Best-selling YA author Melissa de la Cruz (known for her popular Blue Bloods series) tries her hand at adult fiction in a spellbinding new novel. The first in a planned series, Witches of East End explores modern-day witchcraft as practiced by the Beauchamp family.
The Beauchamp women of North Hampton are immortal witches who endured the Salem Witch Trial and have now been forbidden (in modern times) to practice any magic. There is Joanna Beauchamp—the matriarch of the family—a healer who can raise the dead; her eldest daughter Ingrid, a reserved librarian who is able to cure ailments such as infertility; and then there’s Joanna’s youngest daughter Freya, a flirtatious bartender known to conjure up love potions, who is finally ready to settle down with one of the mysterious Gardiner brothers.
Unable to deny their true nature, the Beauchamp women break the ban on magic until mysterious things begin to occur in their town. Dead birds appear on the shore, an illness plagues the local children and an unidentifiable toxic sludge creeps out from the ocean. It is only when a young girl goes missing that the Beauchamps realize their practicing magic has consequences, and that a dark black magic is working violently against them.
De la Cruz’s tale radiates with passionate love affairs, making this title one steamy summer read. While at times it borders on almost too fantastical (was there really a need for zombies, when one already has witches and vampires?), Witches of East End will entertain readers, both young adult and adult, who will fall under the spell of de la Cruz and the Beauchamp women.
