Secret Magic: Evie Everyday Witch #1 is a super cute book about being careful what you wish for. All Evie wants is to be "normal". After she and her parents move to a new "normal" town, she finally gets the opportunity. However, this wish will come at a price. Will Evie discover the truth behind what is happening in Wyndemere or will she be too blinded by the need to fit in?

I read this book twice because I felt I must have missed something the first time. I rushed through it the first time because Evie annoyed me so much. After a bit of time passed, it hit me. She reminded me of myself when I was her age. I was so desperate to fit in that I completely ignored my own interests in an attempt to get people to like me and not think I was weird. I also found myself being rude to certain individuals who did accept me regardless of what I liked because they also did not fit in. This was a brutally relatable read and I wish it had been available to me when I was in Elementary school. 

*I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Rating: 4/5 ★★★★☆

Book & Author Information:

Book: Goodreads

Elena Paige: Goodreads, Twitter, Official Site

It has become an annual tradition for me to list off my favorites in various categories at the beginning of each new year. 2020 was a weird year for everyone. For me, it changed and delayed many of my normal media consumption habits. Depression settled in and kept me company for the majority of the year. I got behind (or just plain missed) so many things that I normally love. This year there will be no overview of the films I watched. I only watched 65 movies...only one or two new to me. I normally struggle to reduce my list of favorite songs...not for 2020. My main method of escapism was through books...so if anything, that list has been made more difficult. This is where we will start.

The twenty books I enjoyed the most in 2020:

1.  I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara 
2. Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide by Karen Kilgariff & Georgia Hardstark
3. Armstrong: The Adventurous Journey of a Mouse to the Moon by Torben Kuhlmann
4. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami & Philip Gabriel (Translator)
5. The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia by Candace Fleming
6. People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo - and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up by Richard Lloyd Parry
7. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #1) by Rick Riordan
8. Virginia Wolf by Kyo Maclear & Isabelle Arsenault (Illustrator)
9. And The Ocean Was Our Sky by Patrick Ness & Rovina Cai (Illustrations)
10. The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada & David Boyd (Translator)
11. Axiom's End (Noumena #1) by Lindsay Ellis
12. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata & Ginny Tapley Takemori (Translator)
13. The Tea Dragon Festival (Tea Dragon #2) by Katie O'Neill
14. Wonderland by Zoje Stage
15. The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin
16. Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables #1) by L.M. Montgomery
17. Mouse Scouts (Mouse Scouts #1) by Sarah Dillard
18. The Merciless (The Merciless #1) by Danielle Vega
19. The Adventures of Sophie Mouse: A New Friend (The Adventures of Sophie Mouse #1) by Poppy Green
20. Secrets at Sea by Richard Peck & Kelly Murphy (Illustrator)