The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association by Caitlin Rozakis
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy
Representation: Biracial secondary character (spouse), secondary F/F, secondary Black character, secondary Desi character
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
Published on: 27th May 2025
ISBN: B0DFGB9XJQ
Goodreads

Two parents and their recently-bitten-werewolf daughter try to fit into a privileged New England society of magic aristocracy. But deadly terrors await them – ancient prophecies, remorseless magical trials, hidden conspiracies and the PTA bake sale.

When Vivian’s kindergartner, Aria, gets bitten by a werewolf, she is rapidly inducted into the hidden community of magical schools. Reeling from their sudden move, Vivian finds herself having to pick the right sacrificial dagger for Aria, keep stocked up on chew toys and play PTA politics with sirens and chthonic nymphs and people who literally can set her hair on fire.

As Vivian careens from hellhounds in the school corridors and demons at the talent show, she races to keep up with all the arcane secrets of her new society – shops only accessible by magic portal, the brutal Trials to enter high school, and the eternal inferno that is the parents’ WhatsApp group.

And looming over everything is a prophecy of doom that sounds suspiciously like it’s about Aria. Vivian might be facing the end of days, just as soon as she can get her daughter dressed and out of the door…

I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Highlights

~no werewolves CAN’T have chocolate
~deeply suspicious accounting at the PTA
~passing kindergarten is HARD
~smart people go to therapy
~the prophecy says WHAT now???

I was wowed by the cover and delighted by the premise, but I’m still surprised that The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association by Caitlin Rozakis (from hereon referred to as TGGSPTA!) ended up being, not just a fun read, but one that won a spot on my favourites shelf.

(If you are the kind of reader who can read multiple books at once, I STRONGLY recommend reading this alongside Emily Tesh’s Incandescent. That’s how I read them, and they make for such an incredible contrast!)

Cosy fantasy seems to be pretty hard to define, but I lean towards Alexandra Rowland’s take, which is that cosy fantasy (or cosy ANYTHING) needs high tension if it’s going to have low stakes. And on that front, TGGSPTA is a masterclass, because despite the implicit promise of that very bright and cheerful cover, this unexpectedly turned out to be an edge-of-my-seat read – Vivian’s story is immensely stressful, actually! Rozakis had my heart in my throat and my stomach in knots the whole way through – I even burst into tears at one point, just from the overwhelming, grinding misery of Vivian’s situation and headspace. It’s a really fun book, with a very whimsical, funny approach to magic school (especially magical kindergarten) but like, YIKES. I spent the whole book waiting for poor Vivan to have a breakdown, and I wouldn’t have blamed her for it one bit!

But, just as one should not bring a knife to a gunfight, one should not bring brownies to a magic school picnic.

Everything Vivian does is a misstep in the magical community she and her husband David have been forced to join, and any readers who’ve ever struggled with anxiety, or who, like Vivian, are aware of and hate their need to please others, are going to feel their hearts break for this poor woman. From the first pages, when Vivian brings brownies she baked from scratch to a school picnic, only to discover that chocolate anything is a huge faux pas in this crowd (because werewolves, like canines, can’t have any), Vivian is constantly running right into rules no one will explain because they all take them for granted – and being forced to deal with the fact that, as magical parents go, she is wildly inadequate: she can’t access the shops stocking Aria’s school supplies, can’t protect Aria when something magical goes down – she can’t even create a ‘here I am!’ sigil.

“It’s another little cantrip almost anyone can cast. Most families have one, so you can signal your location to each other from far away. It’s a lifesaver in the school pickup line.”

“What’s ours going to be, Mommy?” Aria asked hopefully. “Can it be purple?”

“Mommy can’t make magic fireworks, sweetie,” Vivian said, trying to conceal the wince. “You’ll have to stay close to me, that’s all.”

Aria looked crestfallen. The fact that she didn’t seem disappointed in Vivian, just sad, made it worse.

Parenting a werewolf brings a fair bit of humour to TGGSPTA; I particularly liked Vivian’s quest to make Aria wear booties when she’s indoors in her wolf form, to keep the wooden flooring from being irreparably ruined by claws. And there’s a wonderful wry streak running throughout via the Looks and commentary Vivian and her husband David share whenever something is especially weird – especially because the reader is, naturally, very much with them when it comes to magical people do WHAT?! moments. It’s one of the many ways Rozakis connects us to Vivian, because we’re absolutely sharing her wtf-ery – experiencing what she experiences, right in the moment, making us intensely sympathetic to her.

Of course a siren would run an ad agency. It was probably restful, luring consumers to their doom instead of sailors. Less dead fish smell.

