Book: The Coven
Author: Harper L Woods
Publisher: Bramble / Tor Books
Year: 2023 & 2024
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “I was raised to be my father’s weapon against the Coven, who had taken everything from him. I would do anything to keep my younger brother from suffering the same fate. My path lead me to the prestigious halls of Hollow’s Grove University, where witches learn to practice their magic free from human judgement.
There I come face-to-face with the beautiful and infuriating Headmaster, Alaric Grayson Thorne. He despises me just as much as I loathe him – in spite of the fire that burns between us…”

Review : This is a first for me, a book that has been previously published being sent out as an advanced reader copy. I admit, it took me a little bit of digging to figure out why I received an uncorrected advanced reading copy of a book that was published in 2023; it seems this marketing campaign is running ahead of a special edition publication of The Coven debuting in August of 2024, a month before the sequel releases. Whatever the case, this book has been circulating and doing surprisingly well over the last few months, so by the time I received an ARC, opinions had already filtered their way to me. I received this book and immediately heard from a friend how much they enjoyed it, I know the author has amassed a monstrous following on social media, falling into the category of fantasy romance which means the loyal fans are deeply loyal. I had expectations, to say the least.

Unfortunately, The Coven lived up to the low, low bar of my expectations. Now, before we dive in, please don’t get me wrong! I’m not here to shame anyone for reading smutty fantasy novels, I don’t look down my nose at the books or the readers of the genre. At all. However, it has been my experience that many of these fantasy romance authors, in an effort to churn out as many books as possible for their droves of die-hard fans, often sacrifice quality for quantity. Or even quality for smut. It’s fair to say that I went into this book with a bit of trepidation, knowing Woods’ second book is set to debut just a year after her first – a timeline which is pretty drawn-out as far as fantasy books are concerned lately. I expected this book would sacrifice plot for smut, but what I didn’t expect was the shoddy writing (though, perhaps I should have given the passive voice used in the synopsis).

*Spoilers Ahead*

The Coven is a hard to follow fantasy that very clearly draws on so many fantasy and witchy tv shows. Unfortunately for Woods, I too have watched so many fantasy and witchy tv shows, meaning my mind immediately jumped to all the storylines she’s at times all but outright copied. First of all, the vampire-witch romance trope is unbelievably overplayed, but if you’re going to go that route, at least stray away from names used in tv shows like Vampire Diaries (*cough* Alaric *cough*). I find it hard to believe that any reader interested in a book like The Coven hasn’t also watched Sabrina, Legacies, or A Discovery of Witches. Like I said, the vampire-witch struggle and eventual romance is played out. There’s something deeply aggravating about a controlling, toxic male vampire who for some unknown reason just cannot resist the temptation of an “impossible” and frustrating female witch. We’ve seen it played out hundreds of times through so many fantasy books, movies, and tv series…it’s not compelling. Pun not intended. There’s nothing about an over-done trope that makes me want to continue turning pages. It makes me want to throw the book in the trash.

My second issue with The Coven is that while I can appreciate that Woods chose to include content warnings at the beginning of the book, clueing the reader in that the central male character is nothing but toxic, at the end of the day the portrayal of a controlling, manipulative, and coercive relationship is at best disquieting and at worst misogynistic and traumatic. I have yet to decide where Woods falls on the spectrum with her male main character (MMC) – a content warning isn’t enough, simply choosing not to write toxic men into stories where the reader is meant to find their humanity and fall in love with them is more of what I’m looking for. And this leads me to my third grievance with The Coven, which is the, frankly, hard to believe convolution of the storyline that means we readers cannot actually find humanity with Woods’ MMC because he is, in fact, the literal devil. Woods has created a universe where magic is readily available to those who have magical family lines they’ve been fortunate to be born into. Magic, then, is available through whatever means your family line is able to work with : air, earth, water, life, crystals, and the cosmos. However! In Woods’ universe, this ever-present magic is only available through these forms thanks to a blood pact that was made with the literal christian devil, Lucifer Morningstar. I told you, convoluted.

It’s this blood pact that brings me to my fourth grievance with The Coven : setting. While this book is modern, the witches and their family lines all stem from Salem, MA, as if that trope weren’t played out enough already, though as you can see, Woods is not one to run from an overdone trope. Though we’re to believe that Salem is the pinnacle of witchy activity (and not, I don’t know, any of the sites where thousands of people were burned overseas thanks to an unrelenting witch-trial that barely made it’s way to the States), Woods chooses to use the name of someone who didn’t exist in real life as the witch-mother herself, she who made a pact with the devil. It’s like there are all these puzzle pieces and they’re all close enough to fitting, so you shove and shove at them, hoping they will eventually fit, only to realize they’re pieces from two different puzzles.

Finally, my last, and possibly my biggest frustration with The Coven is the slipshod writing Woods employs. We can see it first in the synopsis, an ever-present passive voice. All I could think as I read this book was how much my high school english teacher would have despised it (content aside). He drilled into my head on a regular basis how insufferable a passive voice is, and to this day it lives in my brain : thou shalt not use a passive voice. The Coven is a lot of “what had happened” – again, as you can see from the synopsis. The writing doesn’t improve as the book continues and given that this is an ARC of a book that’s already been published, I don’t suspect additional editing will truly occur here. This book is how it is, passive voice and all. Woods could have benefitted from removing about 50% of the occurrences of the word “that” as well, something that I would think any editor would notice in a first or second draft. Again, this is an ARC for an already published book. It is what it is.

Advice : If fantasy smut is your thing, this book is pretty dang boring. If quality writing is your thing, run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. Don’t. Bother. It’s a waste of money and time. Trust me.