Spell Bound picks up from the cliff hanger ending of Waking the Witch and is the 12th and penultimate novel in Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld series. This review may spoil your enjoyment of the earlier books if you’re not up to date…and if not, why not?

Savannah has made her accidental bargain with a demon and lost her powers but she is determined that no one will find out and she’ll get them back before anyone notices. In the meantime she still has to stop that witch hunter and work out her feelings towards Adam.

Waking the Witch was very much a coming of age story for Savannah but she seems to have regressed to a sulky, unforgiving teenager for much of the book. Of course this could be blamed on her loss of magic but I wasn’t buying it and I didn’t really enjoy her narration. The whole Savannah and Adam thing is drawn out too long and starts to get annoying.

Perhaps Spell Bound is setting up some ideas for the final novel in the series. There seemed a lot of threads to the plot but nothing substantial. There was the continuation of the story from Waking the Witch with the witch hunters and Savannah’s desire to put things right, a secret organisation plotting to unveil the supernatural world and a shady group of immortality questers. Not to mention the fragile bonds of Savannah’s unconventional family. The novel seems quite short and it’s just too much to fit in.

I hope the series returns to form for the final instalment, I would hate it to end on a sour note. I would like to know more about what happened to Bryce and hope this will be dealt with before Kelley puts the Otherworld to rest.