Spellbound by Murder is the first book in Stacie Ramey’s A Mystic Hollow Bookshop Mystery series, and it was an entertaining start to the series.
Veronica and her teenaged daughter Phoebe move from Florida to Mystic Hollow, Maine, after Veronica’s grandmother calls her and tells her that she needs help with her bookshop. As soon as they arrive, they are thrown into the planning of a town festival, and as the planning progresses Victoria starts to notice some strange things about the bookshop, and her grandmother. When there is a death at the festival, and Veronica is nearby, she immediately becomes a suspect.
A bookshop in a small town, a mystery, and some magic…this book sounded like it was just up my alley. Unfortunately it was just an okay read for me, mostly because I couldn’t connect with Veronica. She seemed immature, had a sense of humour that I just did not get, and was just all around annoying throughout the book.
While the magic in the book was okay, there were points where I thought the book would have been better without that aspect. Also, maybe this is a bit of a spoiler, but who loses a magic amulet, sees it get kicked down a hallway in a crowd of people, and just shrugs it off like it’s not worth recovering? My gut feeling was that the author wrote herself into a corner and had to get rid of it so that it didn’t make solving the mystery too easy. It felt sloppy.
Anyway, this wasn’t a bad book by any means, there were just some things in it that didn’t particularly click for me. I think it may appeal to many people looking for the same types of things I was, if they can get past the childishness of the main character.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Spellbound by Murder will be available on March 10 2026.
Life, Tea, and Everything 