From Bad to Cursed is the solid sophomore entry in The Witches of Thistle Grove paranormal fantasy romance series by Lana Harper

My rating: 5 of 5 stars (4.5 rounded up to a 5)

From Bad to Cursed is the sophomore entry in The Witches of Thistle Grove paranormal fantasy romance series by Lana Harper. The ebook version is 368 pages. We follow our main character with first-person point-of-view.

We follow Isadora, the wild child demon summoner of the Avramov family and younger sister to family scion Talia, who was one of our main characters in the first book in the series. She works full-time designing costumes and storylines for her family’s Arcane Emporium haunted house, but her heart is calling her to become an indie fashion designer and break away from the family business. During preparations for the town’s Beltane festival, things keep being sabotaged, and the town elders decide to appoint co-investigators to get to the bottom of things. Isadora is chosen by the Avramov family, as dark magic was used as a hex, and their family is under the greatest suspicion. Her co-investigator is none other than Rowan Thorn, lawful good nature boy, and also Issa’s archenemy. Their families also have a complicated history that they have to navigate.

This usually doesn’t happen to me with the second book in a series, but I definitely liked this one better than the first entry, Payback’s a Witch! Getting to know the Avramov family was a treat, and I would love to read future novels about Issa’s siblings. I really enjoy Lana Harper’s prose; at this point she’s become one of my auto-buy authors. I’ll have to check out her YA books, which she writes under the name Lana Popović. Everything is so smoothly written! I’m sure the audiobook version will also be wonderful, since they have the same narrator (Jeremy Carlisle Parker) as the first book who did an amazing job. The covers are also super well done for this series.

In her Acknowledgements, the author notes that she had sensitivity readers for this book, which is something I love to see! At the back of the book, there is a Readers Guide with questions for discussion, which I always personally appreciate because I like thinking deeply about something I’ve just read. There’s also a sneak preview of the the first three chapters of the third book in the series, Back in a Spell.

Tropes in this book include: enemies to lovers, queer side characters, nonbinary side characters, interracial romance

CW: description of panic attacks, talk about racism/classism/other -isms, ghost possession

Special thanks to Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley for providing an eARC of this book for me to review. All opinions contained herein are my own. From Bad to Cursed releases on May 17th, 2022.

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