SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Mr. and Mrs. Witch by Gwenda Bond

 



Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on March 7, 2023 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Mr. and Mrs. Witch is a fantasy romance novel written by author Gwenda Bond. The book is, as you might imagine from the title, a riff on the movie "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", where Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play a married couple who, unbeknownst to each other, are each contract assassins who wind up getting assigned to kill the other. Only here, in this novel our just about to get married protagonists are Savvy - a witch who secretly works for an organization tries to stop supernatural threats from arising around the globe - and Griffin - a human hunter of the supernatural who works for an organization that opposes the Witches and sees them as one of those supernatural threats. Naturally just as they're about to get married the secret comes out, leading to a conflict of fighting...and love.

The result is a book that sometimes feels a bit rushed with character development and actions and certainly has a setting and plot that doesn't make too much sense if you try to think too hard about it....but is still incredibly fun and breezy and a very enjoyable romance. The chemistry between Savvy and Griffin works really well, the side characters are amusing if not deep at all, and the story makes good use of its premise to fill a short but enjoyable romance. There's little actually surprising here and some things are resolved way too easily, but well - I didn't expect anything else, so I could hardly be disappointed. In short, if you pick this up, you know what you're getting and you will be pretty much satisfied.

Plot Summary:

Savvy and Griffin are about to get married - something neither of them ever thought would ever happen. It's not just that the two of them were single loners who'd never had a lasting relationship before. It's also the fact that well, Savvy is a witch and a member of C.R.O.N.E. (Covert Responses to Occult Nightmares by Enchantresses), a secret organization of witches dedicated to using their magic in order to stop occult threats around the world, an organization Savvy had previously dedicated her whole life to. Now she has Griffin, and even if she isn't allowed to tell him who she really is, he gives her something else in her life, something that she now realizes she was always missing.

Of course for Griffin, it's also the fact that he's an agent of H.U.N.T.E.R. (Humans Undertaking Nocturnal Terror and Evil Reduction), an agency of human men who go around the world taking down supernatural threats before they cause major problems. It's the rival organization to C.R.O.N.E. - indeed they used to hunt Witches in the past - and also a secret one, so Griffin has posed as a professor and antiquities scholar to Savvy and other outsiders. Griffin hates having to hide this truth from Savvy, who he thinks is just a PR person for multiple multinational organizations, but having Savvy in his life more than makes up for it. And soon they're about to be married.

Of course when the ancient leaders of CRONE - the witch Circe - and HUNTER - the hunter known as the Butcher - show up at the wedding, well eventually all hell breaks lose, revealing to Savvy and Griffin the other's secret identities...and putting the two on a collison course where each is supposed to kill the other for their betrayal. But as events get even more chaotic, and both Savvy and Griffin find themselves hunted by their own orders, they find themselves wondering: do they really want to hurt the other? Or perhaps is love worth one more try....assuming they can get out of the situation alive first?

Mr. and Mrs. Witch doesn't spend a long time getting into the thick of its plot - it takes just three chapters for the protagonists' secret identities to be revealed and for things in the present timeline to fall into chaos, which makes sense given well, if you're reading a book with this title, you know what has to happen so no reason to slowplay it out! The book however occassionally flashes back to significant moments in the past to show how Savvy and Griffin met, how they fell in love, how their relationship played out, etc. These ditties work very well because Bond manages to really make the chemistry between Savvy and Griffin work - neither of them are normal individuals (although Griffin's claims to lack charm and suave seems clearly false from what we see) and they might each be a little cartoonish, but hey, that's the type of book it is and you can see how they each fall for each other immediately...even if you're like me and instant hot attraction and one night stands aren't exactly something you've ever felt on your own.

And in the present timeline, well, things work almost equally as well as the two first deal with their feelings of betrayal and then eventually get back together for steamy sex (albeit in very brief sex scenes) and then an alliance to figure out what's really going on behind their orders' reactions to their relationship. The story does at times feel like it's skipping through emotional developments - Savvy and Griffin act betrayed and come to the decision to kill the other ridiculously quickly for two people who were so in love, have one confrontation where they realize they can't do it, and then fall back together almost immediately - but again, this is a book where those plot developments are so expected, and Savvy and Griffin's characters and dialogue are done so well, that it's hard to care too much. And the side characters - from the their CRONE and HUNTER friends, to Savvy's familiar Paris, to one surprise side character who I kinda loved and who I won't spoil - work really well to keep the book always light and charming and fun.

Again there isn't much depth here really, and it probably falls apart if you think about it too hard. The action scenes aren't remarkable, the Witch powers seem far more powerful than the Hunter technology, the antagonists turn out to be cartoonishly evil and way too easy to defeat, the surprise last act plot twist is predictable, and the side characters often have little depth besides their bubbly dialogue and how they relate to the main characters (or well a few of them have hints of such depth but there's no time to explore them). Yet that all really doesnt matter too much. You've got here a fun romance, some enjoyable dialogue, and a world that's light and amusing even in its darkest parts. All in all, a very satisfyingly enjoyable brief fantasy romance, and exactly what Mr. and Mrs. Witch promises in the title. Can't complain about any of that.