Written by Elizabeth Smith
The Babysitters Coven is a fun adventure in babysitting mixed with lots of action and supernatural powers. Esme Pearl is seventeen. She and her best friend Janis have a babysitters club together, which basically amounts to a shared cell phone and a list of regular clients. When they get together for “meetings”, it is just an excuse to hang out, or go thrift shopping. Both Esme and Janis love fashion and text each other each night to describe their next day’s outfits. I honestly wish I had the fashion sense and confidence in high school that these girls have!
One night while Esme is babysitting Kaitlyn, a regular that requires many bedtime stories before falling asleep, an incident occurs. She hears a sound after putting Kaitlyn to bed and rushes upstairs only to find the door to the little girl’s bedroom locked. After struggling, she finally gets inside and the window is open with little Kaitlyn out on the roof. Esme coaxes her in and gets her back to bed, but is obviously shaken from this incident, however, this is only the beginning.
Strange things begin happening to Esme at school, things she cannot explain. It’s almost as if she is moving things with her mind, but that can’t be possible, right?
Cassandra Heaven is the new girl at school and even though her fashion sense is nothing like Esme and Janis, she still has that cool-girl appeal, like nothing can touch her. She approaches Esme about the babysitters club and just like that, they have a new member after years of it being just the two of them. Janis is wary of the new girl, but Cassandra welcomes her and finds they might have more in common than meets the eye.
Finally, Esme lives with her father. It’s been just the two of them since her mother was sent to live in an institution. Though Esme and her father visit on weekends, Esme still feels unconnected to her mother. She doesn’t really know anything about her past other than the snippets her father has let slip over the years.
I read and adored The Baby-Sitters Club series when I was a kid, so when I first heard about The Babysitters Coven, I was all on board. Give me anything with a supernatural twist and I will devour it, which is exactly what happened with this book. It is a fast read because you will want to pick it up the second you set it down. There were many laugh-out-loud moments as well as times that it made me tear up. It leaves you guessing at the full story until the very end. This is a wonderful first book in a new series that will surely become a new favourite!
The Babysitters Coven is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Adventures in Babysitting meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer in this funny, action-packed novel about a coven of witchy babysitters who realize their calling to protect the innocent and save the world from an onslaught of evil.
Seventeen-year-old Esme Pearl has a babysitters club. She knows it’s kinda lame, but what else is she supposed to do? Get a job? Gross. Besides, Esme likes babysitting, and she’s good at it.
And lately Esme needs all the cash she can get, because it seems like destruction follows her wherever she goes. Let’s just say she owes some people a new tree.
Enter Cassandra Heaven. She’s Instagram-model hot, dresses like she found her clothes in a dumpster, and has a rebellious streak as gnarly as the cafeteria food. So why is Cassandra willing to do anything, even take on a potty-training two-year-old, to join Esme’s babysitters club?
The answer lies in a mysterious note Cassandra’s mother left her: “Find the babysitters. Love, Mom.”
Turns out, Esme and Cassandra have more in common than they think, and they’re about to discover what being a babysitter really means: a heroic lineage of superpowers, magic rituals, and saving the innocent from seriously terrifying evil. And all before the parents get home.
