Book Review: The Babysitters Coven
Media Type: Ebook (ARC)
Title: The Babysitters Coven
Author: Kate Williams
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Pages: Hardcover; 368
Release Date: September 17, 2019
Source: Publisher / FFBC Tours
Content Screening: Nothing of note.
HDB Rating: 3*
Recommended to: Readers who love cute, fun stories with plenty of snarkiness!
Add it on: Goodreads | Amazon | B&N
Adventures in Babysitting meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer in this funny, action-packed novel about a coven of witchy babysitters who realize their calling to protect the innocent and save the world from an onslaught of evil.
Seventeen-year-old Esme Pearl has a babysitters club. She knows it’s kinda lame, but what else is she supposed to do? Get a job? Gross. Besides, Esme likes babysitting, and she’s good at it.
And lately Esme needs all the cash she can get, because it seems like destruction follows her wherever she goes. Let’s just say she owes some people a new tree.
Enter Cassandra Heaven. She’s Instagram-model hot, dresses like she found her clothes in a dumpster, and has a rebellious streak as gnarly as the cafeteria food. So why is Cassandra willing to do anything, even take on a potty-training two-year-old, to join Esme’s babysitters club?
The answer lies in a mysterious note Cassandra’s mother left her: “Find the babysitters. Love, Mom.”
Turns out, Esme and Cassandra have more in common than they think, and they’re about to discover what being a babysitter really means: a heroic lineage of superpowers, magic rituals, and saving the innocent from seriously terrifying evil. And all before the parents get home.
Look, the quickest way to my heart is to make any book dredge up all the nostalgia inside of me within the first few chapters. The Babysitters Coven delivered that in spades, and so you can probably already tell that I’m going to give this a good review. Throw in a rescue pit bull named Pig and well, come on. How do you not at least smile a lot while reading this book? Trust me, I did.
Esme is a quirky, snarky, and has a sense of style that is all her own. I appreciated her themed outfits, her interactions with her best friend Janis, and of course her pitty baby. I have a soft spot for dogs, what can I say. Cassandra, since we’re playing the Buffy comparison game, is probably Faith in this case. The loyal sidekick, the solid rock, the one who pales just a little in comparison to her larger than life partner. This story started out really cute, if a little younger in tone than I expected, and I had high hopes that I was in for a treat.
The plot though, was where I had a bit of a problem really sticking with this book. The mythology behind the coven, the “sitter” lore, felt a bit rocky at the best of times. I can’t say too much without spoiling, but I’m not sure if the point here was to keep this family friendly, or try to distance it from the content that it slightly mirrors. At first I thought that the way spells were cast in this book was cute but, like a lot of things, it started to feel a little cheesy after a while. It felt almost like forced levity, which was frustrating because I loved the characters so much. I’m told this is a series though, which means time for growth! So I’m sticking in there.
Overall I’d say that this is probably a book geared towards the younger half of YA. I could absolutely see a younger reader sitting down and absolutely adoring this whole story. Esme and Cassandra really are a lot of fun. I literally giggled out loud a few times while they were trying to figure out how everything worked. It kind of sucks when your trainer is also responsible for football season. Hahaha. However, I couldn’t love this as much as I wanted to because it just felt a little young for me. I’ll let you make the decision for yourself, but I can promise you that you’ll at least have a lot of fun getting to the end.
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FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review. I was not monetarily compensated for my opinion.
