witchbuns

Catherine Walsh, 2026

Four big stars for this being a quiet but feisty escape read with a strong female lead who kept surprising me and making me laugh. This is the story of a daughter reconciling her father’s death by constructing the final missing book in his fantasy series opus, and the nerd boy editor that finds her in a small Irish village and ultimately helps her reconstruct the other parts of herself, the writing and non-writing parts. This builds a solid swoon between the two of them, plus great bits from the side characters that expand their community and make you want to hop on a stool in a dark bar and listen in further. 

What separates this book from other rom coms with similar titles to me was the conflict of Ciara and her father’s fanbase. What an incredible concept to write from – the father that she wanted to be closer to left behind a legacy of fandom that she feels  disconnected from and resents openly. She sees them as taking away her writing career, a piece of herself that she developed to share with her father. And now she’s taking the series to the end, writing in a new genre and mourning him in the shadows of his house. I wanted to hang out in that conflict for longer, with 50 more pages that developed Ciara writing the middle and ends of the book, developing the storyline and playing at worldbuilding with Sam, all while weighing the odds of that fandom and how she leads them to the conclusion. God, I can see the montage! The descriptions of the map-making by her father and the connection to locations in Ireland were really fascinating and I think there’s more there to explore. 

Overall – This was a fabulous read and I loved the writer’s voice, I just wanted it to extend the world, with a deeper second act. Where this book twisted in the second half I wanted a chunk of time where the two built their relationship, wrote and edited and slow burned to the end. I wanted to see Ciara find acceptance in her identity as a writer while continuing her father’s work, and I wanted to see more of Sam learning that editing is not his true life’s purpose, because he needs to live in his own story. There’s such great detail to chew on here and the characters were so vivid, I just wanted to pull up that stool for longer.

Thank you to Dutton publishing and Catherine Walsh for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.