Having enjoyed the first two entries in the Witches of Thistle Grove series of romances, I was excited to dive into Back in a Spell—especially because the love interest is a nonbinary character. However, between the extremely disappointing nonbinary representation and other narrative decisions, Back in a Spell ended up leaving me cold instead of cozy.

Back in a Spell centers the story of Nineve Blackmoore, a dutiful Blackmoore family member who is nursing a broken heart from a fiancee who left her at the altar. Trying to get back into the dating scene, Nina decides to accept a date with the most unlikely person she can find on a dating app, which happens to be Morty Gutierrez. The same Morty who owns a bar that Nina’s family—with her help—has been aggressively trying to purchase out from under. Strange events end up fostering a magical connection between Nina and the non-magical Morty, including giving Morty magical power, and bringing them closer than ever expected.

This novel has some of my favourite tropes, including magical empathic soulbonds. Nina’s individual character arc of her strange and mysterious connection with an unknown entity was compelling. The chemistry between Morty and Nina when the two of them were on page together was gripping. Certain aspects of Thistle Grove and the worldbuilding within continued to be charming.

Unfortunately, the positives were by and large overshadowed by my qualms with how Morty was handled. I want to start with a disclaimer that nonbinary covers a WIDE range of identities and presentations. There’s no one right way to be nonbinary; many nonbinary folks are comfortable with and even prefer binary pronouns. 

However: When you take the time to include a scene where the protagonist says he uses and welcomes BOTH he and they pronouns, it’s a kick in the teeth to not see a single, solitary instance of ‘they/them’ used to refer to Morty. 

Seriously.

The entire novel, including every character and all of Nina’s internal thoughts, default Morty to ‘he’. Morty does say that they default to ‘he’ at the bar and at home for various reasons, which makes total sense; many nonbinary folks have to navigate a certain degree of fluidity depending on their comfort and safety levels in various situations. But nonbinary and/or genderfluid folks who use pronoun sets like ‘she/they’, ‘he/they’, or ‘she/he/they’ often cite their struggle with everyone defaulting to the binary ones. This is information a cursory Google search could provide.

In fact, aside from the initial pronoun and gender scene/discussion and one very short scene later with Morty’s family… it feels like this novel was conceptualized and drafted as a queer M/F romance and amended to be nonbinary in retrospect. A novel does not need to be an identity story to have respectful inclusion of someone’s identity in meaningful ways. What would have really helped is having chapters from Morty to get some of their perspective, though I understand the decision was probably made to follow the single POV format of the other Thistle Grove novels.

There’re also some inclusions that rung my gender essentialist bell. Aside from multiple casual usages of “guy”, “dude”, “boyish face”, and “boyishly delighted grin” throughout the text—none of which Morty specifically okays—it gets even more uncomfortable during sexual encounters.

During the first sex scene, Nina intuits that Morty feels a “distinctly male undercurrent” of pride in the fact that he’s well-endowed, which pulls a double whammy of misgendering Morty and disregarding trans men who may or may not even have the same genitals at all. Later, Nina is about to perform oral sex on Morty and thinks to herself that it’s been a while since she’s been with a man. Again, Morty clearly states he is fluid and does not ever say they think of themself as a man. Furthermore, not all men have penises, so we have some light transphobia on the side.

All the issues with the nonbinary representation aside, the side characters and family plot of this novel didn’t work for me. Gareth plays a prominent role in this novel and an attempt is made at a redemption arc for him. While I can appreciate that we are more than our mistakes as human, unfortunately, I didn’t buy Gareth’s arc and felt it detracted from the novel. He’s still a jerk, and not a loveable one at that.

There’s also an undercurrent of a familial abuse plotline that ends up being somehow both deeply underdeveloped and cartoonishly evil at the same time. The resolution of this plotline feels random and unearned for how little space it is given on page and how little it is discussed or referenced throughout the novel.

All that being said, I can respect that in all likelihood, Morty’s character was a sincere, earnest attempt at inclusivity. I also firmly believe it falls incredibly short in many ways and could have benefited from one or more sensitivity reads. The copy I received was an advance copy and not final, so it is also possible some of these items will have been changed or amended in the final, published copies.

But between Morty’s representation and the lackluster character arcs and plot resolutions, I can’t recommend Back in a Spell, and I will not be continuing with the Witches of Thistle Grove series.

Thank you to Berkley and NetGalley for an advance review copy. All opinions are my own.