A Spell of Rowans - Byrd Nash

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Author: Byrd Nash

Genre: Magical Realism, Mystery
Rating: 3 stars.

In a Nutshell: This started off excellently for me but began dipping around the midway mark. The finale left me disappointed. Nevertheless, it’s a unique story and deserves credit for its imaginative characters.

Story:
Three siblings, who have been in touch only virtually since a few years, meet up in their quaint hometown of Grimsby after their mother’s death. What makes this unlike any such situation is that their mother was a narcissistic woman who had made their lives miserable. Also, the trio aren’t ordinary individuals. Each of them is blessed with a special talent. Philippa Rowan, the eldest, can use her charisma to bewitch others into doing what she wants. Victoria is an empath who can glean emotions from others and even manipulate them. Liam can know the history of objects merely by touching them. Their reunion uncovers many secret revelations and begins a series of dark events. Will the siblings be able to escape the dangers facing them and move on from their pasts?
The story comes to us in the first person perspective of Victoria.


The book started off wonderfully. With the right amount of mystery and magical realism and a fast tempo, it created a storyline that didn’t allow me to keep it aside. I enjoyed every bit of the fantastical elements, even if the whys and hows of them weren’t explained. However, towards the middle, the book moves more towards a criminal investigation that seemed like a very abrupt switch in the focus. The story then tries to balance the crime thriller and the fantasy drama, and does an average job of it. However, the climax was way farfetched, with too many coincidences and last minute twists that ended up making hardly any sense.

I enjoyed (but not necessarily liked) the main characters in the story, especially the three siblings and FBI agent Reed Easton. While the reason behind the unusual talents of the Rowan children isn’t specified, I still appreciated how the story incorporated their unique abilities. (I would have loved to see a bit more of Philippa’s talent used. Her abilities got the least amount of limelight.) Their mother, Rachel Rowan, also seemed like an intriguing character. While she is a constant presence in the narrative through her children’s antagonistic feelings for her, she gets a spotlight only towards the end of the story. I would have loved to see her get a greater focus throughout the book, maybe through interim flashbacks that revealed a glimpse of her behaviour towards her children and her husband. I would have loved to know more about their father, who hardly gets any character detailing. Also, one of the main characters is written in a very stereotypical manner for supposedly autistic behaviour (without any medical rationale about how they came to this diagnosis.)

There are many things left unexplained in the story. While some things in a fantasy novel can be accepted without elaboration (such as the unique Rowan talents), some plot points needed more attention. I can’t reveal much without going into spoilers, but the rationale behind the townspeople’s attitude towards the Rowans and the criminal’s reason for the crime needed greater detailing. Even some character behaviour went without reasoning. Like, the reason for Reed’s ability to absorb others’ emotions despite not coming from a magical family was never revealed. There are so many doubts created about the role of the Rowan house in the plot but nothing ever reaches clarity.

Overall, this story definitely had great potential and I really wanted to like it, more so as it is by a debut author. But maybe my expectations were more of a fantasy, so the ordinary crime-thriller direction the book took disappointed me, even though there were some paranormal moments interspersed here and there. It felt like the book tried to straddle too many genres and ultimately, ended up doing justice to hardly any. The monotonous secondary character development and the half-baked analysis of many plot points further lowered my enjoyment.

5 stars for the initial 20-25%, 3-3.5 stars for the middle, 2 stars for the finale and the epilogue.

Mine is an outlier review. Most of the feedback for this book has been extremely positive. So please read through other reviews before you make up your mind about this book.

My thanks to author Byrd Nash and BookSirens for the DRC of “A Spell of Rowans”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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