Hello hello and welcome or welcome back to my little bookish corner of the internet! Today I’m sharing with you my thoughts on the magical romcom, The Ex Hex. This is one I absolutely got sucked into reading because of social media, and it was so much fun. I’m really glad I got caught up in it!
Synopsis
Nine years ago, Vivienne Jones nursed her broken heart like any young witch would: vodka, weepy music, bubble baths…and a curse on the horrible boyfriend. Sure, Vivi knows she shouldn’t use her magic this way, but with only an “orchard hayride” scented candle on hand, she isn’t worried it will cause him anything more than a bad hair day or two.
That is until Rhys Penhallow, descendent of the town’s ancestors, breaker of hearts, and annoyingly just as gorgeous as he always was, returns to Graves Glen, Georgia. What should be a quick trip to recharge the town’s ley lines and make an appearance at the annual fall festival turns disastrously wrong. With one calamity after another striking Rhys, Vivi realizes her silly little Ex Hex may not have been so harmless after all.
Suddenly, Graves Glen is under attack from murderous wind-up toys, a pissed off ghost, and a talking cat with some interesting things to say. Vivi and Rhys have to ignore their off the charts chemistry to work together to save the town and find a way to break the break-up curse before it’s too late.
Review
Like I say, I was sucked into reading this book after seeing it everywhere on social media. And sometimes, these books are everywhere for a reason!
Romance isn’t my auto buy or read genre, because I find it often to be too twee and a bit sickly sweet. Either that, or just a bit toxic. This, however, was utterly hilarious. Vivi was a protagonist you couldn’t help but fall in love with – both as a broken hearted teen, and a still somewhat broken hearted adult – and Rhys’s dry humor and wit won me over completely. The fact that she has, in fact, cursed him, and things start to go wrong all around him, combined with the sparks they still feel all these years later… Perfect balance.
It also manages to keep a really strong balance between the focus being on romance but with witchy things playing a major role. Little touches like the personalised set of tarot cards that Vivi’s cousin has painted herself really add to it, and allows you to become really absorbed in both the magic and the relationships that the book looks at.
Because while the focus is on Vivi and Rhys, there’s also a big amount of time designated to the dynamics between Vivi and her family, and Rhys and his. Where Vivi is an orphan, she has grown up knowing she is loved and wanted just the way she is. Rhys’s father, however, constantly lets him know he is a disappointment, and he has rebelled and distanced himself from him as much as possible. We get to see this side of Rhys’s life via the dual POV provided, and it allows us to get to understand him a little bit more; he deflects when things get serious because he’s never used to being fully understood and appreicated.
It’s a book that’s been everywhere, and it’s been everywhere for a reason. If you haven’t come across it before now – well, consider yourself alerted, and pick it up soon!
Thanks for stopping by today for this review. I always love being taken by surprise by books, and enjoying this one as much as I did is one of the best kind of book surprises to wind up the year.
And On She Reads 