agrees despite promising Jack she wouldn’t do any more magic, the result is her father and his “apprentice” giving Ivie a magical roofie and magically violating her. They took away her free will with magic (the roofie) and lied the entire fucking book about it. They used magic to manipulate her and even though Ivie knew something wasn’t right, she kept allowing her dad to do shit to her magically. I am so not ok with this. In fact, I almost just stopped right there, but decided I should hang in and see if Ivie rips her dad a new asshole about this shit. Nope. That is NOT what happens. Ivie continually lies to Jack about the shit that’s going on, completely disrespecting him and their relationship, all the while drooling over the “apprentice” all because of the magical roofie. On top of all of this, toward the end, there are more instances of Ivie being a total moron and it ends in a cliffhanger. I will not be reading any more in this series. I’m completely soured on the whole Ivie and Jack relationship now and I wash my hands of them. ( )

This was a cute book about a witch whose father casts a spell to get her and his new apprentice together, making things a bit awkward between her and her fiancé, Jack. The story was okay and moved along nicely. I just find cliff hangers not really to my liking. Ivie Mckie, a would-be kindergarten teacher and fiancée of Jackson Blake, a former magician, has sworn off magic because magic does strange things to her and usually gets her in some sort of absurd and difficult situation. However, her father, who has just returned to Ivie’s life, after years as the victim of a spell that turned him into a cat, butts into Ivie’s life, casting a spell to make her attracted to his new apprentice, Liam, and Liam, in turn, to Ivie. Things with her fiancé Jack soon go downhill after this happens. In this story, Ivie tries to figure out what is going on and to somehow rectify things, while ending up in outrageous situations because of her magic and sometimes her father. Generally, every time Ivie is involved in magic, regardless how or why, comical and strange things happen to her and her world. Thus, she has promised her fiancé Jack to stay away from magic, but still cannot help being drawn into it by her father or her want to do things correctly and the easier way.

I have not read the earlier book in the series, but this stand-alone still was interesting and fascinating. However, I found it difficult at times to accept Ivie as she is, because she easily lets herself get into some pretty crazy situations. Obviously, this allows for a lot of madcap humor while keeping the story lively. Still, I found some of the antics not to my liking and had to breeze through them quickly and suspend my hope for a more grounded main character. Ivie is a woman growing into herself and her magic side, while trying to just live her every-day life. The book is a quick read that will keep you chuckling and wondering what will happen to this witch next, as well as how she will cope with events and hopefully make them right again. I enjoyed the book, but not as much as I have others of a similar vein and storyline. Sometimes, as I said, Ivie was just too crazy and too gullible (and sucked in by people and events) for me. Still, I enjoyed reading the book as will readers who enjoy this sort of genre, and I will look for a follow-on as well as the other book in the series I missed. I received this from NetGalley to read and review. ( )