Sarah O'Connor

“No matter what, you will always be loved. You cannot mess up so badly that you will not be loved,” (Anders 161)

Twenty-something Jamie is working on her PhD dissertation, in a strong relationship with their partner Ro, processing their generational trauma, and is a practicing witch. She has a fraught relationship with her mother, Serena, who has isolated herself from the world after the death of her wife and blowing up her career. Jamie tries to help her mother by teaching her magic, but one working together leads to a domino effect neither of them will see coming.

I’ve heard great things about Charlie Jane Anders, and when finding out one of my friends was starting this book decided to do a buddy read together. Neither of us had reader anything by Anders before but had heard good things. Unfortunately for us, I don’t think this was a good book for us to start.

Lessons in Magic and Disaster was such a struggle to get through. While I enjoyed how magic worked in this world there just wasn’t enough of it, and the conversations on grief never really got to where I would have liked them to be. From Jamie’s dissertation to her researching to dealing with Serena and then learning her and Mae’s backstory, getting excerpts from Jamie’s research pieces and other large and small conflicts throughout the story it started feeling like, what’s the point of it all?

There’s a lot of academic jargon in the novel, which, I get, is the point when one of your protagonists is a PhD student, but it felt like I was being lectured too while reading this book. I enjoyed university and lectures (nerd alert, I know) but this was overkill. And not only is the book written that way, but the characters also speak to each other like they’re each giving a lecture and constantly talking about different theories to each other which just isn’t realistic. And not only is there a lot of academic jargon, the book is littered with therapy speak. The conversations and book as a whole comes out feeling sanitized and robotic. I understand the importance of therapy and having good communication practices with those around you, but while there’s an ideal to put things into practice having the characters speak to each other in this way felt completely unreal. It’s unfortunate because one of the conflicts that happens in the book is completely relatable with what’s happening currently at the University of Oklahoma, but even the seriousness of that felt numb.

I’m sure Charlie Jane Anders is a great writer, their accolades speak for themselves, but she really lost me with this book. I won’t say I won’t read her again, but I will unfortunately be very hesitant to do so considering what a slog it was to finish this book.

Publication: August 19 2025
Publisher: Tor Books
Pages: 320 pages (Hardcover)
Source: Library
Genre: Fiction, Queer
My Rating: ⛤⛤
Summary:

Jamie is basically your average New England academic in-training–she has a strong queer relationship, an esoteric dissertation proposal, and inherited generational trauma. But she has one extraordinary secret: she’s also a powerful witch.
Serena, Jamie’s mother, has been hiding from the world in an old one-room schoolhouse for several years, grieving the death of her wife and the simultaneous explosion in her professional life. All she has left are memories.
Jamie’s busy digging into a three-hundred-year-old magical book, but she still finds time to teach Serena to cast spells and help her come out of her shell. But Jamie doesn’t know the whole story of what happened to her mom years ago, and those secrets are leading Serena down a destructive path.
Now it’s up to this grad student and literature nerd to understand the secrets behind this mysterious novel from 1749, unearth a long-buried scandal hinted therein, and learn the true nature of magic, before her mother ruins both of their lives.