Venco by Cherie Dimaline

 This review will be about Venco by Cherie Dimaline. It’s classified as a novel and was published on February 7, 2023, listed as an Adult Fantasy Novel. 

⭐⭐⭐

About The Book:

“Lucky St. James, a Métis millennial living with her cantankerous but loving grandmother Stella, is barely hanging on when she discovers she will be evicted from their tiny Toronto apartment. Then, one night, something strange and irresistible calls out to Lucky. Burrowing through a wall, she finds a silver spoon etched with a crooked-nosed witch and the word SALEM, humming with otherworldly energy.

Hundreds of miles away in Salem, Myrna Good has been looking for Lucky. Myrna works for VenCo, a front company fueled by vast resources of dark money.

Lucky is familiar with the magic of her indigenous ancestors, but she has no idea that the spoon links her to VenCo’s network of witches throughout North America. Generations of witches have been waiting for centuries for the seven spoons to come together, igniting a new era, and restoring women to their rightful power.

But as reckoning approaches, a very powerful adversary is stalking their every move. He’s Jay Christos, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter as old as witchcraft itself.

To find the last spoon, Lucky and Stella embark on a rollicking and dangerous road trip to the darkly magical city of New Orleans, where the final showdown will determine whether VenCo will usher in a new beginning…or remain underground forever.”

Review:

Starting this book, I really enjoyed getting to know Lucky, Stella, her grandma, and her mother’s spirit. That said, I feel like the backstories and getting to know Lucky felt like a long time though. I was hooked on reading this book because of Stella, I adored her in this whole entire book! The only way I can describe her character is that she has a Golden Girls vibe. 

The adventurous side to this book doesn’t really start until close to halfway through the book, about 200 pages in. The main first portion is really just about Lucky and how she’s taking care of her grandma Stella who has dementia, trying to find housing and a job, adult stuff.. Then there will be flashbacks of Lucy and her mom together. 

The other half of the book is about Lucy and Stella traveling to find the last spoon and the last witch, while the other witches with their spoons tell Lucy their story and how they came across their spoons. The stories of these other ladies are informative but I wish it was a bit shorter as I didn’t feel like it added up with the story. I feel like the whole book is about backstories and hardly any plot. 

Of course I held out for Stella, that doll. But I was also looking forward to the bad guy, Jay Christos. I was hoping it would have more angst to the book as it was falling flat with Lucky and Stella traveling and a lot of other witches' points of view where they are just wringing their hands and hoping for the best with Lucky. Or, completely ignoring the danger that Lucky was in and not telling her. But unfortunately, the bad guy was a miss as well. There’s a few scenes where the character actually acts like a villain but once he meets Lucky, his whole entire personality changes and is acting more like a stalker than a bad guy who’s trying to kill all of the witches. 

I had so many mixed emotions about it that it was severely hard to write a review for it but I did enjoy the book to a certain extent. At the same time, I could have gone without reading it. Which is hard for me to say because normally I don’t say that.

If you enjoy reading; finding oneself, witchy found family, golden girl vibes, and a type of girl power, I can’t say I would recommend it but I wouldn’t not recommend it either.