Review - The Babysitters Coven

The Babysitters Coven

​​by Kate Williams

​​368 pages

​​Release date 9/17/2019

​​5 out of 5 stars

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​​According to the publisher,“Seventeen-year-old Esme Pearl has a babysitters club. She knows it's kinda lame, but what else is she supposed to do? Get a job? Gross. Besides, Esme likes babysitting, and she's good at it.

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​​And lately Esme needs all the cash she can get, because it seems like destruction follows her wherever she goes. Let's just say she owes some people a new tree.

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​​Enter Cassandra Heaven. She's Instagram-model hot, dresses like she found her clothes in a dumpster, and has a rebellious streak as gnarly as the cafeteria food. So why is Cassandra willing to do anything, even take on a potty-training two-year-old, to join Esme's babysitters club?

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​​The answer lies in a mysterious note Cassandra's mother left her: "Find the babysitters. Love, Mom."

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​​Turns out, Esme and Cassandra have more in common than they think, and they're about to discover what being a babysitter really means: a heroic lineage of superpowers, magic rituals, and saving the innocent from seriously terrifying evil. And all before the parents get home.”

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​​This is the perfect book for Halloween!!!!

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​​I stumbled on this book completely by accident and I could not be happier that I did!  To start with, the cover is so incredibly cute;  I try to not “judge a book by its cover” but I could just not pass this one up!  

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​​I also absolutely adore the premise of this book - a high school outsider trying to survive a boring town gets the surprise of her life when she finds out she has supernatural powers.  She makes a new friend, meets a cute boy, and fights off demons to save the world.  These things sound like they could be ripped directly from a bad 80s movie, and this book could have gone in a totally different direction.  The author displays a sense of self-awareness throughout the book that makes these plot points campy rather than cheesy; she is definitely in on the joke along with the reader.  There are definitely some unbelievable moments, but I think you have to take that as part of the package in a book of this sort.

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​​There is a lot going on in this book:  the dynamics of female friendship, navigating high school when you’re not one of the cool kids, family relationships, romance, and of course a town full of witches and spooky demons.  There is also a lot of information that gets left out - the witches have some kind of other dimensional government? But this is supposed to be the first book in a series, so I’m hoping many of my questions would be answered in future books.

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​​I do want to point out one confusing thing:  my library had this book listed as Young Adult, and I have seen that online as well, however there are some cultural references in the book that I think would be lost on actual high school students.  So while this is technically a YA book, I think adult readers would find it much more enjoyable.

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​​I definitely predict that this will be adapted into a Netflix original movie at some point in time and it will be amazing! Get your copy of this book so can say you read the book first!