Her Majesty's Royal Coven by Juno Dawson

 Different women, different locations, different lives but with one thing in common: they are Sisters in the Craft of witchy excellence. Despite their differences, they muddle through their lives, helping ordinary humans ('mundanes') and protecting the planet where they can.

That is, until a strange teenager shows up who can carry out very powerful magics. Throw in a prophecy about a child who will bring about the apocalypse, and everyone gets quite rightly worried. While some want to help the child, others want to bring about destruction on the pretext of saving the Coven and humanity at large. But who is right? And who will win?

I really enjoyed this page turner of a novel from Juno Dawson, the first in a series, and I am excited to read the next instalment. Fundamentally, this is a book about women: women's lives, women's relationships, and how cis women react to the idea of a transwoman trying to join the sisterhood. Although some part of the narrative were triggering, this was well done in order to explore the reasons behind fear of transwomen. It portrayed the fear experienced by a young transwoman very well too.

The only comment I would make is that I felt the novel was spoiled somewhat by the amount of swearing, which would also make me cautious about recommending it as a YA read, and the words were thrown about without enough thought in my opinion. The littered the text and became less powerful through overuse. Aside from that, I found the novel to be very hard to stop reading, and it was a real page turner. I cannot wait to find out what happens next!


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