Reviewed by Jess
TITLE: The Cabot Girls of Coventry Island
AUTHOR: Geonn Cannon
PUBLISHER: Supposed Crimes
LENGTH: 167 pages
RELEASE DATE: December 1, 2017
BLURB:
There have always been Cabot girls on Coventry Island.
Located off the Washington coast, the tiny island is a source of incredible magic. Women in the Cabot family are entrusted with protecting it from being abused by the outside world. Twins Reese and May, along with their older sister Winnie, are the current custodians and use their connection with the island to the betterment of its inhabitants. Winnie owns a bakery where she imbues her creations with positive energy. Reese and May have a thrift shop where repurposed items are blessed and passed on to the owners they were always meant to have.
The sisters have a close connection, still living together in the same house where they grew up. But once their impenetrable bond was nearly shattered by a woman named Jessica Vaughn. She very nearly succeeded but, in the end, the sisters were able to overcome her manipulations and exiled her from the island once and for all. Or so they thought.
Jessica has come back, determined to stay, and she has big plans for the island, plans that run contrary to the quaint and quiet life the Cabots have vowed to protect. This time she has an ally who could turn the tide. The tight-knit sisters will discover their family has been harboring certain unforgivable secrets.
At a time when their island needs them the most, the Cabots may find their relationship has been fatally fractured.
REVIEW:
Geonn Cannon is steadily making his way up my must-read lesfic list. He’s so good at writing dynamic, flawed female characters while still telling an awesome story with a smooth plot.
This setting, this isolated tourist town of Coventry Island, feels instantly both welcoming and foreboding. In the first chapter, we see the three sisters use their inherited magical powers to banish a woman from the island, and then we get right into their everyday lives and routines as if anything stranger was just a dream. It’s easy to forget how powerful they are, since they deal with such mundane problems as well.
This book is a wholly unique read in which the several romances take a backseat to the family drama in an enjoyable and natural way. The ex-girlfriend tangle among May, Reese, and Jessica works towards a larger conflict involving stewardship of the island, and Reese’s eventual romance with mainland shelter owner Sarah provides a nice touch of cozy, contemporary romance to a slightly Gothic tale.
My favorite character is definitely May. She has such a good character arc that elevates her from mousy perpetual virgin to strong witch-goddess extraordinaire, and her very unconventional encounter with “Nish” is intensely strange, erotic, and sensual. You’ll just have to read it to see what I mean. Though I have a soft spot for May, all the sisters get you right to the core. Winnie’s burdens become your burdens, Reese’s injustice becomes your injustice. You can tell Cannon loves these women and put a lot of care into crafting them.
If I wanted to be fussy, I could poke a few little holes in the plot. “Carrying on the family line” is such a huge theme in the book, and since the Cabot girls have little chance of reproducing naturally (May is a lesbian, Reese is bisexual and favors women, and Winnie is asexual), their grandmothers start putting some pressure on them. But their grandmothers are a lesbian couple themselves. So the fact that they’re worried about the sisters carrying on the line seems odd. They obviously carried on the line in some way, so I wish we got a better reason for that particular conflict. And the Jessica conflict seemed to reach such a fever-pitch climax and then fizzle into something less spectacular.
But the fact that I’m nitpicking these plot points shows that I got really, really involved in this story and setting. It’s easy to get lost in this book, which is always an adventure.
I will give a mild content warning—if incest is a major no-no, some parts might tread a little too close to strange waters. The sisters have some…let’s just say, boundary issues. I recently discovered that an early online prototype version of this story did contain outright incest between May and Reese, and I’m very glad Cannon steered away from that direction. I don’t mind taboos in romance and erotica, but I just don’t think that would’ve served the (already awesome) story in any way.
RATING: 
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