An Intrigue of Witches - Esme Addison
Sidney Taylor is let go from her post at the Smithsonian, rather mysteriously. She returns home to her grandmother's house where she once worked as a history reenactor at a local museum. The mysterious museum director offers a huge sum of money to look for a missing artifact, enough to get her out of her current debt. But why does he insist this artifact has to be uncovered asap. The story has historical, and ancient connections mixed up with a future world of AI and virtual reality. A world that Sidney and her colleagues and family don't want to be part of and must race to fine the artifact before her enemies do in order to prevent this takeover..

I enjoyed the magical and historical elements but found the political AI world unnecessary and a bit superfluous. It was not for me anything like A Discovery of Witches which I loved.

Did not finish book. Stopped at 35%.
This is gonna have a lot of spoilers and just random thoughts i had throughout this book. I do feel like i could have finished this book but honestly it annoyed me so much that my intrigue into how it all turned out was not strong enough.

Now firstly when we are first introduced to our fmc omg she is so fucking annoying and the whole woe is me omg im in so much credit card debt because my parents are millionaires and wouldnt give me money but i had to live in the best neighbourhood and have the nicest clothes so im in debt is so crazy like wtf?!?

Also the plot has way too much going on, at the start i was like ok this is kinda cool we’re gonna have a mix of sci-fi and fantasy with this ultra modern world where vr is gonna take over and theres witches… well i got to 35% and shock surprise no witches yet. Its literally in the title how do we have no witches??

However i did enjoy that the author used actual people from history and as someone who doesnt really read historical fantasy i really enjoyed it.

The main reason i dnf’ed this book is because i just got the biggest info dumping of the randomest shit about this royal bloodline and a character starts saying shit like slave owners were having sex with their slaves because they wanted to continue the bloodline that ran through the slaves dna? like firstly how would they even know who had the royal blood and who didnt and then the whole convoluted story about this specific bloodline is supposed to rule the world and the ‘opposition’ has been trying to take them down for centuries is so far fetched its crazy.

An Intrigue of Witches is a relatively fast paced read featuring secret societies with their own agendas. I really appreciated how quick of a read this was. It’s worth noting, though, that there’s a lot of information presented in the relatively short book. However, because it’s on the shorter side, there wasn’t a lot of delving in to the details of the information presented. For the majority of the story it stays relatively at the surface level. Given that it’s the first book in the series, I’m hoping that means we’ll get more of a deep dive in future book(s). Unfortunately, I struggled with connecting to many of the characters. I’m hoping that will also change with future books as we spend more time with them. I really loved the whole premise of the book between the secret societies and puzzles hidden throughout history. The plot also featured enough tension from the competing societies and enough twists to keep me thoroughly engaged. If you enjoy magic mixed with history or the movie National Treasure, this book may be perfect for you.

What a great new creative mystery! I love the mix of historical fiction, fantasy fiction, and science fiction. I loved the storyline from start to finish. I also love how the main character started off skeptical and became more aware of the situation as the story progresses. I also like that clearly, there will be a second book, but most of the mysteries started in this book is cleared up by the end for the reader.

Seeing descriptions of this book from the author didn’t prepare me for the scope of this book. An Intrigue of witches really does combine mystery, science fiction, fantasy, legend and a treasure hunt. I am quite in awe of how the elements roll together to form a whole that is fascinating. It felt like the history was real. I really want some of the elements to be real.
I don’t want to go into details because this was such an experience to watch it unfold in my imagination that I don’t want to take the discovery experience from anyone else.
This is different from what this author has previously written and yet not completely. She is skillful in bringing legends or myths to life. Making the reader want them to be real because it would be so cool if they were real.
I highly recommend An Intrigue of Witches. Just know you’ll need to be up for an unusual experience.
Thanks to Netgalley and Severn House for the opportunity to read this book.

Cozy fantasy meets history and you have this story. I found the plot to have dense information that was a tad overload. For this being a series, it leaves me wondering how this can continue.

When you market a book as "National Treasure" meets "A Discovery of Witches," I go in with certain expectations. I expect secret societies, treasure hunting, and witches. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am. What I’m not expecting is all of the above plus time travel, AI, virtual reality, secret societies, witches, ancient Egypt, and the American Civil War.
This is a relatively short book for so much plot. Clocking in at less than three hundred pages, I felt at times like I was struggling to bite into an overstuffed sandwich. I expected thrills, chills, suspense, and maybe even a dash of dark academia, and what I got was something more akin to a sci-fi paranormal mystery conspiracy romp. Admittedly, this could be the fault of the marketing, but I just felt confused and disappointed by the millions of different directions the book seemed to want to go in.
More than the plot itself, the writing here is just… well, there’s no other way of putting it, so I’ll be blunt: it’s bad. The pacing is clunky, the verbs awkward switch tenses mid-paragraph, and the author relies so heavily on telling instead of showing that I times I felt condescended to. This is marketed as an adult mystery, and our protagonist is a grownass woman, so the abundance of over explaining felt incredibly irritating. This is a book where we’re often told how to feel about events which, readers of this blog will note, is a particular pet peeve of mine.
Speaking of our protagonist — what a disappointment. Sidney Taylor is a thirtysomething American history professor, but you wouldn’t know it from her juvenile reactions. At times, I felt like I was reading about a college student or someone in their early twenties. Her internal monologue was grating and meandering, and the numerous tangents and exposition dumps didn’t add anything to the book besides making me feel bored and irritated. Maybe I’m being too harsh, here, and I fully admit that, but something about this book just grated on me.
It’s a strange thing to say about such a short book, but I really feel this needs another heavy round of edits. The overstuffed plot, uninteresting characters, and clunky writing style made this a slog to get through. Rarely has it ever taken me this long to polish off 288 pages.

