The Ex Hex Book Review

Title: The Ex Hex
Author: Erin Sterling
Type: Fiction
Published: 2021
Pages: 308
TW: Death of a Parent, Sexism

“And he would always break her heart. He wouldn’t mean to, he definitely wouldn’t want to, but he would.” 

Set in a small town called Graves Glen, The Ex Hex centres on Vivienne who accidentally hexed her ex-boyfriend 9 years ago when they broke up and he moved back to Wales. In the present, her ex Rhys returns and Vivienne starts to see the signs that maybe the ‘fake’ hex she cursed wasn’t so fake after all. But Rhys is back to recharge the leylines and the chaos that ensues may just be more than they can handle…

When I read this for my book club, I coined it ‘like a Halloween Hallmark film’ and I absolutely stand by that. If you want a cheesy, predictable, two-dimensional story absolutely riddled with plot holes, the The Ex Hex is for you. However as my book club members rightly pointed out, when it’s a film, you can half pay attention while doing something else, a book on the other hand, it just time you’re not getting back!

I really wanted to love this because I normally do love cheesy romance, but it was shocking the lack of thought that had gone into the plot. Firstly the magic, which seemed to be made up as the writer when along and then never considered later on, most notably, the consequences for all the non-magic people whole lived in the town too. Then the storyline itself which really didn’t make much sense, and again, was littered with holes. And finally there’s car crash that was Vivienne and Rhys’ relationship which also made no sense whatsoever.

Yes I don’t need everything neatly wrapped in a little bow, but every scene in this book seemed to raise more questions than it answered, and while for the most part it felt like a cute YA story, everything seemed to make our starring couple horny and so it was far too raunchy to be allowed to be labelled for that audience (and unnecessarily so I might add – what is this adding to the storyline!?)

Honestly I don’t have much else to say about this book because I really cannot believe it was published in the first place. Kudos to Erin Sterling for the numerous titles she’s successfully had published and I sincerely hope the others are better than this but it’s such a shame how disappointing The Ex Hex turned out to be!