The Witching Moon Manor (The Spellbound Sisters, #2) by Stacy Sivinski
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, cozy mystery, historical fantasy, historical romance
Series: Spellbound Sisters #2
Pages: 336
Published by Atria Books on October 7, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The magical Quigley sisters return to bargain with fate once more in this follow-up to the “charming, uplifting, and utterly enchanting” (Lana Harper, New York Times bestselling author) national bestseller The Crescent Moon Tearoom.

The Crescent Moon is thriving after a much-needed expansion, with the ladies who step through its doors continuing to seek comfort in the glimpses of their futures found in the swirls at the bottom of their teacups. Anne is leading the city’s witches as Chicago’s Diviner, Beatrix is swept away on a book tour across the country, and Violet has found her place with her feet swinging through the air above the circus crowds. That is, until the Quigley sisters find themselves stumbling on their chosen paths, and they are drawn back home in search of refuge in each other’s company.

As Anne struggles to balance her growing responsibilities, Beatrix fears she has lost her gift for storytelling, and Violet is shaken after an accident at the circus, the future the sisters had drawn for themselves feels murkier than ever. And, when the threads of fate begin to unravel, Anne must lean on her sisters and team up with a mysterious—and oddly infuriating—necromancer to save the city from an uncertain destiny and help old friends find a happy end.

With all three Quigleys back in the warm comfort of the Crescent Moon, they set out to bargain with Fate once more. But will the sisters find the courage to embrace who they have become while returning to what they left behind, or will the future unfold in a way that even a Quigley couldn’t have predicted?

My Review:

When last we met our heroines, at the end of the author’s positively delightful and utterly charming debut novel, The Crescent Moon Tearoom, the Quigley sisters were saying goodbye to each other at the door of their tearoom, each on the way to their very own fates and happy ever afters.

As this story begins, Violet and Beatrix are on their way back home, because something is going terribly wrong. Not just for the Quigley sisters, but for all of magical Chicago – a place that Anne Quigley is duty bound to protect as just one part of her duties as the city’s magical Diviner.

Whatever creeping wrongness has been invading the city, it has reached the point where it’s affecting not just the magical side, but the purely mundane as well. And it’s all the Quigley sisters’ fault.

It’ll be up to the three of them to fix what they broke. Along the way, they’ll have a chance to rest, regroup, bask in each other’s company, and maybe, just possibly, figure out where each of them has gone astray in the individual lives they were each so willing to set out for.

Three paths to the future lay before them. One way lies disaster. One way lies safety but regret. And the third to the happy ever afters of their wildest dreams. All they have to do is find the way forward – before disaster becomes inevitable. If it’s not already too late.

Escape Rating A+: I loved this book even more than the first book, The Crescent Moon Tearoom, and that’s saying quite a bit! I think that’s because this one hit all the cozy, charming high-notes of the first book while not diving so deep into the low notes of putting the sisters down. In the first book, the threat felt both contrived and designed to cause a costly failure that would be personal, where this time the threat is earned and built into their circumstances and their personalities.

What’s fascinating about this particular magical world is the concept of Fate with a capital F. Fate in this case is a duty rather than a predestination. Each witch (and they are all witches regardless of gender) is born with one task that they must fulfill. If they don’t, the magical fabric of the world has to absorb the damage their unfulfilled fate might cause, and the witch themselves becomes a ghost instead of passing into the afterlife.

The first book was all about finding and fulfilling the task of a witch with relatively little power, Capricious Crowley, before he died of old age. The Quigleys chose not to force the fulfillment of his task because Mr. Crowley intended to become a ghost so that he could join the man he loved who was already lingering in that state.

It sounds romantic, and it is. However, the Quigley sisters’ allowance was based on Mr. Crowley’s presentation as a witch of very little power whose unfulfilled fate would do equally little damage. But he wasn’t and it didn’t, and that’s where this story begins. The worlds are slipping out of alignment, Mr. Crowley’s task MUST be fulfilled to set things right. But the sisters are all romantics, they want their dear friend to remain united with his love, which means they have to unravel the secrets that are keeping that person from HIS afterlife.

So it’s more than a bit of a mystery, a mystery that gets both bigger and more intimate as Mr. Crowley’s unfulfilled task is leeching magical power away from his entire extended family AND making Chicago’s winter even worse than normal (UGH!) while creating so much chaos that the mundanes are certainly going to notice – if they haven’t already.

At the same time, all three Quigley sisters are experiencing their own bits of chaos, as each is wrapped up in doubts and fears regarding their own gifts and their own futures. So there are little mysteries as well, as Anne, Beatrix and Violet are lying to themselves and concealing their truths from each other.

So this story is wrapped in a big mystery, one rooted in the past, even as the future that Anne wants to see for each of them moves further out of reach. Their fears and failures beset them on all sides, and it’s only once all their hearts are laid bare that ALL their happy ever afters become attainable. Even Mr. Crowley’s.

If you like cozy, witchy fantasy, the Spellbound Sisters duology, The Crescent Moon Tearoom and The Witching Moon Manor, is a delightfully cozy blend of historical fantasy, magical realism, mystery and romance. If you’re already a fan and are looking for similar books, take a look at The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches and A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna.

