Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Deceiving the Witch Next Door by Melissa Bourbon Ramirez











Summary:


Storie Bell has a little secret—she’s a witch. But magic hasn’t exactly kept her life from being a complete mess—her love life is non-existent and the town thinks she’s a total nutter. Plus there’s her neighbor Reid Malone who runs hot one minute and cold the next.
Reid Malone can’t wait to escape Bloomington, Texas. Unfortunately, he’s stuck where he is unless he helps his father hide a very illegal secret. The only key to Reid’s freedom lies with the eccentric Storie … and he’ll do whatever it takes to get the information he needs from her.
But Reid’s holding something back. Something big. And if he’s not careful, he’ll find out exactly what happens when you try to deceive a witch…




 Reviewer: Dolce Amore


Eight years ago, Reid Malone saw Storie Bell the night before she left Bloomington, Texas and realized how beautiful she was. The descriptions are almost magical. It’s almost like we can see the storm; watch Storie enter the lake; see Reid’s panic at the thought that she might be drowning


“I thought you were drowning.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Next time you’re not drowning,” he said with a low growl, “I’ll just leave you to it.”

And they almost make love after the attended rescue

Now, Storie is back to run the dilapidated old gas station her father left her. The same old gas station Jiggs Malone wants badly. Storie is not going to sell it to Malone; she knows there was bad blood between Jiggs and her father. 


Storie was an outsider to her own life. The folks avoided her because of her powers. She left town because she couldn’t control them, but now she is back and wants to make her dreams real. Of course, using just a little magic because she wants to be accepted. And she is transforming the family gas station into a bookstore and coffee shop, The Storiebook Café.



The Storiebook Café, with the tagline, Where happy endings begin … Mixed and matched pots would overflow with multicolored flowers. And inside? Coffee. Tea. The best food this side of the Brazos River. All with the added bonus of books.
The only friends she has are Harper and her girls. And they don’t know about her being a witch.   

Wow!!! The story is so captivating that I keep forgetting to add info to the review. It’s like watching your favorite series and you can hardly tear your eyes from the screen.

Reid loves his father and understands that he wants to leave something behind after his death, and Jigs wants to leave the Apple Pie Moonshine, an illicit distilled liquor, in a deal he made with the Gemstone Spirits Company. However, there is a missing ingredient and Reid must find it before the company comes back requesting the recipe for Apple Pie Moonshine. Storie’s father gave Jigs the ingredient, but after his death there was nobody to ask where it had been hidden.

Harper’s daughters are delightful; here is a remark about Piper, a solid nine going on forty-five year-old girl, concerning the old gas station and the café while Storie and Harper finish the renovations:



“It’s worse than the old junkyard near Daddy’s work,” she said in all her little-girl wisdom. “Have you and Mama lost your everlovin’ minds?”
Reid lures her contractor, Buddy, to leave the renovations undone because she doesn’t want to sell.  



Deceiving Storie might not be honorable, but it was fun. And truthfully, he was trying to protect her and Harper. Probable deniability. What they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them. Or get them tossed in prison.

He takes Buddy’s place to supposedly help her finishing the renovations while he continues his search. What a devious and clever man, although the missing ingredient isn’t all he wants. He also wants to finish what started between him and Storie eight years ago … Reid only knew that the secret ingredient was an oil and he was becoming desperate as he could not find it.  

Without it, Jiggs’s moonshine was nothing special, but with it, the stuff was a gold mine.


 When they move a bookshelf they find a secret door which leads to where Reid’s father was doing the moonshine. 

 Bit by bit, Storie’s magic is fading away and her mother, the woman who gave her birth, comes and tells her that Storie has a brother and a sister and that they need her in the magical realm. When Storie agrees to cross to the magical realm, her mother leaves, intent to return when the moon is full.

And then, poof!, she melted into thin air, leaving Storie to pick up the pieces of the life her mother had just torn apart.
But then, her mother is not like Storie thought she would be. She also meets her sister and discovers that what her father told her once is real: the power changes people. Her mother turned black and Storie and Astrid have to defeat her. Yet, she has another ally in Reid. He is not going to stand by and let the woman he loves get hurt.  

Storie is a good woman who just happens to have magical powers. Her mother left her many years ago and she was raised by her father who always told her not to have a relation with an ordinary human. An outcast all her life because her powers were a bit out of control, she was avoided. In that, we have the perfect transformation as her feelings for Reid are getting stronger. However, with her powers fading and her mother asking for help, she is easily manipulated. Although she might seem weak, she is not. She fights for her future with Reid.

Reid is a good man, attractive and rich. He does what he does because he loves his father. But after seeing Storie, he falls for her. His reasons for getting close to her are paling in view of his feelings for her. He knows she is different, but only understands how much in the night he fights for her and their future. He understands that his home is with her.  

I loved it, as I did all the wonderful characters of this book; of course, all except the evil witch who wants to get the power from her own children.  

5 Stars, I totally loved the story.












 Publisher:  Entangled Publishing      


Source:  Net Galley

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