Blog Tour Review: Now, Conjurers by Freddie Kölsch

Jenny (jenjenreviews)

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Paranormal mystery/thriller mixed with a little bit of horror

Thank you so much to TBR and Beyond Tours and Freddie Kölsch for allowing me to be part of this experience and also providing me with a complimentary copy and media kit!

Book Information

Genre: Young Adult Horror
Publishing Date: June 4, 2024

November 1999. North Dana, Massachusetts.

Nesbit Nuñez discovers the partially devoured body of Bastion Attia: star quarterback, secret witch, and Nesbit’s even-more-secret boyfriend.
No one knew why brilliant, gentle Bastion lived his life by a seemingly arcane set of rules, including a strange manner of speech and an inability to say his own name.

Now the remaining members of North Coven—Nesbit, Dove, Drea, and Brandy—vow to get answers. Nothing can prepare them for what they uncover: Bastion had been locked in a terrifying battle of wits and wills with something living deep beneath an ancient mausoleum in the local
cemetery.

North Coven must confront the red-gloved monster that took piece after piece of Bastion, that he fought until his last breath. Not knowing that Bastion left behind the key to its destruction . . .

Now, Conjurers is a wildly original, spine-chilling YA debut about queer found family and a love that outlasts death.

Content Warning: death, gore, child abuse, homophobia

Book Links

About the Author

Freddie Kölsch is a connoisseur and crafter of frightful fiction (with a dash of hope) for teens and former teens. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts with her high school sweetheart-turned-wife, a handful of cats, a houseful of art, and a mind’s eye full of ghosts. Now, Conjurers is her first novel.

Author Links:

Review (no spoilers)

If you’d like to follow along with the rest of the tour, you can find the tour schedule here.

Now, Conjurers is a story about a group of teenage witches trying to figure out what killed their friend and how to stop it before it kills again. Not only was the head of their coven suddenly found brutally murdered, but now nobody—other than them—seems to remember that he even existed. To put a stop to the madness before more innocent people are harmed, the group will be forced to explore whether their powers are actually strong enough to kill the thing that probably gave it to them in the first place.

It took a while for me to get into this book because it’s got a more gothic-feel than what I normally read. The narration is also written in a way that it feels like Nesbit (the narrator) is talking directly to the reader, which is another thing I’m not used to experiencing. Throughout the book he even gives you specific hints as to what’s about to happen and which characters will pop back up again later. I would say that things picked up for me around the 60% mark as the background story of what exactly happened to Bastion really began to unwind around that point.

This book had very similar vibes to to the darker paranormal/supernatural teenage shows that I’ve watched before (think: Scream, Sabrina, Riverdale), leading me to believe that it would do really well as a series adaptation. I have a hard time narrowing the story down to one specific genre because I think it’s much more involved than a classic YA horror. There is a lot of witty banter, a non-linear timeline, a haunting murder mystery, and the nostalgia that often comes along with moody stories that take place in the 90s.

I would have to say that the best part of this novel was the characters variety and depth. The cast is a mixture of teenagers and adults from various ethnicities, religions, social positions, and sexualities. As the reader, you are told everything through Nesbit’s point of view, but you still learn so much about the people that surround him: their personalities, their relationships, their humor, their strengths/weaknesses, and their motivations. The ending is a bit open, but I’m hoping for the best for every last one of them.

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