Reviewed by Cheryl K
TITLE: The Little Shop of Curiosities The Music Box – Part 1.
SERIES: Crawshanks Guide to the Occult
AUTHOR: Vawn Cassidy
PUBLISHER: Self
LENGTH: 321 pages
RELEASE DATE: December 25, 2025
BLURB:
The Music Box – Part 1.
Despite being raised and well loved by his two adoptive fathers Harrison Ames has always felt alone. As an incredibly powerful witch, he’s never come across anyone else who can do the things he can. Moving to London from Devon, he’d hoped that if he finally gathered the courage to confront the biological mother who’d given him up as a baby, he might finally have some answers.
Sam Stone carries scars of his own, both physical and otherwise, but he’s determined to ignore them and get on with his life. But when fate drops a gorgeous prickly red haired witch in his life, he figures his luck is finally changing.
With mediums, dead drag queens, and supernatural beings as his new friends Harrison finds himself drawn into a world of magic and chaos. But amidst all the insanity that is his life, there’s Sam, his anchor when the secrets of his biological family begin to tear his life apart…
Please note: This book is 100% human written. NO AI was used in any capacity.
REVIEW:
Disclaimer: Be advised that you really should read all the previous books in the multiverse that Vawn has created. This one references characters previously mentioned in the Dead Serious series.
The world building is once again spectacular. This series starts off with a POV rewind for Sam and Harrison, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I always wondered what was happening with Sam and Harrison in the Dead Serious series. But with that said, we get an expanded world that includes Harrison and Sam’s extended families.
The character development just keeps getting better and better as this multiverse expands. We get an even more in-depth and highly detailed look at our main characters. Vawn goes above and beyond and lays out more of Sam and Harrison’s familial history. As I’ve come to expect, there is also no skimping on all of the side characters. We get glimpses of long ago characters and that part is particularly gut wrenching to read, but absolutely necessary to move the story forward during the Dead Serious timeline. The special part of this series is meeting more of the Crawshanks and getting to see how Sam and Harrison become more than friends.
Obviously, I was thrilled to get to Sam and Harrison’s story, but this book and series is so much more than that. It fills in the gaps and answers some of the long awaited questions I had. We get a variety of characters in this one. We get witches, psychics, demons, mediums, a dead drag queen, and a few more of the occult along the way. We also get some seriously hot sexy times. Will Harrison reconcile with his mother, Will Sam reconcile with his mother? Will the mystery of the music box be solved? Will Sam and Harrison become more than friends with benefits? Well, my Darlings, I am still not going to tell you. You know the remedy to that little conundrum…
I highly recommend this first book in the Crawshanks Guide to the Occult series. So much so you need to run out and grab this from your favorite eBook purchasing site. With the release of the second book in this series, I can’t wait to read it and anymore that follow in its footsteps.
Till next time…
RATING: 
BUY LINK:
