The witches of Witchlings are back! Seven Salazar and friends Valley Pepperhorn and Thorn Laroux are excited about The Golden Frog Games, a magical tournament being hosted in their town of Ravenskill. The three girls have bonded as “Spares,” witches who weren’t chosen for a coven and have often been shunned by the witch community at large. Despite being a Spare, though, Thorn wants to compete in the fashion-creation event, and Seven and Valley are ready to support her—but someone is using a forbidden hex to turn the champions to stone.
Seven also has troubles of her own. She’s in training to be the town’s “uncle,” its second-most important leader, with a special affinity for animals, but she’s hearing voices in her head not from animals but from monstruos, including that of the Nightbeast whom she faced in the first book. Additionally, Valley is preoccupied with a new crush (a girl), and Seven might be developing a crush of her own on someone else. Can the friends face their own challenges while also being there for each other and saving the town from the perils that threaten it? Wise readers might guess yes—but it is the how that provides the fun and the suspense.
Fans of the first volume should be thrilled with this sequel (though those who haven’t read the first are advised to do so before starting this one). The mustachioed Edgar Allan Toad is back; we meet a delightful band of talking raccoons; and we see Seven, Valley, and Thorn learn and grow.
Author Claribel Ortega has once again imagined a fun and fantastical place that both evokes the world of She Who Must Not Be Named and goes beyond it in important and original ways. Here, a character of color takes the lead; the culture is infused by Ortega’s Dominican heritage (as well as by purely imagined phrases, events, and traditions); and themes of social justice, friendship across difference, and writing (and rewriting) one’s own story are soundly developed. It’s also gloriously and incidentally queer, with a nonbinary Oracle, a drag witch who MCs the Games, another two-girl couple (besides Valley and her crush), and a character with two moms. There’s a hint, too, that Seven is bi, although her crush in this volume is on a boy.
Don’t be a froggin’ butt-toad, as Seven might say. Go read it.
