Overall I did enjoy this book, the story perfectly illustrated the real experiences and trials that queer people face and have faced over the last few centuries, as well as being a beautiful and realistic depiction of how grief presents in different people. We get to follow Jamie on her journey of trying to reconnect and repair her relationship with her mother after their mutual loss drives them apart, using witchcraft as the glue. I enjoyed this take on modern witchcraft, and the overall narrative that we get back what we put into the world and our intentions matter. I also very much enjoyed the plotline of Jamie's thesis, it felt like we were at times in a detective novel and I was excited to see her make her discoveries.

The only downsides for me were that there were some parts of the writing that felt a little unpolished, for example there were a couple of times new characters were introduced in a way that sounded like a social media bio rather than an actual description. I also found the pacing to be a bit lopsided. It felt like the first 3/4 of the book moved very slowly and then the last section was very rushed with a million things all happening at once.

Despite these issues, I think this book is still a great read and would recommend it to people.

Lessons in Magic and Disaster is a novel about a trans witch who teaches her mother magic, only to find that magic might not always be the answer. Jamie is a trans woman, graduate student, and a witch, and she wants to do something to get her mother, Serena, back out into the world, as Serena's been hiding away since the death of her wife. Jamie teaches her mother the magic she's been using for years, all about exchanging something for what you most want, but Serena finds this magic a powerful force, and suddenly all elements of Jamie's life are affected: her relationship with her mother, her marriage to Ro, her reputation at the college she works at.

I was drawn to this novel as I wanted to read a book by Charlie Jane Anders, and even though I'm not a huge fantasy person unless the fantasy is combined with more literary or general fiction, the selling point of the book being about a trans woman witch was enough for me to give it a go. Conveniently for me, Lessons in Magic and Disaster is not just a story about magic, and it is the kind of fantasy that is set in the real world except a few people can do magic, which is what I was hoping for.

The book is told both in the present day from Jamie's perspective, and also in the past telling the story of her mothers, Serena and Mae. The present day narrative explores the magic side, and also Jamie's research into a (fictional) eighteenth century novel and what it says about the real life historical women involved in it, whilst the story of Jamie's mothers is more around queer community, sacrifice, and what makes a relationship. Sometimes this structure, particularly the chunks from the fictional eighteenth century novel and a fairytale story within its narrative, makes the book feel a bit slow-going, as it takes a while to get to the next bit of a plotline. However, the layered approach allows there to be a lot of things in conversation with each other.

The characters are flawed and messy, though I think some of the moral dilemmas and questions could've been more deeply explored as there's some interesting stuff around trust and sacrifice and coping with things that gets reduced to characters taking in a "therapy-speak" style. There's an online abuse/cancel culture plotline that again doesn't quite get enough space to have nuance, and Jamie's academic work (both research and her teaching/position at the college) always felt a bit pushed to the side even though there were so many chunks of the fake novel. I did like a lot of the character relationships, including Jamie and Ro's marriage that hits tension when Ro finds out about the magic, and what we see of Jamie's relationship with her dead mother, Mae.

Overall, I like how ambitious this novel is in combining the magic side with a tale of eighteenth century writer women and a look at queer community, whilst at its heart, having a story about a trans women and her relationships with other people in her life. At times I found it a bit slow and frustrating, but I found the ending powerful in terms of the character relationships and I think this book will be great for fans of queer fantasy with a literary edge.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc of Lessons in Magic and Disaster. I'm rating it 2.5 stars.

***Review Summary:***
This book is part historical novel and part lit fic with a small dash of fantasy. Its main focus is on exploring queer history, LGBTQphobia, cancel culture and trolling, grief, and family bonds, and it does so across three timelines: modern-day USA, shown through the eyes of Jamie; the US in the '90s and '00s, shown through the eyes of Jamie's mother, Serena; and eighteenth-century England, which is shown in a series of letters and stories between various women.

This book is hard to review because it had some five-star moments but also a lot of two-star moments. It shines when it explores queer history and experiences of grief, and by and large, the plot is interesting. However, the beginning was rough, the dialogue and character interactions often took me completely out of the story, and the book's at times weird about race and cancel culture. There were also some minor things about the magic system that didn't make a lot of sense given the setting.

The writing itself verges from bad to beautiful. There were a couple of paragraphs that I highlighted because they were so poetic and impactful. But they were the exception, not the rule.

***In More Detail:***
As I said, there are several things that I like about this book. There's a lot of queer history and identities. There's also a big focus on eighteenth-century literature, which is always fun. And, I appreciate the way the three timelines weave together, focusing on some of the same themes while also having their own flavour. They enhance the other storylines without getting repetitive.

At the same time, I had a lot of issues, and those are probably worth breaking down one by one.

- ***Character Interactions and Dialogue***
This book is heavy on characters using academic, politically-informed, and therapy-informed dialogue (which is ironic, because the book also criticises people on multiple occasions for things like "rote activist phrases"). I often found myself thinking "this is too formulaic; people don't speak to each like that in real life".

But even leaving that to one side, the characters just come out with ridiculous statements. Take our villain Greg, who tells Jamie, "You're a good teacher, and I hope you stick with it, even though you're a degenerate groomer." Who would ever think or say something like that? That's such a ridiculous contradiction.

