Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Beginnings: The Lily Singer Adventures, #1
3.5/5
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About this ebook
Saving the world is such a bother when it makes you late for tea.
Wizard Lily Singer is kept busy managing library archives, studying magic, and trying to keep her witch friend Sebastian from dragging her into trouble. Unfortunately, he loves adventure even more than she loves being left alone.
She doesn't want to investigate a malignant spell in a haunted house, but Sebastian is promising rare books as the reward. She also doesn't want to hurt her family, but is tired of being lied to about her past. And she definitely doesn't want to get stuck in a dangerously unstable time loop, but Sebastian is in trouble--again...
Strangling her friend, as satisfying as it would be, won't fix her problems. If she wants answers, and to not miss tea, she had best find the right spell for the job--before everything goes to hell, and takes them all with it.
With 400+ five star ratings on Amazon and Goodreads, this urban fantasy series full of adventure and snarky humor is guaranteed to cause loud snorts of laughter, tea cravings, and sleep loss. Don't start reading at night or you'll never go to bed! Great for fans of urban fantasy from Harry Potter to Harry Dresden. Pick up Book 1 and enter your magical escape today.
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Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Universe Books:
LILY SINGER ADVENTURE SERIES
Beginnings (#1)
Revelations (#2)
A Study In Mischief (#2.5) - novella, can be read as a standalone
Allies (#3)
Legends (#4)
Cat Magic (#4.5) - novella, can be read as a standalone
Betrayal (#5)
Identity (#6)
DARK ROADS TRILOGY (Sebastian Blackwell backstory)
Accidental Wtich (#1)
More coming soon!
Read more from Lydia Sherrer
Ashes of Hope: A Post Apocalyptic Dark Fantasy Short Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
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Titles in the series (7)
Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Beginnings: The Lily Singer Adventures, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Revelations: The Lily Singer Adventures, #2 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Legends: The Lily Singer Adventures, #4 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Allies: The Lily Singer Adventures, #3 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Identity: The Lily Singer Adventures, #6 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLove, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Betrayal: The Lily Singer Adventures, #5 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Kindred: The Lily Singer Adventures, #7 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
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Reviews for Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Beginnings
39 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Lily Singer is the book-loving wizard who manages the archives of the Agnes Scott Institute, a women's college in Atlanta. She's learned everything she knows about wizardry from her mentor, Madam Barrington
It turns out not to be everything Madam Barrington knows about wizardry, and not just because there hasn't been time to teach her everything yet, but that's another story.
This one is about Lily and Madam Barrington's disreputable nephew, Sebastian Blackwell, discovering they can work together. Sebastian, you see, is a witch. Even though he comes from an old wizard family, he has no magical power of his own. That's why he ventured into witchcraft. Witches work with the fae, bargaining with them for the use of their powers and gifts. Some also bargain with demons, and that's why Madam Barrington, and many other wizards, regard witches as disreputable and sometimes worse. Sebastian, though, uses his professional skills as a witch to provide assistance to those in need of it, for reasonable fees. Their first adventure begins when Sebastian's latest client turns out not to need a ghost banished, but a curse broken.
When they encounter a problem with a time loop in a small town, they find it's going to take the skills of both to recover a treasure Sebastian inherited from his family and save the small town from complete disaster.
It will be no surprise to seasoned readers that Lily and Sebastian like each other, and haven't really admitted it to themselves, never mind each other. They are both likable in their different ways, and it's easy to understand why each regularly wants to clobber the other one.
It's very, very easy to understand why Madam Barrington is so frustrated with her nephew.
This is a fun, light urban fantasy with hints of potential romance in later books. Well worth reading when you need something light and entertaining.
I received a free electronic galley of this book, and am reviewing it voluntarily. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I loved this first book in the Lily Singer Adventures. The main character is a feisty librarian who spends her day seeming a bit prim and proper, but when her friend Sebastian is involved you see her caught up in some crazy adventures. Oh did I mention she's not just a boring librarian, she's a witch who at night is still working on her training. Sherrer has come up with a great magic system for her world, instead of falling back on what has become a traditional method a la J.K. Rowling. Lily is engaging and I felt that I didn't want to put the book down because I was dying to know what happened. Sebastian is a bit of a bad boy and he seems to be the one who keeps dragging Lily into the problems he causes.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Review of Lydia Sherrer’s Love, Lies and Hocus PocusSplit into two halves, this novel features a wizard, Lily Singer, and a witch, Sebastian Barrington, using ancient Sumerian (the oldest known written language) to cast magic. Lily is a wizard because she was born able to touch “the Source” of magic in the world, whereas Sebastian was not, so he has to manipulate magical beings, like the fae, in order to do magic.The first half of the book sees Lily helping Sebastian, who hires himself out to break curses and exorcise ghosts from ancient Georgian homes, break a 100-year-old curse on a plantation house which a man, cursed by his jilted lover, has haunted since his death. In the second half of the book, Lily once again helps Sebastian, this time to recover an ancient clay magical device called a lugal-nam, which controls time.While each story is well written and interesting, the book as a whole would have hung together better if the two stories had been intertwined.For a first novel, it’s still a fun and interesting read, and refreshingly demonstrates the ancient Sumerian love of magic, moving magical stories decidedly away from some writers’ love of Latin.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5**This book was reviewed for Lola’s Blog Tours**Beginnings, first in Sherrer's Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus series contains three short stories. Labelled as two episodes and an interlude, they follow the adventures of Lily Singer and Sebastian Blackwell as they free a haunted house of it's trapped spirits, track down missing artifacts, and protect the mundanes from abused magick. You see, Lily is a wizard, born with an innate connection to magick, and Sebastian is a witch, who relies on summoning Otherworldly beings such as the fae to aid him. His is a magick of give and take, of favours asked and perhaps given, perhaps not. Hers relies on dedicated study to hone that natural link. Lily and Sebastian couldn't be more different. She’s an introvert, preferring the silence of her archives and the company of books. Sebastian is outgoing, and at times incorrigible. Beneath the lazy veneer though, beats an honourable heart and a generous nature.Sherrer's whip-crack humour and subtle insertions of pop-culture references such as Harry Potter and the X-Files made LL&HP:Beginnings a delightful read to devour over a rainy day. Falling into Lil and Seb’s world was a rollickin’ good ride. The stories alternate, with the two 'episodes’ centering around Lily, and the 'interlude’ focusing on Sebastian's point of view. I enjoyed all three, but I think the Interlude was my favourite. Sebastian on his own is different than when he's with Lily. You get to see more of the part of him not afraid to act tough, and be protective. Plus, more of his wit, and snarky comments. To wit:'Criminals were sadly predictably, especially those with so little self-respect as to wear their pants around their knees.’I spit my tea.This particular line also brought to mind an amusing snippet from American Idol trials from 2008, with the hilarious Pants on the Ground song. For your viewing pleasure. Oh yeah, and I want an eduba. So very useful!My only dislike was that there were jumps in time that happened in the very next paragraph, and I would have expected a gap between the ending section and the new section that would give readers a small warning something was about to change.???? Highly recommended for any fans of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, JK Rowling's Harry Potter, or the Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearne.