31 Jul 2023

Review: ALL TOO FAMILIAR by Belinda White (Accidental Familiar #1)

ALL TOO FAMILIAR

Author: Belinda White

Series: Accidental Familiar #1
Source: Audible Plus
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Publication Date: July 31, 2019

Overall Rating:
Diversity Rating:
Representation: N/A

Summary:

A familiar is a life-long companion. Choose wisely.

It's hard being the youngest in a family of witches known for their power. It's even harder when that magical power has all but passed you by.

Still, I was doing okay for myself. I like to think I was proving to the rest of my family that magic wasn't a requirement to living.

Then Aunt Opal was accused of murder. Wouldn't you know it would happen right when everyone else in the family but me was out of town.

Now it's up to me to prove her innocence, and a little magic could go a long way in helping me do that. My aunt's been after me to get a familiar for quite a while now. They are known for helping a witch channel her power and even strengthen it.

So, want to or not, allergies or not, I did it. I went to an animal shelter and found my familiar. A cute little black kitty. The allergy medicine companies were going to love me.

But for some reason, this little guy didn't make me sneeze. Kind of weird, actually. Not that I was complaining.

I just really wish I'd known more about him before I did the binding spell…

Purchase:

Amazon | Chapters

Content Warning: pet allergies, death, murder (not graphic), use of a taser

I thought this was really cute and a good introduction to this series! I would have liked a bit more focus on the mystery portion and less on the romance aspects. There is a delicate balance in these types of cozy mysteries of the need to have the romance be cozy and the mysteries be interesting and I think this doesn't quite have that balance yet.

I thought it was interesting that the main character wasn't super powerful and that the mystery wasn't just waved away with magic. There was a slow development, but I liked that she is able to play to her strengths and using a tazer. I hope the next book has a bit more character development, especially for the side characters that we barely got introduced to.

This is also a very White, Straight book. That doesn't necessarily make it bad, but it does have the tropes of cops/investigators being "good guys" that you can "trust" when we know that isn't the case. Take that, and this genre, with a grain of salt when reading since one of the love interests is usually a cop.

I am interested in reading the rest of these, so we'll see how far into the series I get!