Or there's Ro, who when Jamie's desperately trying to find her mother before [spoiler and content warning]<spoiler>her mother finishes killing herself</spoiler>, goes on a tangent about their economics dissertation before telling Jamie "I will support whatever you decide. Like, if you just want to get pancakes, and deal with your mother later." <spoiler>Like, after Jamie's mother's already dead?</spoiler>

Even with all the therapy-informed dialogue, these characters often treat each other in a way that's really unhealthy. One example is when the narrative tells us that Jamie needs to provide unconditional love to her mother, promising that no matter what she does, Jamie will love her, even though <spoiler>Jamie's mother nearly killed Ro</spoiler>. 

- ***Cancel Culture and Trolling***
A recurring theme in the book is characters' lives being ruined through cancel culture and online pile-ons leading to them losing their jobs, friendships, and social standing. In the end, it turns out that on all occasions this happened due to the characters being queer or left-wing, but for the majority of the book, we're encouraged to assume that a major character was cancelled for saying something problematic and likely prejudiced. The actual incident is kept a mystery while the book foreshadows that Serena was "torn apart by her friends" on Twitter. It tells us that she lost not only her job but a lot of her friends after being recorded "talking shit, the sort of stuff you could take out of context". For context, Serena is queer and most of her friends seemed to be left-wing and queer — so why did she lose so many friends for what turned out to be <spoiler>some pretty basic, feminism 101 comments about sex work</spoiler>?

There's a lot you can explore when it comes to online pile-ons, conservatives piling pressure on queer and trans people's employers, and the fear of saying the wrong thing. But this weird "Gotcha!" just feels like a cheap way to handle it.

- ***Race***
The book reads as hyper-aware of race even though it's not the main focus.

The main characters all seem to be white, but minor characters are diverse. However, it really stuck out to me that the book uses the topic of race and racism to show us that our white protagonist Jamie is a good person. It tells us that the "queer and BIPOC students...always seem to be picking up what Jamie's putting down", that white kids (no other descriptors) went out of their way to bully Jamie at school for not fitting in, and one of two main things we learn about her work teaching is that three white students submit stories "that are racist and/or full of cultural appropriation...It falls to Jamie to lead the class...in a discussion of whether this is Your Story To Tell." Which Jamie isn't wrong about, but the only times racism shows up in a book shouldn't be to demonstrate that a character is a good person. To use the activist language of the novel itself, it feels like the book is co-opting racism to present Jamie as a victim, even though Jamie is herself white. (There's also the moment when Serena thinks describes a character in passing as "Anita, who obsessed about antidiscrimination lawsuits"; I'm not sure if Anita is meant to be Latina, but it would be disappointingly ironic if she is, given that the book regularly brings up microaggressions against queer characters.)

I also wish books would stop introducing a long list of characters, each with their racial identity, unless they're the main white characters who go undescribed. It's not great when I immediately know the race of the majority of the secondary characters, even when at times that's the only thing I know about them, but I'm there deducing that the main characters are white because of things the book saying that they one of them is receiving microaggressions for being a fat lesbian (and presumably, if she weren't white, the book would say something like "fat lesbian of colour").

- ***The Magic System***
The magic system is an example of a pretty widespread element of modern witchcraft. However, for some reason, these characters use Discord to arrange meet-ups but have to invent these very basic magical practices and believe that Jamie is the only person to teach another person witchcraft. To be honest, I'd have been fine with it had they not been using Discord. But since they were, I just found myself thinking that they could have saved themselves a lot of time if they'd also thought to use Google or Reddit. They also have those on their phone, right?

Also, it's kind of disappointing that this magic system involves littering in natural places, with the characters often leaving man-made objects that won't degrade behind. I get the theory behind the magic system, but it's a shame that they didn't then find a way to not contribute to the destruction of the planet. 

But other than these two minor points, I liked the magical elements. I'd definitely consider the book to have more elements of historical fiction than fantasy, but the magic system was enjoyable.

- ***Other Issues***
I just didn't think the prose was consistently good. Some of it was delightful; a lot of it was bad. This was especially noticeable at the beginning of the story, when the book relied on telling us paragraphs (or even pages!) of backstory instead of showing us who a character is through their interactions. But a lot of the time, the writing also felt like it belonged more in the group chat/Discord channel rather than in published fiction. And there's regular use of cultural references that are only relevant to a narrow window of time, which left me wondering things like "wait, what meme is that? and without knowing what the meme is... what is this paragraph meant to say about this character/situation?"

There were also occasional small plot holes, but they were minor.

I definitely enjoyed this for the most part, though I have some mixed feelings.

I really enjoyed the academia side of this. Though the letters and book Jamie is researching are fictional, the people she's talking about are not, and you can feel that in the pages. I really felt like we were learning along side Jamie and that felt really fun. Sometimes novels featuring academia can get a bit dense or philosophical, and whilst this had moments of that, I felt like I understand Jamie's passion. I also really enjoyed the queer representation. Jamie is a trans woman married to a non binary person and raised by a lesbian couple. I loved the way the flashbacks were handled in terms of purposefully not misgendering or dead naming Jamie. It felt very refreshing and showed that it's easy to do that, even if it's just blanking out a dead name. I think more authors should pay attention to that approach.

I think where this book lost me slightly is the pacing. It's a very slow moving meandering book. This does suit the fall/autumn vibes of the book, but it does mean there's not a lot of action. It took me much longer to read a book of this length than it normally would have done. I also felt slightly disconnected to the characters at times. Especially when it came to Jamie's relationship with her spouse Ro, who I felt ended up being quite judgmental.

however, overall, i enjoyed the book and i think it's an interesting take on the subject of dark academia and magic.