Book Review – The Babysitters Coven

Hello hello and welcome or welcome back to my little bookish corner of the internet. Today I’m sharing with you my review of The Babysitters Coven, the first book in a trilogy, and the absolutely perfect read for when it came along.

Synopsis
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.

Review
I loved this book. I just straight out loved it. I loved the confidence Esme had in her own skin, finding outfits for every day with a theme, and not giving a damn about what anyone had to say. Her friendship with Janis made my heart smile as it reminded me so clearly of the kind of “we can face anything together” friendship everyone hopes to have supporting them through school.

Esme struggles with her mother being sick and in a mental health unit, and then as the magic starts to make an appearance, she starts to see links between the things that her mother had done before getting sick, and the items for spells that Casssandra’s mother has written down in a journal for her to find.

The bigger picture that develops in the latter half of the book is even more intriuging, and I really can’t wait to see where the second book, For Better or Cursed, goes, as book one left us with so many posibilities. We’ve got some knowledge now, but not all of it, and I’m looking forward to more things falling into place.

The Babysitters Coven manages to find the balance between a serious paranormal threat and the genuinely amusing reality of being a teenager, and I love books that do strive for that balance. It’s exactly the kind of book that I needed this month with everything being so intense in my real life. It was escapism in the best of outfits.