Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted over at Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about but haven’t yet read. Most of the time they’re books that have yet to be released, but not always. It’s based on the Waiting on Wednesday meme, which was originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.
This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is The Invocations by Krystal Sutherland!
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy
Published on: 30th January 2024
Goodreads
From the author of New York Times bestseller House of Hollow comes a darkly seductive witchy thriller where, though both men and demons lurk in shadows, girls refuse to go quietly into the night.
Zara Jones believes in magic because the alternative is too painful to bear—that her sister was murdered by a serial killer and there is precisely nothing she can do to change it. If there’s anything Zara cannot stand it's feeling powerless, so she decides she will do whatever it takes—even if that means partaking in the occult—to bring her sister back from the dead.
Jude Wolf might be the daughter of a billionaire, but she is also undeniably cursed. After a deal with a demon went horribly wrong, her soul is now slowly turning necrotic. Flowers and insects die in her wake and monstrous things come to taunt her at night. If Jude can’t find the right someone to fix her mistake, she fears she’ll die very soon.
Enter Emer Bryne: the solution to both Zara's and Jude's predicaments. The daughter of a witch, Emer sells spells to women in desperate situations willing to sacrifice a part of their soul in exchange for a bit of power, a bit of magic to change their lives. But Emer has a dark past all her own—and as her former clients are murdered one-by-one, she knows it’s followed her all the way to London.
As Zara and Jude enter Emer's orbit, they'll have to team up to stop the killer—before they each end up next on his list.
I really enjoyed the decadent prose and eerie strangeness of Sutherland’s debut, House of Hollow, so hearing that her next book was going to be about teenage witches? Oh HELLS yes!
The blurb is giving me some of the same vibes as Claire Legrand’s Sawkill Girls – which is great, since that’s one of my all-time faves. Wild girls, girls willing to be not-nice, girls who are raging and dangerous and powerful – that’s my catnip, and Invocations sounds like it’s going to deliver in spades. ‘though both men and demons lurk in shadows, girls refuse to go quietly into the night’??? GIMME!
I love that one of the major driving forces of the story is a bond between sisters – I am SO HERE for siblings going to the end of the world for each other, or in this case, trading part of their souls! I’m already rooting for Zara hard. I really hope she can bring her sister back.
There’s plenty of intriguing hints in the blurb about the worldbuilding here – demons exist in this ‘verse; what are they, where do they come from, what can they do? What do they want souls (or bits of them) for? What makes a witch? What can they do? Given how unexpected and unique the twist was in House of Hollow, I doubt that Sutherland’s going to present us with anything simple and/or predictable, and I already know she can weave the intoxicating, uncanny atmosphere that goes great with supernatural elements.
Suffice to say, I am EXCITED!
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