2022 fantasy-romance, second of its loose series. Poppy got drunk
after a bad breakup, and thinks she put some real cursing magic into
one of the crystal trinkets at the shop where she works. Which would
be fine if her workmate hadn't just sold it to a hot guy…
The tone of this is more on the romantic-comedy level than Hex
Appeal, but it still has genuine emotional force. Poppy drips chaos
wherever she goes, and has no idea why; Alex Raine is the big name
stage magician who bought the trinket to try to paper over a rift with
his assistant, but then her flying harness collapses on stage…
Things get off to a rocky start between our leads in spite of the
instant lust, but the actions always felt plausible for the people and
the states they were in. I'm complained before about the sort of
breakup where one partner readily believes something negative about
the other, because it doesn't seem to bode well for the long-term
relationship; well, there is a third-act breakup here (along with
second-act time travel as Johnson has done before), but the person
doing the misinterpreting is already in a fairly parlous emotional
state for other reasons, and the manipulation is expert. Yes, fair
enough, that does work for me. And rather than being perfect and
endlessly patient, Alex has his own problems, including a murky past
and several unresolved emotional concerns.
It's not the utter gem that Hex Appeal was but I enjoyed it. And
apparently there's a third volume.
Favourite character: Poppy's hair.