Book Review - Bella Forrest's Harley Merlin and the Secret Coven

Harley Merlin and the Secret Coven by Bella Forrest
Published by: Bella Forrest
Publication Date: August 27th, 2018
Format: Paperback, 402 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

When you spend years bouncing around the foster care system you really don't have any recourse when you start to develop magical abilities. This is beyond the typical inheritance of blood type and eye color and the likelihood of developing cancer. This is something "other." But Harley Merlin has learned to roll with the punches. Sure, she can sense people's emotions, that just makes her a valuable asset to a local casino. She can pinpoint anyone cheating, a skill most pit bosses would kill for. At the age of nineteen she's kind of given up on ever finding anyone like herself so when an actual gargoyle attacks her and a warlock helps save her ass one night after work her eyes are opened. She's not alone. Only the arrogant Wade Crowley might not be the best guide to this new world. He has issues, mainly a severe superiority complex. He gives her his card and tells her she has twenty four hours to call him and turn herself into the San Diego coven. Harley wonders if she could ignore the summons. Or she could run. Leave San Diego behind. After realizing there's no escaping him, he is persistently annoying, they meet up at the Fleet Science Center which hides the entrance to the coven. She is given a magical infodump and tour. Harley is tested and possess a wide range of skills but doesn't have the power to be anything other than mediocre. Yet they will still train her to properly use her abilities to the extent that she can. The most interesting aspect of the coven is their Bestiary. This magical menagerie of monsters might seem harmless, but the gargoyle that attacked Harley was one of its numbers. Which means not only does someone want to kill her, it's someone in the coven who knew about her before she knew about herself. Which means she has to look to her past. She has to find some information about the parents that abandoned her when she was just three years old. Her legacy and heritage is darker than she could have ever imagined, it's no wonder someone is out for her blood. But her new coven will protect her. They will find out who's behind the attacks. They will form teams and get to the bottom of things. Because she is one of them. Whether she likes it or not.

The real "secret" of Harley Merlin is how Bella Forrest wrote twenty-one books in five years. The answer is obviously she didn't but it wasn't "public" knowledge yet. Back when I read this book in 2019 there were only twelve books in the series but the math of one author writing it all just didn't add up. In fact my book club tried to do the math and we calculated that she would have to be writing constantly just to meet her deadlines. And that's just writing, no editing, no rewriting, just wordcount alone. So we knew there had to be ghostwriters. Since then it has come out that we were indeed correct. In a lawsuit filed in the Bahamas it came out that "Bella Forrest" is a team of freelance ghostwriters and there was a dispute over who owned the "name" which was really more of a brand at this point and Amazon pulled the books from their site. At this point there seems to have been a verdict but it's just hearsay backed up by some possibly related court documents and I'm not sure if anything is resolved because you still can't get the books on Amazon but you can from the official author site... But is that official site the "real" author? It's anyone's guess. Plus it looks like the entire catalog was bought and a Bella Forrest Publishing imprint has been created as of the beginning of this year. I don't have the inclination to go down this rabbit hole at this moment in time, but if you're interested in doing some online sleuthing of your own, be my guest. Reddit oddly has some good theories. Also I'm not judging Bella Forrest for employing ghostwriters, it happens more than you think. All I'm saying is if you're an author and someone else helps you write a book just give them credit. Be like James Patterson. The real reason for me airing my grievances here is I loved this Bella Forrest book, Harley Merlin and the Secret Coven, the second one, Harley Merlin and the Mystery Twins, not so much. So I want to know who wrote the one I liked. Seriously, who had this deliciously snarky voice that just spoke to me? That wrote this book that arrived at just the right time in my life. A book that was just fun and occasionally goofy and really, didn't make much sense, but filled a magical void in me that needed filling. And now that I reread that it sounds dirty. It's not. It's just a case of the right book at the right time and I would like to know who really wrote it, that is all. Internet sleuths, if you do know, drop me a line!