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A rich, dark urban fantasy debut following a teen witch who is given a horrifying task: sacrificing her first love to save her family’s magic. The problem is, she’s never been in love—she’ll have to find the perfect guy before she can kill him.After years of waiting for her Calling—a trial every witch must pass in order to come into their powers—the one thing Voya Thomas didn’t expect was to fail. When Voya’s ancestor gives her an unprecedented second chance to complete her Calling, she agrees—and then is horrified when her task is to kill her first love. And this time, failure means every Thomas witch will be stripped of their magic.
Voya is determined to save her family’s magic no matter the cost. The problem is, Voya has never been in love, so for her to succeed, she’ll first have to find the perfect guy—and fast. Fortunately, a genetic matchmaking program has just hit the market. Her plan is to join the program, fall in love, and complete her task before the deadline. What she doesn’t count on is being paired with the infuriating Luc—how can she fall in love with a guy who seemingly wants nothing to do with her?
With mounting pressure from her family, Voya is caught between her morality and her duty to her bloodline. If she wants to save their heritage
and Luc, she’ll have to find something her ancestor wants more than blood. And in witchcraft, blood is everything.
About the author
Liselle Sambury is a Trinidadian Canadian author and Governor General’s Literary Awards Finalist. She has a love for stories with dark themes, complicated families, and edges of hope. In her free time, she shares helpful tips for upcoming writers and details of her publishing journey through a YouTube channel dedicated to demystifying the business of being an author.
Summary
A rich, dark urban fantasy debut following a teen witch who is given a horrifying task: sacrificing her first love to save her family's magic.
Additional text
It’s 2049 in Toronto, and sixteen-year-old Voya is about to go through her Calling, the trial that will determine whether she will have magic like the rest of her witch family. She might fail, though, since she’s directed to destroy her unknown first love, but if she doesn’t do it, her entire family will lose magic and future generations will be magicless. Billion-dollar tech company NuGene offers a solution with a beta matching program, and she’s matched with handsome trans NuGene intern and sponsor son Luc, who seemingly wants nothing to do with her; Voya’s task will only get harder as the two become closer. Sambury’s near-future Toronto is an interesting mix of cultural progressivity and capitalist nightmare, with NuGene’s high-tech modding and genetic sequencing services only available to the rich and a “sponsor” system where CEOs groom kids from “so-called ‘disadvantaged’ countries” to become heirs, but Voya’s Black family faces less discrimination than they would in the present day. The technology is additionally thought-provoking, with a rating system for everyone’s profiles to determine approachability, and the two prominent trans characters have new tech for transitioning per their preferences but also new battles to fight. It’s impossible not to root for Voya, who loves cooking Trinidadian recipes and always looks out for her big, often dysfunctional family, as she uncovers conspiracies in the witch community. Readers will certainly be holding out until the last page to see if Voya and her complex, nuanced family get their much-deserved happiness.
