I get Anna’s a product of her environment and her bitch aunt’s brainwashing, but listening to a character bemoaning how they’re nothing special and to do anything that might draw attention to herself is BAD isn’t really compelling. Also, having your character insisting for like 100 pages how ordinary and boring they are gets very, very dull to read about after a while. I get this is wish fulfilment and all, but seriously, the lead characters start learning they can do legitimate magic, and what do they do with it? Shoplift, try on pretty clothes, curse the mean girls at school, use love potions on boys and other utterly mundane crap that has no bearing on anything. It takes literally half the book just to cover the aforementioned points when it could have been covered in a few chapters. – Effie bullies Anna and two other girls in her school into joining a coven and Attis is also there.Īnd that’s IT. – Two new students join Anna’s school, Effie and Attis, Effie the daughter of Anna’s deceased mother’s best friend Selene. – The main character Anna and her bitch Aunt are introduced, with Aunt being emotionally abusive and controlling of Anna and reiterating over and over again that Magic is Bad and Anna needs hers bound asap.

I can sum it up for you in a few sentences: She now lives in Monmouthshire with her husband and son, who bears the appropriately Celtic name of Taliesin.I was waiting for Threadneedle to come out in paperback for so long because the plot looked fun – a girl discovering a hidden magic world beneath the ordinary one, secret powers and witchcraft? Normally it would totally be my thing, but this was so, so disappointing.įirstly, this book is nearly 600 pages and for why? For the first half of the story, NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS. She wrote her first novel, Threadneedle, while living in London, wandering the city and weaving it with all the magic she wished it contained. She went on to work at a creative agency, spending her spare time researching magic and accumulating an unusual collection of occult books. Her first job was at teen Sugar magazine, where she ran the book club and quickly realised she wanted to be the one writing the books instead.

She studied English and Creative Writing at Warwick University and Magazine Journalism at The Cardiff School of Journalism.

Cari Thomas has always loved magic, inspired by her upbringing among the woods and myths of Wales’s Wye Valley.

Cari thomas author