Payback's a Witch

Payback's a Witch by Lana Harper, 340 pages.

Thistle Grove is an intensely magical town that is home to four very old families of very powerful witches. But not, for the last nine years, home to Emmy Harlow, heir to the Harlow clan of witches, the least powerful family in town. She left just after high school to escape the suffocating feeling of never being more than her unimportant, unpowerful family (and maybe a little because Gareth Blackmoore, of the most powerful family in town broke her heart), and if her magic was the price for her very own life in Chicago than so be it. Now she's back to arbitrate the magic competition that determines the balance of power in Thistle Grove for the next fifty years. She soon finds out that Gareth has broken the hearts of both her best friend Linden Thorn and the gorgeous Avramov heir, Talia. The three form a pack to knock Gareth and his terrible family down a peg by making sure they lose the competition for the second time in 300 years. 

This seemed like an extremely fun revenge story, and it was! But beyond that I was surprised at the amount of love in this book. All of the core cast has such a depth of every kind of love (for friends, romantic partners, family, and the town itself) that it shines through the whole book. There was more than one scene between Emmy and Linden that made me emotional about just how much they cared about each other. As a fun bonus, terrible Gareth has almost no speaking lines in this book, really making it clear that none of this is actually about him. The setting is super cool, and I'm looking forward to reading the sequel next year. Definitely check this one out for a surprisingly wholesome fun Halloween read (a little late).