Possibly my favourite read of Spooktober 2025, Adrienne Young’s Spells for Forgetting crept up on me, taking my easy weekend reading time to the next level with no breaks and an impatient need to get the answers I so desperately needed. The vibes are immaculate, marrying witchy fantasy eeriness with a small town (or, in this case, a small island) mystery that is all parts intriguing, twisted, and intense.

Emery Blackwood’s life changed forever the night her best friend was found dead and the love of her life, August Salt, was accused of murdering her. Years later, she is doing what her teenage self swore she never would: living a quiet existence on the misty, remote shores of Saoirse Island and running the family’s business, Blackwood’s Tea Shoppe Herbal Tonics & Tea Leaf Readings. But when the island, rooted in folklore and magic, begins to show signs of strange happenings, Emery knows that something is coming. The morning she wakes to find that every single tree on Saoirse has turned colour in a single night, August returns for the first time in fourteen years and unearths the past that the town has tried desperately to forget. August knows he is not welcome on Saoirse, not after the night everything changed. As a fire raged on at the Salt family orchard, Lily Morgan was found dead in the dark woods, shaking the bedrock of their tight-knit community and branding August a murderer. When he returns to bury his mother’s ashes, he must confront the people who turned their backs on him and face the one wound from his past that has never healed—Emery. But the town has more than one reason to want August gone, and the emergence of deep betrayals and hidden promises spanning generations threaten to reveal the truth behind Lily’s mysterious death once and for all.

Spells for Forgetting felt so well-balanced and engaging as a read, with its blend of fantasy and magical realism pairing so well with the mystery aspects of this novel, not to mention the romance that is right up my alley with its second chance childhood friends-turned-lovers to whatever this was. The emotion was so tangible for both Emery and August, the tension palpable, and the pressures of the small community gossip only too believable. Everything works in this story, but it doesn’t give it away. You will stunned and shocked and riddled with excitement for the next chapter and the next.

I love these kinds of vibes in a read like this, which goes to show how wonderful of a scenic setting the Pacific Northwest is. It has been the setting for Wild is the Witch and The Nature of Witches from what I recall, but it still carries that coastal feeling befitting for locations like the many isles throughout the United Kingdom. I am requesting The Unmaking of June Farrow as soon as the library website decides it wants to cooperate because I need more of this witchy magical writing from Adrienne Young.

This is the perfect witchy read for those not wanting to get too into the characterisation of witches. A little magical realism here. A little superstitious small town who can’t mind there own business there. Definitely a book that needs to be on the tbrs of you low fantasy romance readers, or any fantasy readers who like real world settings and real world problems. I wholeheartedly enjoyed Spells for Forgetting, and I can see myself rereading this in a few months time, so it might make it onto my bookshelf at some point before then.