witchbuns

Rebecca Serle, 2026

4.5 Stars for Making Choices.

This was an absolute feast of a book, with the narrating laying out almost as a suspense novel to me, with gentle notes of romance. We begin with Lauren sharing that her father died in a car accident, but he reappears at the end of the first chapter, and we learn that the females in her family receive a magical silver ticket that offer a way back to an earlier choice in time. The suspense is how she will use her ticket and when, but the story expands to three narrators with each of the women in her family storytelling, and it’s a short but thorough saga of family legacy, home, and accepting fate. 

I ache for this book because it’s about intersection of choice and love, and we see characters making mistakes on all sides. As my first Rebecca Serle novel, I found strong story crafting, multi-layered heroines, and surprises in where she took the story. The narration is almost a steady heartbeat, moving forward while placing settings and characters naturally into scenes. It was masterful and I wish I’d slown to savour it more, but I was propelled forward to learn the resolution. 

The one area where I personally wanted more was in the love story with Leo, because we meet him when they are apart and he spends most of the novel away from her. Later areas of the novel would have been more impactful if we’d spent more time to understand their story, with perhaps just one more scene of them on a date where we see their feelings simmer.  

Overall, I will be re-reading this book to spend time with the characters, perhaps as an audiobook, because I want to live in this story for a longer time. 

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.