Black Magic Kitten Book Review: A Witchy Cozy That Flips the Script

Read time: 5 minutes

🎧 Listened in audio | 📢 Narrated by Ellie Gossage
⏱ Duration: 5 hours | Genre: Paranormal Cozy Mystery
🏷️ Publisher name: Tantor Media

Book Blurb:

Kinsley Skeenbauer swore she’d never go back to Coventry. But after a messy divorce leaves her jobless, childless, and out of options, she has nowhere else to turn. Coventry isn’t an ordinary town, though. It’s home to the most powerful witch family in the world, and Kinsley was supposed to lead it, whether she wanted to or not. Her homecoming barely gets started before a body turns up behind the local diner, putting her on the town sheriff’s radar. With a killer loose and a black cat familiar named Meri along for the ride, Kinsley has to learn to harness the powers she spent her whole life running from, before the killer catches up with her first.

Let’s talk about the book:

I’m a sucker for witchy cozies where the heroine has no clue she’s magical and gets to discover her powers alongside the reader, the surprise, the exploration, the eventual save the world arc. Going in, I expected that. This book flips it. Kinsley already knows exactly what she is, and spends the whole story trying to run from it rather than into it. Different flavor than I usually reach for, but it worked.

Kinsley comes home to Coventry after a messy divorce, jobless and childless and dreading exactly the kind of destined witch leader future she spent her adult life avoiding. A body turns up behind the diner within pages of her arrival, and from there it’s small town magic and murder. Meri, the black cat familiar, stole every scene he was in, genuinely my favorite part of the book. That said, I finished the book still not entirely sure why the series is named after him. He’s cute and charming, but his actual role in the plot is pretty minimal. I kept waiting for a reveal that tied the title to something bigger, and it never quite landed.

A few other things kept this from being a full home run for me. The parents, for one. I expected an open arms, emotional homecoming, but the interactions between Kinsley and her parents felt oddly formal and distant given the setup. Then there’s the romance pacing. The connection with the sheriff develops fast, faster than felt earned for someone who, by her own admission, just crawled out of a bad marriage. A little breathing room before the next relationship would’ve gone a long way. And the investigation logic stretched believability more than once, with the sheriff letting Kinsley (a suspect’s returning daughter with an obvious personal stake) tag along on interviews.

None of that killed the experience, though. The overall vibe was cozy and comfortable, and Bourgeois clearly knows this world (this is a long running series, so there’s history here I’m just stepping into). My gripes felt more like series growing pains than dealbreakers, and I’m curious whether later books smooth them out.

Ellie Gossage’s narration deserves a special mention. She gave distinct, consistent voices to Kinsley, Meri, and the sheriff, which made the whole thing feel immersive rather than just narrated. That alone will keep me coming back to the audio editions.

I’ll be continuing the series to find out where it goes.

Would I recommend it?

Yes, especially if you want a witchy cozy with a different setup than the usual “discovering her powers” arc. Kinsley knows what she is and runs from it instead, and that swap alone made this stand out from the pack for me. Meri the cat familiar and Ellie Gossage’s narration carry a lot of the charm here, even when the pacing on the romance and the family reunion felt rushed. It’s a solid series opener with real growing pains, but ones I’m willing to look past to see where Bourgeois takes book two.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Continue Reading:

• If the Broom Fits by Sara Bourgeois — If you want to see where Kinsley’s world came from, this is book one of Bourgeois’s earlier Wicked Witches of Coventry series, set thirteen years before Black Magic Kitten in the same town.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• Brownies and Broomsticks by Bailey Cates — For the reverse trope, a heroine who finds out she’s a witch instead of running from it, with a magical bakery and a cat named Honeybee thrown in for good measure.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• It Takes a Witch by Heather Blake — Another small town witch family mystery, this time with sisters who grant wishes instead of leading a coven, and a similarly cozy magic-meets-murder setup.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• Secondhand Spirits by Juliet Blackwell — Swap the small town for San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, but keep the reluctant witch trying to build a normal life while magic keeps pulling her into murder.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• A Familiar Tail by Delia James — If Meri was your favorite part of Black Magic Kitten, this one leans even harder into the cat familiar dynamic with Alastair, a scene stealing gray cat who basically adopts his witch.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | Litsy

Chase It or Run From It?

So tell me: if you found out tomorrow that you came from a line of powerful witches and were expected to lead them, would you lean in, or would you be booking it out of town like Kinsley did? Drop your answer in the comments, I want to know if I’m the only one who’d pack a U-Haul too.

Book Links

Want to purchase this or any of your favorite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider purchasing using the sites below. These sites work with independent local bookstore owners to fulfill your book orders. #SupportLocal

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | Litsy
Check out more books from Tantor Media