Customer Reviews

Wednesday Night Witches (Red Dress Ink Novels)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I picked this up with no grand ideas that this book would be anything more than a charming, light read that would entertain me. I wasn't expecting Jane Austen, Neil Gaiman, or even Dan Brown. I wanted fluffy romance and predictability. Sometimes, we really need some candy like these books. However, I found the narrative so distracting with the constant switch from first to third-person narrative to be a poorly formed creation. How could any editor worth her salt allow a writer to trip so badly? Why not just make the entire story third-person, allow the characters to grow through the lense of an outside narrator?
Poorly written.

Pour yourself a pink cosmopolitan, and curl up with this fun combination of chick lit with a supernatural twist!

Follow 3 friends as they each experience some crazy times. Eve is a Kindergarten teacher who has just moved to Broome Island, just off the coast of Maine, after an embarrassing break-up with her Lawyer boyfriend. Natasha is a struggling artist, searching for appreciation and acceptance of her art. Kim is a cook with a witchy heritage, and a troubled past. These three friends come together to share their misery, and toast to their friendship -- eventually becoming a tightly bonded group, they dubbed themselves the "Wednesday Night Witches" after they decide to meet for drinks every Wednesday night. However, trouble gets stirred up after these three "witches" find a mysterious bottle of liquour in the basment, and use it to toast each other and make a wish. When the wishes start coming true, the real fun begins...

This book is just a lot of fun. I love all the magical and witchy aspects of it. It takes a traditional chick lit story, and turns it into something new and exciting. More and more we are seeing supernatural chick lit novels introduced into this particular genre, and most of them are really entertaining. "Wednesday Night Witches" is no exception.

The characters are each unique and fun, and I think most people will be able to find something relatable about each of them, whether it's relating to Eve's romantic pursuits, and her desire to prove herself through her career -- or maybe relating to Natasha's frustration with her art, and her desire to be appreciated for her talents (in addition to finally attracting a man). Or, perhaps you will relate more to Kim, and her lonliness, and desire to overcome her past difficulties, and have a child of her very own. One of the things I liked about this book was that although (as usual with chick lit) a large emphasis is given to these women's romantic lives (all three want to find the man of their dreams, of course), they are also more indepth characters, and have other dreams, pursuits, and wishes that have nothing to do with snagging a man!

Bottom line, this is an easy read, and a great book for a lazy afternoon.

After a fight with her rich, live in boyfried, eve crenshaw hops on a plane to stay in maine with her college room mate Natasha. Eve assumes her BF will come to his senses and beg her to come home, but instead he calls her to ask where to send her things. So eve is stuck in Maine and has only Natasha and a new fried Kim to lean on. The 3 dub themselves "The wendesday night witches" and of couse end up unleashing an evil spirit (by accident, oops!). Their wishes start coming true, but on the island they live things start going wrong.
The main problem I had with this book is that it was too predictable. There were no suprises in this book. Also the ending is very rushed, they wrap it up in only a few pages. The story itself is a light, easy read, but there isn't much substance.

This book is terrible from beginning to end. The story line is something that I would have read in those "Sweet Sixteen" books 20 years ago. The spelling, punctuation and grammar made me wonder if this book was even edited. A waste of money and time. The worst book I have ever read.

One more thing. The author's name in large bold font on every other page is annoying.

Maybe it's because one of the main characters in this book came looking to rent the bottom half of my house here in Maine recently (she's the basis, at least, for one of the main characters).

Or maybe it's because I taught elementary school for a few years, and another of the main characters is the funniest kindergarten teacher I've ever had the pleasure of meeting up with in a novel.

Or maybe this is just a darn good book.

All I know is, I loved it.

Luanne, the woman who came to look at the bottom half of my house grew up on an island off the coast of Maine (which is where this novel takes place). A couple of centuries ago, her great, great, great etc. grandmother was hung there as a witch. Luanne edits for Lee Nichols, the book's author, and Lee decided to do a novel (this one) about Luanne's life -- and the life of her unlucky grandmother.

I even keep thinking I'm going to read this book on tape and donate copies to my local library.

I think the writing is great, and the humor was the gut-level kind that makes involuntary noises bubble out of your mouth when you least expect it.

Another thing I really vibrated with was the way the author got the three main characters 'right.' One was a Maine native whose family had lived in the state for generations, the second was what Mainers call a 'summer person' (spent summers here and winters elsewhere), and the third was a New York City woman completely unschooled in the wily ways of the true Mainer.

