ARC Review: The Babysitters Coven by Kate Williams

The Babysitters Coven by Kate Williams
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Seventeen-year-old Esme Pearl has a babysitters club. She knows it’s kinda lame, but what else is she supposed to do? Get a job? Gross. Besides, Esme likes babysitting, and she’s good at it.

And lately Esme needs all the cash she can get, because it seems like destruction follows her wherever she goes. Let’s just say she owes some people a new tree.

Enter Cassandra Heaven. She’s Instagram-model hot, dresses like she found her clothes in a dumpster, and has a rebellious streak as gnarly as the cafeteria food. So why is Cassandra willing to do anything, even take on a potty-training two-year-old, to join Esme’s babysitters club?

The answer lies in a mysterious note Cassandra’s mother left her: “Find the babysitters. Love, Mom.”

Turns out, Esme and Cassandra have more in common than they think, and they’re about to discover what being a babysitter really means: a heroic lineage of superpowers, magic rituals, and saving the innocent from seriously terrifying evil. And all before the parents get home.

The Babysitter’s Coven definitely has a Buffy influence, but with much more snark about the concept and a bit of humor. Esme is part of a small Babysitter’s Club, which is mostly her and her friend Janis hanging out, and the occasional gig. She mostly lays low, so when the new girl Cassandra goes out of her way to join her, she is surprised. Pretty soon, she discovers that they both have powers, powers that seem to be connected to their mothers and powers that give them responsibility in an old Sitterhood (no that isn’t a typo). For now, though, they have to catch a child abducter who may or may not be a demon.

Firstly, I loved Esme as a protagonist, because she is entertaining in her descriptions, and also there’s the fact that she and Janis both ‘theme’ their outfits daily. She is the tempering presence to Cassandra’s brash confidence and recklessness, though she herself undertakes risky things later on in the book. The first half was slow and there was no ‘Sitting’ going on, but the second half makes up for the slack, delivering us action, some nice plot twists (predictable if you have read a certain other similar witchy book) and some nice stakes for future books. I love the occasional gag like their Counsel being too busy with his ‘cover job’ to take their education seriously, but there were also times that they were comically not funny, like the villain face-down in the ending (why would he even come back there if he got what he wanted?); overall, though, it is entertaining enough and is a quick read, nevertheless.

Received an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review from Delacorte Press, via Netgalley.

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