“You’ve got some alarming bad habits, but assuming you’re not convicted of murder, my reasons for wanting to marry you hold. Like I said, I don’t think life with you will ever get boring.” [loc. 1727]
Cosmo Saville is a successful antiques dealer, and he's about to marry Police Commissioner John Joseph Galbraith in the high-society wedding of the year. Unfortunately, Cosmo is implicated in the death of a rival: and being arrested on a murder charge is only one of the problems he has to resolve before the wedding. Because there is a lot he hasn't told his husband-to-be, including the very pertinent fact that he is a powerful witch whose family are magical aristocracy. Oh, and he's known John for a fortnight. And John, it turns out, is under a love spell ...
The levels of deception in this novel made me very uncomfortable. Cosmo is the narrator, so at least we get an honest (?) account of his motives. But he's not the only character who's economical with the actualities: there are friends (with only the best intentions) and foes (with a priceless grimoire). And nobody, except John, seems to believe that being honest and straightforward might be an option, let alone the best strategy.
I did like Cosmo, despite his fascination with interior design: I wasn't sure about John, who's quite ... determined, and who seems to realise on some level that Cosmo is keeping major secrets from him. He does develop over the course of the novel, to the extent where he seems able to detect and deflect some of Cosmo's minor, 'convenient' spells. The secondary characters were an interesting bunch, and I'm intrigued by the world-building: the magical world coexisting with the mundane, and picking up on cultural phenomena such as Bewitched. But I'm in two minds about the rest of the trilogy: do I want to read more of Cosmo's lies and cover-ups? On the other hand, John isn't stupid ...
Bonus points, though, for a feline familiar named Pyewacket!
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