This continues throughout, and I thought it was AMAZINGLY well done. For example: woven into the parenting-a-magical-child issues are the problems every parent faces, magical or mundane. When Vivian and David are discussing whether Aria should be given potions to help her control her shapeshifting, an editor could have replaced all mentions of ‘werewolf’ with ‘ADHD’, ‘potion’ with ‘adderall’, and the scene wouldn’t have altered a whit. Or then there’s the ongoing worry over whether Aria is making friends, and are they good friends, or is there bullying going on – the fact that two of the kids involved are mages doesn’t make it any different than if the situation were set in a normal human kindergarten. And I think this – this anchoring of the fantastical elements into the familiar-and-everyday – is part of the genius of the book; it bridges the gap between reader and fiction beautifully, brings us into the world alongside Vivian, because we know exactly how all of this feels, even if what we’ve gone through didn’t involve fireballs and demon-summoning (hopefully!)

It also creates a really fascinating effect that I’m not sure I’ve seen elsewhere: because the magic is channelled through these very familiar-to-us life experiences, the magic feels less wondrous, but doesn’t become banal. A fair bit of the book could have remained the same if Aria had gone to a school for the super wealthy, for example: the magic of TGGSPTA is in a lot of ways functionally identical to how the wealth/status/prestige would have worked in that scenario. Vivian would still have been an outsider, still blundering over rules no one would explain, still struggling to be accepted in this new community if the issue was money rather than magic.

This could have reduced the magic to set-dressing, nothing but an aesthetic, but I actually found that it made Vivian’s story feel much more real and immediate. I could believe in this community, that the parents around a school like Grimoire Grammar would be like this – sure, they can enchant a spilled drink back into the glass, or talk to ghosts, or turn clouds into vehicles, but they also gossip, worry themselves sick over how to get their kids into a good high school, and start drama in the groupchat. Their cavalier approach to magic helped make them all feel human (even the ones who aren’t!)

And that Vivan throws herself into mastering this new world she finds herself in – that she does so without going all starry-eyed to have found herself in a fantasy novel – that she sees it only in terms of how her comfort with magic will reflect well on Aria and help Aria’s uncertain position here – it’s so convincing! Because yes: would any (good) parent allow themselves to lose themselves in how strange/cool/epic this all is, when their kid’s welfare is at stake? No! No they wouldn’t! I could absolutely believe that Vivian would forget to feel wonder when she’s terrified any misstep will get Aria expelled or socially excluded! She has no TIME for that; she has to Get It Right, for Aria.

Which is extremely stressful. I just – I cannot overstate how sympathetic and believable Vivian is as a character. Even when she messes up big time – I thought she was very much in the wrong, but I could absolutely see how it happened. There’s a moment when Vivian is furious because two girls have done something pretty terrible to Aria, but the parents brush it off – and Vivian freezes. On the one hand, she should absolutely blow up at these awful people, protect her daughter; on the other hand, if she does so, what if these people completely cut her off and she loses the fragile inroads she’s made here? What if no one lets their kids play with Aria any more because her mom is rude/scary/a freak with a temper?

Folx, this is the first time in my LIFE I understood a parent not immediately blowing up in defense of their kid. I have the strictest parenting standards, you have no idea, and I’ve always been very unforgiving of parents who bow to social pressure when their kid needs them. But Rozakis made me get it. Please give her MANY points for being the first to manage to get this through my skull!

There’s something painfully ironic in the fact that Rozakis made me understand it perfectly – but Vivian can’t explain it to David in a way that makes sense. Honestly, the way all of these stresses affect her and David’s relationship was also immensely believable, and I both loved their dynamic, and loved how carefully Rozakis handled what this situation could do to a marriage – even a strong and healthy one.

I also really appreciated the frank, undramatic approach to Vivian’s anxiety and guilt and trauma – turns out it’s actually pretty traumatic to see your daughter attacked by a werewolf, who would have guessed. Vivian is undergoing therapy! I am extremely impressed! I can’t remember the last time I saw an adult character attending therapy, and I love how it was normalised here.

That did make it extra jarring to see ‘schizophrenic’ used to describe a chaotic room – in all other respects, TGGSPTA is very inclusive and considerate; there’s a great amount of diversity among the secondary cast, especially. My fingers are crossed that the line is fixed in the final version of the book (I read an advanced reader copy, after all, changes can be made between that and the version published on release day).

But that is literally the only critique I have for this book! And you must admit that is a very small thing to critique! Everything else (so, virtually everything!) is PERFECT. Even the whole prophecy thing – I despise prophecy plotlines, but I was so happy with how this one played out in TGGSPTA! Just like I fell head over heels for Vivian, despite her being a person/character I would have thought would annoy me. But no: as I said at the start, I felt for her so much, and I fully credit that to Rozakis’ excellent character work, and whatever magic is in her writing that turned my empathy up to 11. And in-between playing my heart like a yo-yo, there was so much laughter here – the announcements from the school notification system at the start of every chapter had me in freaking STITCHES.

Giggles, all the Feels, delightful magic, fantastic characters – TGGSPTA has everything, and I loved it. I LOVED it.

You can be sure I’ll be grabbing a copy of Rozakis’ previous book next, and any others she writes in the future!

Related Posts