I’ll be over here with my fingers crossed, hoping for more of the Quigley sisters and their fantastically magical historical Chicago, and anyplace else this author intends to go.

The Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy Sivinski
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, cozy mystery, historical fantasy, historical romance
Series: Spellbound Sisters #1
Pages: 336
Published by Atria Books on October 1, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A cozy and uplifting debut novel about three clairvoyant sisters who face an unexpected twist of Fate at the bottom of their own delicate porcelain cups.
Ever since the untimely death of their parents, Anne, Beatrix, and Violet Quigley have made a business of threading together the stories that rest in the swirls of ginger, cloves, and cardamom at the bottom of their customers’ cups. Their days at the teashop are filled with talk of butterflies and good fortune intertwined with the sound of cinnamon shortbread being snapped by laced fingers.
That is, until the Council of Witches comes calling with news that the city Diviner has lost her powers, and the sisters suddenly find themselves being pulled in different directions. As Anne’s magic begins to develop beyond that of her sisters’, Beatrix’s writing attracts the attention of a publisher, and Violet is enchanted by the song of the circus—and perhaps a mischievous trapeze artist threatening to sweep her off her feet. It seems a family curse that threatens to separate the sisters is taking effect.
With dwindling time to rewrite their future and help three other witches challenge their own destinies, the Quigleys set out to bargain with Fate. But in focusing so closely on saving each other, will they lose sight of themselves?

My Review:

The Crescent Room Tearoom serves well-to-do ladies with considerably more than just tea from its turn-of-the-20th century location on Chicago’s bustling State Street, already the home of Marshall Field’s and Schlesinger & Mayer.

The Quigley sisters, Anne, Beatrice and Violet, serve slices of the future along with tea, pastries and finger sandwiches. They are witches, and they are all gifted with the ability to tell the future – just like their mother before them.

Like much of Chicago’s magical community, the Quigley sisters hide in plain sight, operating their tearoom just outside the edge of the city’s burgeoning magical district, dispensing true fortunes and sage advice under the guise of gossip, amusement and ladies’ fripperies.

Of course the magical community knows the truth about the Quigley sisters, the triplet daughters of the most gifted seer the Chicago Coven had seen in generations. A woman who gave up her place in the Coven to marry her mundane soulmate, knowing that their lives would end in tragedy.

Because her gift of seeing the future could also be a curse.

A curse that seems to have passed to the sisters now that they have grown up. Their joint operation of the tearoom has given them safety, security and companionship. At least until they discover that they are cursed to lose it all – and that it seems as if the leaders of the Chicago Coven are complicit in that curse.

Just as the curse drives a wedge in their contented companionship, setting them each on paths that pull them away from the shop and from each other, the Coven sets them three seemingly impossible tasks that must be met by an even more impossible deadline – or they will destroy the shop and cast the sisters out of the community.

It’s obviously a plot. If the curse doesn’t get them, the Coven will – and vice versa. Unless, like their parents loving but much too brief happiness, the curse is not really a curse after all.

Escape Rating A+: It’s the way that the whole, entire story does a complete heel turn that makes it work – because the story isn’t AT ALL what the reader thinks it’s going to be at the beginning.

First, I loved the setting. Chicago is still one of my favorite cities, and it’s always seemed magical to me. Part of the reason I loved the Dresden Files series so much – back in that day – was that Harry’s Chicago was ‘my’ Chicago, just with more magic. It’s also a part of what made Veronica Roth’s recent When Among Crows work so well, because it seemed just so downright likely that there’s a magical community hiding in plain sight.

Which is the case in The Crescent Moon Tearoom. This is definitely turn-of-the-last century Chicago, when State Street was already ‘that great street’. The gigantic downtown department stores were still new and celebrated and it was fun to read about Marshall Field’s back in that day, because the building is still something special a century plus later. (I had to look Schlesinger and Mayer up because the store didn’t last but the building did – as Carson, Pirie, Scott.)

Returning to the story – because it’s a wonderful story to return to – what I loved about The Crescent Moon Tearoom was the way that the reader is led down a primrose path, multiple times, making the reveal at the end just that much cozier and more heartwarming.

Because I have to admit that as the story was going along, I wasn’t all that sure about the cozy fantasy label. At first, it reminded me a LOT of Small Town, Big Magic, in that the heroine is cursed, her powers are gone, and the local coven leadership is manipulative to the max and evil to the core. And that’s at the point where the reader thinks the purpose of the story is to reveal the coven’s machinations and thwart their plot.

That it turns out to be entirely different – and much better, more heartwarming and considerably more interesting into the bargain – was the ending I stayed up until 4 in the morning for – and I’m so very glad that I did.

The Crescent Moon Tearoom is the author’s DEBUT novel, and it’s simply fantastic in all of the meanings of that word. The one and only, teeny-tiny, even slightly negative thing I could possibly say about it is that this book does not read like the first in a series. I could be wrong. I’d LOVE to be wrong. But even if I’m right about this book, I will absolutely be on the lookout for her next!