Diary of an Accidental Witch: Magic Ever After

By Author / Illustrator

Honor and Perdita Cargill, Katie Saunders

Genre

Magical Realism

Age range(s)

Publisher

Little Tiger Press Group

ISBN

9781788956109

Format

Paperback / softback

Published

04-01-2024

Synopsis

Tuesday 12th April: We're all still talking about our plans for the holidays and Fabi has had a GENIUS idea. When I get back from visiting my grandparents, we're going to have a Finkelspark Club May Day treehouse sleepover. Can't wait.

The school holidays are coming up and Bea is excited to see family, practise magic and spend time with ALL her friends! It'd be perfect, except something's up. Dad is OBSESSED with learning magic (he can't even levitate a pea!) and Taffy keeps having to do some SERIOUS THINKING. What's going on?

Then Bea finds out Dad and Taffy's secret... They want to get married! Bea's To-Do list just got a lot longer - she's got a wedding day to plan, MORE secrets to keep and magic to learn teach! With help from her family and friends (new, old and VERY OLD), Bea is determined to make everything PERFECT and throw the best party of the year EVER!

A perfect potion of magic and mischief, Diary of an Accidental Witch is The Worst Witch meets Tom Gates. "Great fun!" - iPaper. "Full of magical mayhem!" - BookTrust. "A brilliant, hilarious story!" - Emma Carroll, author of The Week at World's End.

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Reviews

Diary of an Accidental Witch: Magic Ever After is book six in a sparkling series that will have its young readers spellbound.

As always, young student witch Bea Black opens her delightful, dramatic diary to us and we follow the next installment in her lively, family, friend and frog-focused life ! Bea's witchy and non-witchy worlds are about to collide in the most romantic, love-struck way when all of Dad and girlfriend Taffy's serious THINKING is revealed as the super-exciting news that they plan to get married! Dad is even more desperate to learn levitation, spell casting and more as soon both his daughter and new wife's magical marvelousness will leave him outnumbered. There are not one but two weddings to plan and Bea's first Eggstraordinary Eggy Day event to experience at witch school.

Magic Ever After lives up to its name - it is a joy to read and being reunited with Bea, Stan the frog and friends is such a warm, cosy and fun feeling. I love the tone of Bea's diaries - all high-octane energy, impulsiveness, witty observations - and sometimes a pure sense of panic, ALWAYS with a sense of slight chaos and calamity being just round the corner.

The possible perils and disasters are all warmly written about and filled with good humour, however. The reader puts their trust in Bea completely to navigate through this next round of perplexing potions to figure out and lost wands. "I am not used to French people falling out of chimneys..." writes Bea, on Friday 29th April.

I have grown so fond of the cast of the Accidental Witch books but it was a delight to welcome new witches into the story with the unexpected arrival of Monsieur Froufrou (fabulous French magical wedding dress designer), bringing with him glittering designs and a sense of excitement. Bea is set to be no ordinary bridesmaid but a vision of magical wonder as a "wing-girl". Even the non-magical wedding (ceremony No 1) isn't going to remain untouched by the shimmer and glimmer of magic, not with the guests including a mini pig named Excalibur and numerous cats and bats.

I love that book six wraps up all Bea's most beloved and precious people together in heart-warming celebrations. The charming narrative that authors Perdita and Honor Cargill created through Bea Black, the wonderfully warm and fun illustrations by Katie Saunders and the cast of so many lovable, positive characters, has been the real spell cast by this series of books. Utterly amazing.

256 pages / Reviewed by Jennifer Caddick, teacher