Last year I thoroughly enjoyed Hexed, the debut by Julia Tuffs which was billed as ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch meets Sex Education’ and was a very funny account of a fifteen-year-old girl discovering her family are all witches. Although it was a comedy it also had a serious message on the topical subject of everyday sexism in secondary school, here’s an excerpt of my original review: “Amazingly, when we get beyond the humorous aspects of Jessie Jones trying to get a handle on her clumsy magical skills Hexed has a powerful message which is uncannily similar to the current media stories of rape culture and sexism in British secondary schools. In fact, Hexed completely nails this subject to the wall and does it with some style and good humour whilst making revealing observations.” Although there was nothing wrong with Twice Hexed it does not develop its anti-sexism message and concentrates more on the comedy and friendship elements as Jessie gets herself in a series of scrapes when she starts year 11 and prepares for her GCSEs.

After being friendless for much of Hexed Jessie now has a solid group of friends around her and even has a boyfriend and the story revolves around what happens when a new girl (Sloane) joins the school and muscles into the friendship group and cracks appear. Part of the problem of Twice Hexed was the fact that it was so incredibly predictable, from page one it was obvious that Sloane was a witch and was dodgy. I was stunned by how quickly Jessie abandoned her friends and found herself under the thrall of Sloane which gave the novel the opportunity to explore how magic (and dark stuff) worked in slightly more detail. This was a very light and easy read with a fair share of funny moments as Jessie’s life descends into chaos when the influence of Sloan really kicks in. If there is to be a third novel in the series it needs to have slightly more kick otherwise repetition will set in very quickly. AGE RANGE 12+