Payback’s A Witch is a queer paranormal fantasy romance by Lana Harper that leans New Adult

My rating: 4 of 5 stars (4.25 rounded down to a 4)

Payback’s A Witch is a queer paranormal fantasy romance by Lana Harper that leans New Adult, though there are some steamy scenes. The eBook version is 340 pages. I listened to the audiobook, which clocks in at a little over ten hours and is narrated by Jeremy Carlisle Parker. We follow our main character with a first-person point-of-view.

Emmy Harlow is a witch from one of the founding families of her hometown, Thistle Grove. She recently returned home after a long stint away to complete her familial duty to serve as arbiter for a spellcasting tournament. But her time away was spent mostly in a magical-less life, so she’s trying to get back in the groove. Her first night back in town, Emmy has a meet-cute in a bar with Talia Avramov, a badass lady adept in darker magical arts who was two grades older than her while they were growing up. Talia recently broke up with Gareth, the scion of the most powerful witch family in town and also ex who broke Emmy’s heart. He was cheating on Talia with Emmy’s best friend Linden Thorn, who didn’t know he was seeing anyone else. The ladies decide to band together for revenge but Emmy can’t stop thinking about Talia. All this is happening while Linden’s brother Rowan, Talia, and Gareth (aka the scions of the founding families) are getting ready to compete in the spellcasting tournament Emmy will be overseeing.

All-in-all, a really fun read! The narrator did a phenomenal job with all of the different character voices. This is the first book released under Lana Harper, but she also writes YA as Lana Popovic. I thought she did a wonderful job with pacing in this novel, and especially with build-up. Her prose is a bit lyrical yet easy to read. I’m excited to read more books in this series.

There were some discussion questions at the end of the book that could be useful for book clubs.

Tropes in this book include: witch heroine, queer heroines, bisexual heroines, fake dating, revenge plot

CW: cheating (off-page), ghost possession

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