Kim Harrison
A Fistful of Charms
The Hollows, book 4
Review brought to you by OBS staff member Heidi
This is the fourth book in Kim Harrison’s Hollows series that follows the witch, Rachel Morgan, and her two business partners and friends, Ivy, the living vampire, and Jenks, the pixie.
In book three, Jenks left after Rachel didn’t trust him with a secret and they haven’t spoken since. Now Rachel finally gets her chance to mend things with him when his wife, Matalina, asks for her help. Rachel’s ex-boyfriend, Nick, left town and took Jenk’s and Matalina’s oldest son, Jax, with him. Nick got caught up in some trouble and now Jax is stuck in Michigan, which is too cold for a pixie to survive in this time of year and he has no way back.
Rachel would do anything for Jenks and quickly agrees to go with Jenks, even if she has to force him to take her along. She finds some spells in some demon books that her boyfriend, Kisten, dropped off to help them. One of which makes Jenks big so he can survive the cold of Michigan and can protect Rachel from any vampires that may want to stake a claim on her. The cost of the demon spells is just a little black on Rachel’s soul.
They go to Michigan and find Jax and a new pet he’s taken on, Rex, the kitten. Jax tells them that Nick tried double-crossing some werewolves and was captured and has been beaten. Rachel and Jenks go in to save him and barely escape with their lives, but now the weres are hot on their trail, wanting the artifact that Nick has stolen. With it they can make any human into a were with a simple bite and could therefore take over the world.
Ivy shows up to help out and they formulate a plan to fake Nick’s death and the fake destruction of the artifact.
The books in this series have been hit or miss for me so far. This one fell shy of the mark, in my opinion. It was a slow read for me with the action being spaced out a little too far. And I felt there wasn’t enough Kisten or Trent Kalamack to keep it interesting…in fact Trent never made an appearance, although he was mentioned. Some of the scenes, descriptions, and conversations just seemed to drag on for forever I just found the book to be boring except for a few funny scenes with Jenks. It was fun having Jenks big and unleashing his inner shopper and of course all the girls that came along to ogle him. But I feel that that was the one bright part of the book and everything else dimmed in comparison.
