There’s No Magic to Be Found in Spells for Lost Things

Simon & Schuster

I like spooky things as much as the next person, but when it comes to mystical beings, I’m more likely to prefer the benign versions depicted in media. For example, I’m much more fond of witches who aren’t using blood to levitate or trying to curse children; I like a bit of variety, which is why, for me, it’s more interesting to see witches who are a little on the benevolent side. I was interested to see what Jenna Evans Welch had planned for her latest novel Spells for Lost Things, and she definitely delivered on her witches being different—they just weren’t all that complex or likable, and neither was the rest of the book.

Spells for Lost Things follows Willow and Mason, two teens thrown together by circumstance when they both wind up in Salem, Massachusetts, for the summer. Willow’s mother needs to settle the estate of Willow’s aunt—a woman Willow never even knew existed—and suddenly Willow has an entire family history to uncover that her mother has hidden from her for years. Mason has been placed in the care of a former friend of his mother’s, but he’s determined to reunite with said mother after the foster care system lost contact with her. Mason teams up with Willow to solve the mystery of a generations-long family curse, with the clues hidden in Willow’s aunt’s house, and they find themselves immersed in a story of witches and misunderstandings—and they have to figure out how to leave the past behind while healing things in the present.

This is Welch’s first dual POV novel, but all this really accomplished was growing tired of one and wishing to switch to the other, over and over. Willow is a very flat character, having very little personality aside from her constant wanderlust; she has no concrete hobbies, and her best friend, Bea, lives in Paris and is only seen through text messages and video calls. Willow’s isolation and need to belong should be relatable, but I felt myself struggling to sympathize with her at times because she never truly felt like a real person. Her determination at solving her family’s curse had me slightly more invested, but that had more to do with the actual curse than Willow’s drive to lift it.

Mason, similarly, was difficult to connect with, albeit for different reasons. He has his star log of the night sky to balance out his uneasiness of being in yet another foster home, and I enjoyed the occasional fact he’d throw in about constellations or outer space in general. All that aside, he’s obsessed with looking for “signs” from the universe to guide him to reuniting with his biological mother, and while it’s supposed to be a bittersweet, misguided way of looking at the world, it came off as unhealthy and troubling right from the get-go.

The “romance” between Willow and Mason can hardly be labeled as such, given they know each other for less than a week and their initial draw to each other is based on Mason’s continuing quest for signs. His mother loves mermaids, and because Willow looks like the mermaid in a painting he comes across, that’s enough for him to project an entire personality onto her, treating her as some kind of ethereal concept of someone who doesn’t actually exist. He eventually drops this line of thinking once he gets to know her, but their chemistry is weak at best and they spend more time stuttering and blushing than they do actually talking to each other. What few conversations they do have mostly take place during montages, where they’re summarized and glossed over in favor of moving the plot along.

The plot may be uninterested in developing character relationships, but it sure does love to plod along for the first 60% of the novel. There’s too much set-up that happens for both Willow and Mason’s individual stories before they eventually meet at the halfway mark, and by the time anything of note happens, it feels like too much time has been wasted to justify why this is. The biggest reason for this is that Willow’s mother and Mason’s foster parents have been withholding information from them, either making excuses that it’s “not the right time” or just not wanting to talk at all. That may be in character for them, especially with Willow’s mother’s cagey behavior, but the longer it goes on, the more it feels like a cop-out to stretch the story further than it really needs. I understand conflict and build-up are important for any story, but there’s a difference between good pacing to build suspense and too much filler to pad things out.

I’ve come to expect Welch’s books to be on the cliche side and have a bit of predictability thrown in, but the charm that goes with that wasn’t present in Spells for Lost Things. It was disappointing to find myself rolling my eyes while reading, because I genuinely enjoy Welch’s work as a whole. I’m not sure what happened with this latest book, but it just didn’t hit the mark this time around. I’ll still look forward to any future projects she has planned, but I’ll do so with a little less enthusiasm.

Spells for Lost Things is out now. I definitely recommend Welch’s Love & trilogy as the perfect alternative to this.