This book has a little bit of everything in it. It's a mix of multiple genres. The title alone drew me in. Plus I love scholarly fiction. I like reading books where the main character is highly educated. I find them relatable. How could you not love someone who works at the Smithsonian? It's hard to discuss this book without giving away spoilers. You reach a point where you can't put the book down because you need to find out who all is witches. I love when you aren’t quite sure who the bad guys are. It makes for a very intriguing read when you don’t know who to trust. I’m excited to read the next book in the series.

Conspiracy theories, history, secret societies, and magic all play major roles in this mystery, and the author does a great job at working them all together to make sense.

I especially like that this story features people of color, and asks us to question the history we've all been taught in school.

Sidney, an accomplished historian, suddenly finds herself without a job. Coincidentally, she receives an anonymous invitation to find a lost object (her specialty - finding historic objects) in her hometown, where her grandmother still lives. Throughout the story, Sidney reconnects with people from her past, in more ways than one! As she does, she discovers that not everything is as it seems. She begins to uncover a dangerous political plot, and this puts her life in danger. Yet she still pushes forward!

Well written and enjoyable read!

-secret societies
-diversity
-powerful fmc
-coming into powers story
-mystery 👀

I loved the colonial history mixed with magic and Witchery!
I identified with the heroine Sidney I not only love history but I teach it.
I loved tagging along as Sidney tracked down clues, deciphered codes and found out more about her heritage.
I did get lost when the dialogue turned to physics but I just focused on the historical aspects.
My favorite character was Fiona because she was a spirited older woman who took everything in stride.
This book was like a cross between National Treasure and Witches of Eastwick.
The VR stuff was nerve wracking because of the insidious control behind it.
I hope there’s another book in the series because I need to know if the villains are stopped. Plus I want to see Gabe the babe and see if anything more develops between he and the historian!

If there's one way to get me interested in a book, saying it's a combination of A Discovery of Witches and National Treasure is it!

Sidney Taylor is a professor of American history who was recently laid off. She receives a mysterious invitation to hunt for an archeological treasure back in her old college town. Once there, she receives a debt-ending opportunity from the local museum director to find a missing artifact. From there, the story takes the reader on a genre-bending ride through cozy mystery, historical fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, and adventure.

The premise of the story truly drew me in, however, I got a bit lost in the narrative. There is a lot to digest in this book! There are quite a few plot lines, and a few that were left unresolved, as if they had been forgotten. Keeping the facts and plotline straight did take me out of my suspension of disbelief a bit. The added sci-fi element really threw me for a loop, but not in a good way. I believe this will be a series; I'm hoping some of the plot holes that were left hanging will be ironed out in the next novel.

Ultimately, if you're a fan of Dan Brown, like I am, you will enjoy the historical elements of this novel. It was a fun read.

Thank you NetGalley & the publisher for allowing me to read and review this ARC. All thoughts and opinions within this review are my own.

I really enjoyed this book! It has witches, clues, problem solving, treasure hunts, mysteries. It has a lot going on as other reviews mentioned but that wasn’t a bad thing for me!

This book felt like an adventure, just as I was hoping. While most of the book was interesting it did drag on a bit. Otherwise, it was a lot of fun to read and I would recommend giving it a try. Love to hear what history fans thought of it. Waited to read the reviews, but headed there now.

This is a deeply cosy mystery perfect for any lovers of history! Unfortunately, the story didn't quite hit the mark for me, but this is purely due to my preference. I do love a good mystery and any witchy stories but for the length of the book, I found there to be too much information to keep up with and at times I wasn't sure what was going on. It was quite slow-paced as well, but did wrap up well at the end.

Thank you so much for the advance copy!

I really enjoyed this story and was sad for it to end...I would love to read more! I loved the concept of Esme Addison's story and it's ties between the present, world history going back centuries and paranormal possibilities. For Sydney to find out about it and how her family is connected to it was very interesting to read. If there's going to be any sequels, I will definitely read them.

I think this book struggled a little with finding its way.
The first part was a fairly plain story which then leaned toward a socio-political-historical-conspiracy-science-fiction type book but landed with a very heavy thud in the fantasy genre.
I felt like there was an overload of information; too many historical stories and myths and legends thrown together creating a hurricane of confusion.

Unimportant nuggets of narrative were expanded upon unnecessarily. For example, I’m not sure we needed to know why Sidney had keys as an admin member and her badge worked in the back entrance if this is not going to later become apparent as a key piece of information. The author could have used the word count to explain some of the more complicated theories and accounts.
Added to this the bigger events come out of the blue and then seem to be thrown into everyday conversation like they’re not sensational events?
There were descriptions of people and objects aplenty but the stone, which is a main point of the story, was just described as… a stone!

In fairness, fantasy is not usually my chosen genre but I think the last third of the book certainly became more interesting with lots of exciting occurrences and revelations. I think if it was for these 100 pages I would have had to do something I hate and award 1 star and then banish the book from my brain.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC

Ugh books like this make me guilty. I might even come back to it and try one more time in the future. I started this book 3 times and I couldn't make myself finish it. It just didn't hook me. I'm not fully quitting on it yet and I'm going to hold off on a goodreads review until I get through it, because I could change my mind yet. For now... 1 star for the DNF.

Fantasy and
History and
Mystery—oh my!

This is one complex story. For the most part, it works.

While I had difficulty believing how such a smart protagonist could make so many poor choices and mistakes, I enjoyed this novel, especially
the parts pertaining to mysteries.

I could see myself reading more of this series, should it become one.

To be published May 7, 2024
by Severn House Publishers

I enjoyed this book it has found family, political intrigue,sprinkles of magic and mystery/treasure hunting plot it was a fun and engaging read