Mainly by Moonlight

Mainly by Moonlight (2019) Josh Lanyon

Cosmo Saville is a witch–a fact he’s hiding from his soon-to-be husband. But when Cosom discovers that someone put a love spell on John Joseph Galbraith, he insists the spell be removed–even if it causes the wedding to be called off.

And to make things worse, the business meeting (at midnight no less) Cosmo went to found the other party dead in a pool of his own blood and cops banging down the door.

But even though it’s only been two weeks, Cosmo loves John and wants the wedding to go on and the marriage to succeed–even if no one else in either of their families does.

The world building here is interesting. It’s a magic-hidden just out of sight world, however, as fast and loose as Cosmo and their friends play with magic, it seems unlikely magic would really have remained hidden over the years.

The mystery was good, although there is very clearly another book coming in the series. Cosmo may no longer be a suspect, and the book may have been recovered, but there are still a lot of unknowns.

I did really like the hand-fasting ceremony.

“Cosmo and John have chosen to include the traditional handfasting in their ceremony. You may know this ceremony as the basis for such terms as tying the knot or bonded in matrimony. The yoking of their hands symbolizes their love and commitment to each other, but it is not ropes or rings that unite the hearts and bodies of two men for all their lives. Love is not a restraint or restriction or a predicament. Rings may be lost, cords maybe be cut, and bodies will die, but true love is eternal.

That was a lovely bit.

Overall, however, I feel like this story had some big weaknesses. I don’t see how magic would remain hidden if witches all over the world were as lax about hiding what they were as Cosmo and his friends.

And I took issue with this:

After John had left me, I had done a forgetting spell on the building to remove my fingerprints and a forgetting spell on the street to remove my image from any stray security cameras.

Unless it’s a really small town, security camera coverage is pretty ubiquitous; it seems like that would cause more problems than it would solve, and it also seems like an extremely powerful spell to be so broadly employed. And so far, aside from having to keep things secret, there don’t seem to be any downsides to magic use, so I’m not sure what the costs are, which I find problematic.

That’s not to say this is a bad story, only that it has a lot of weaknesses that I wasn’t necessarily expecting. I’ll keep reading, because I do really want to know what happens, but right now this isn’t anything I’d jump to re-read.

Publisher: JustJoshin Publishing, Inc.
Rating: 6/10

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