Books book reviews An Unlikely Coven by AM Kvita Is Full of Delightful Shenanigans If you’re chasing a sense of belonging in what can feel like an ever-more-alienating real world, An Unlikely Coven is the book you need. By Jenny Hamilton | Published on January 15, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Joan Greenwood is not excited to come back to New York. Scratch that: She’s excited about the New York part, and the reuniting with her vampire bestie part, and the finished her architecture degree part, but not so much about returning to the bosom of her family. The Greenwoods are the most powerful magical family in New York, counting among their number the Head and High Witch of New York and Manhattan (Joan’s aunt), and the Head Witch’s eagerly cutthroat planned successor (Joan’s father). And then there’s Joan, the only talentless Greenwood witch in living memory, a perpetual disappointment to her family. Still, home she goes, arriving to rumors that someone’s managed to cast a spell transforming a regular human into a powerful witch—rumors that, if true, have the potential to destroy the power Joan’s family have amassed in New York, not to mention the delicate ecosystem of mutual tolerance between the witches and New York’s other magical communities. Joan’s happy this is none of her business, except that the next phone call she gets is from her vampire bestie, CZ, anxiously confessing that the rumors are true, and the new witch is real, and in fact CZ has rescued them from the Night Market and is sheltering them at his apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. He needs help keeping the new witch, named Mik, safe from the magical communities that are now ravenous to find them. This is not a problem Joan is well-equipped to solve, given that she can’t do a single spell without it going completely haywire. As that description probably conveys, An Unlikely Coven is what I call hi-jinks literature: the type of book that scatters complications like jacks, only to amaze and astonish you by scooping them all back up in a great big finish at the end. A debut novelist has to be wildly ambitious to take on a cast as big as this book has—we’ve got Joan, her family, her bestie, the new witch, the witches that show up from California to cause problems, the vampire leaders, and the consultant brought on to solve the making-new-witches problem—and Kvita manages it handily. Buy the Book An Unlikely Coven AM Kvita Buy Book An Unlikely Coven AM Kvita Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Among the elements that go into making a book, plot can fly under the radar. We notice big twists and turns, but a well-functioning plot can act as the instrument of its own concealment. It’s like a hot water heater, not noticeable unless it stops working. (Ask me how I know.) So I want to take a moment to admire the quiet competence of Kvita’s plot work, where every cog in the machine does its job smoothly, leading us to a satisfyingly dramatic conclusion. The story of regular human Mik being transformed into a witch could have led to a straightforward MacGuffin hunt as our coven searched for a solution. Instead, we’re tossed into a sea of internecine conflicts, new ways of doing magic, and a possibly-sentient city—and the search for a cure for Mik. The other central pleasure of An Unlikely Coven is witnessing its ensemble cast come together as a team. Joan’s friendship with CZ is the relationship that begins and grounds the book, and the two of them have variously wary, curious, and adversarial relationships with the characters who will become a part of their eponymous coven by the end. The arc of creating that found family interweaves seamlessly with the shenanigans of the main plot, as the characters learn how their different strengths, powers, and interests can complement and impede each other. With a cast this big, it’s inevitable that some of the characters will fall by the wayside, and Kvita doesn’t kill themself trying to unload backstory and character development on every single cast member. Instead, they focus on building relationships and establishing group dynamics, leaving plenty of space for readers to learn more about individual characters in future books. Joan’s love interest, Astoria, is inseparable from her bestie Wren, who’s half-fae, while Astoria herself belongs to a ruling family determined to maintain witch supremacy over other magical beings, including the fae. Outsider Grace struggles to find the balance between her passion for creating new spells and her dislike of the ruling witch families. The elder generation of Joan’s family cares about her, but also clings tightly to their power as Greenwoods. These issues, raised but not resolved, leave Kvita with plenty of room to continue exploring the characters and the world, should they wish to make it an ongoing series. (In case it is unclear, I would like for that to happen. I love, love, love a long-running series with an ensemble cast.) I admit that I’m not mad keen on stories where the one character believes she’s a talentless failure, only to discover later in the book that she’s actually the most special and powerful magic-user of them all. Maybe now and then, as a treat, a character who’s grown up feeling worthless because of their lack of magic could locate a sense of self-worth in some other place than the exact system that has excluded and devalued them their whole lives. Not to say that Joan’s magic isn’t cool—it is—or that it wasn’t fun to see her learning from other witches how her specific brand of magical failures could be channeled into success. It’s common for debut authors to insist on their protagonist’s awesomeness without really doing the work to show it in action; but when Joan’s friends remind her that she’s worthy even without magic, they point to personal qualities that Kvita has been careful to demonstrate in Joan throughout the rest of the book. In a fantasy landscape dominated by romance-forward stories, it felt like a treat to read a story where romance just isn’t the point—but relationships still are. There’s a warm heart at the center of An Unlikely Coven, and every single hi-jink will ultimately lead us back there. In the book’s first scene, Joan arrives at Grand Central to find that every member of her family forgot to come meet her there; a disappointment but not a surprise. By the end of the book, she’s no longer an afterthought, but has built herself—almost by accident—a community of support, a cadre of ride-or-dies. If you’re chasing a sense of belonging in what can feel like an ever-more-alienating real world, An Unlikely Coven is the book you need.[end-mark] An Unlikely Coven is published by Orbit. The post <i>An Unlikely Coven</i> by AM Kvita Is Full of Delightful Shenanigans appeared first on Reactor.