As someone who's lived in Maine for 25 years, it was really interesting to see how Lee painted the personality and character differences among the three women.

The only reason I'm giving the book 4 stars instead of 5 is I I don't think Lee has the witchcraft part of it totally right. Although this might be unfair to her and her book both, since it's no fault of hers if she doesn't understand what many today consider "true" witchcraft (or wicca).

Anyway, the evil power in the book emanates from deep inside the earth, and it is my understanding that most wiccans today believe that the earth is Mother Earth and actually the antithesis of evil.

Anyway, small point, really, considering all that this book offers: LOL humor, `good' writing, great local color, and fantastically fun fantasy.

On the other hand, if you're in the mood for some heavier stuff about female supernatural power, I'd recommend
Switching to Goddess: Humanity's Ticket to the Future.

Predominantly chick lit with a tiny bit of witchery thrown in, this story starts off following Eve, a Manhattan kindergarten teacher with a boyfriend so overwhelmingly obnoxious that you can't wait for her to shake him off and head to the backwoods of Maine to cry on the paint-spattered shoulder of her best friend, starving artist Natasha. Add to this Natasha's ex sister-in-law, Kim, who is still in love with her ex-husband and regretful that they allowed themselves to be torn apart over Kim's miscarriage, and you have a nice trinity of young, seemingly luckless gals who just need a little shove in the right direction, and maybe a little magic to boot. On a proverbial dark and stormy night, the girls gather at one of their homes to drown their sorrows and make tipsy wishes via a mysterious bottle of liquor from Kim's ancestral stores - those ancestors, of course, being witches. None of them remember a thing the next morning, but just put that down to it being one hell of a bottle of wine. Soon, however, their wishes begin to come true in ways they never imagined possible, yet naturally there's another side to the coin in that something malicious is growing and gaining strength deep in the roots of the island.

It was narrated in a way I've seldom seen before, in that Eve's narration was all in the "I" first person and the others were traditional third person. I thought it was interesting the way these two styles were put together, being more accustomed to an author picking one method and sticking to it. It melded fairly seamlessly, I thought.

This is very much a chick lit book and the occult aspect - which is what I got it for - is just a sidebar. Truthfully, had that element not been present I probably wouldn't have enjoyed the story at all because I don't care for chick lit as a general rule. There were also times I thought the author was trying a bit too hard to be clever and cute with her dialogue, and it's true that dialogue is the strong point here. It just glared at me here and there as a little too obvious.

These are very minor flaws, though. It's a cute, well-written and well-paced book, a fast read, and very nicely and originally done. Recommended.

I loved all of Lee Nicols' other books but this one was just not entertaining or funny. I read the entire book and just could not get into the story. I do not mind fantasy stories either but this book just missed the truly funny and entertaining stories that were in Hand-Me-Down, Drama Queen and True Lies of A Drama Queen. I did not think the characters were all that well developed. I am waiting for her next book and hope that Lee Nicols writes another book like True Lies of A Drama Queen.

I bought this book hoping it would be similar to the Three Sisters Island Trilogy by Nora Roberts. Needless to say I was beyond disappointed that it was just typical chit lit with a lot of drinking and a smidge of `magic'. The characters could have been really great had the book focused more on the three of them as witches instead of focusing on the three of them as brokenhearted women. Some parts were funny (intentional and unintentional), but for the most part it was a yawn.

I loved Lee Nichols' other Red Dress Ink books so I assumed this one would follow in the footsteps of the others. It was a bit different because of the whole supernatural bit, but this book lacked something that the other books contained. I was rather disappointed and I hope Nichols' next books wont be like this one.

I suggest to pass on this and read Lee Nichols' previous books instead.

Maybe I've been reading too many vampire novels with so much going on I could barely keep up, but this was a lovely transition for me. I enjoyed that each of the women were completely different, and charming in their own ways. It was like Sex in the City but on a little island in Maine. I'm really not into "chick" books, but this one was a cute novel about girls being girls. I enjoyed the descriptions, the way the story unfolded, and I enjoyed the way it ended. I don't think I will be reading any more like this right away because I don't want to OD on the syrupy sweetness of how girls chat and go shopping, but it was certainly a fun escape while it lasted, and was very easy to read.