The Wednesday Witches Book Club (Magic & Mystery, #2) by Sarah Beth Durst Narrator: Meg Runyan
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: borrowed from Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, fantasy mystery
Series: Magic & Mystery #2
Pages: 49
Length: 1 hour and 9 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on July 28, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads
A book-loving witch finds magic and mystery in a whimsical short story about the transformative power of friendship and community by the New York Times bestselling author of The Spellshop.
After a challenging divorce, Ashley joins a witchy book club in search of a new social life. But when members start being transformed one by one, Ashley and the remaining book club members must uncover the culprit behind these sinister spells. With time running out until she’s the next target, she turns to her grimoire for answers. Because what better way to catch a magical culprit than through stories?
Sarah Beth Durst’s The Wednesday Witches Book Club is part of the Magic & Mystery collection, puzzle-box mysteries from top fantasy authors. They can be read or listened to in one enchanting sitting.
My Review:
Reading has always been magic. Even Stephen King admitted it when he said that “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” Or as another writer, Mason Cooley once said, “Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” Then there’s George R.R. Martin’s famous quote, “I have lived a thousand lives and I’ve loved a thousand loves. I’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read.”
The Wednesday Witches Book Club is a story where books are LITERALLY magic. Pun very much intended. Albeit not quite the same way as Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series, where kids are given the opportunity to become Wizards by receiving a copy of the book So You Want to Be A Wizard, but not all that far off either. (“Wizard” is a gender-neutral term in Duane’s series just as “witch” is in this story.)
In this world, people become witches when a specific book speaks specifically to them. Not a particular book, but the one that is truly their own. The first book where the magic of books and reading literally (again with the puns) takes them inside itself.
That book, not just the title but that particular copy that awakens the magic within, becomes their grimoire.
Which is where this story begins, because Ashley, getting a fresh start on Long Island after a messy divorce, is in desperate need of a new book club. Because witches, unsurprisingly, have a deep and abiding love of reading. So deep, in fact, that every witch needs a book club. Because witches’ book clubs don’t just drink wine and gossip while pretending to discuss a book that none of them have read.
Witches’ book clubs are covens, hiding in plain sight. And Ashley, trying to put her life back together, needs a group of fellow witches and potential friends to ground her in the community she hopes to call home.
When she first meets the group, Genevieve, Vicky , Naya, Marco, Selina and Genevieve’s cat Miss Meowtini (mustn’t forget Miss Meowtini!) all look polished and professional, very much like they all have their acts together. Ashley’s sure she doesn’t fit in, because her life is a complete mess.
That’s when Ashley discovers that Marco is having problems aiming his spells, and she’s already been informed that Selina turned herself into a cat and none of them have been able to turn her back. When Vicky is transformed into another cat, right in front of them all, Ashley is certain that she’s found her people.
And that they could really use some help in remaining, well, people!
Escape Rating B: In contrast with the serious undertones of last week’s A Labyrinth of Honeybees, The Wednesday Witches Book Club is possibly the fluffiest entry in the series. And not just because of the cats. (Although they certainly do contribute plenty of fluff, along with the occasional hairball.)
The story as a whole is very lighthearted and cozy, or, as the blurb says, “whimsical”. All of the above.
Howsomever, this entire collection is made up of fantasy MYSTERIES, which means that there’s a puzzle to solve along with the charming relationship-py parts of the story. Ashley is, after all, looking for her people. Or at least a new set of her people. She’s searching for community, and so are the rest of the book club members.
But someone is rather cleanly taking them down, one by one. Transforming the club members into cats means there’s no messy corpse to deal with – only a dirty litter pan. They go missing, they can’t be found, there are no criminal charges to answer.
Assuming this is a more traditional type of mystery with a more traditional kind of motive. Which, of course, it isn’t. (I did figure out whodunnit long before the characters did, but this isn’t a fair play mystery and that’s not the point.) The point was in just how the witchy perpetrator hid in plain sight among those witches hiding in plain sight and what their motives were. AND how Ashley negotiated a solution that gave everyone something close to what they were looking for.
But if you have cats, and you’ve ever wondered what would happen if your cats had opposable thumbs, all I can say is, “Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.” Because as light-hearted as this story is, your giggles at the way the story works out are going to be just the tiniest bit nervous. Mine certainly were.
As we head into spooky season, it’s fitting that the final two stories in the Magic & Mystery collection, Battle of the Round House by Tananarive Due and J.M. Miro’s The Cairndale Orphan both look like they’re on the darker side of fantasy mystery – at least based on their covers. I’m going to try to hold out until closer to Halloween to find out, but I might not be able to resist!
