Venco by Cherie Dimaline
Lucky St. James, a Métis millennial living with her cantankerous but loving grandmother Stella, is barely hanging on when she discovers she will be evicted from their tiny Toronto apartment. Then, one night, something strange and irresistible calls out to Lucky. Burrowing through a wall, she finds a silver spoon etched with a crooked-nosed witch and the word SALEM, humming with otherworldly energy.
Hundreds of miles away in Salem, Myrna Good has been looking for Lucky. Myrna works for VenCo, a front company fueled by vast resources of dark money.
Lucky is familiar with the magic of her indigenous ancestors, but she has no idea that the spoon links her to VenCo’s network of witches throughout North America. Generations of witches have been waiting for centuries for the seven spoons to come together, igniting a new era, and restoring women to their rightful power.
But as reckoning approaches, a very powerful adversary is stalking their every move. He’s Jay Christos, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter as old as witchcraft itself.
To find the last spoon, Lucky and Stella embark on a rollicking and dangerous road trip to the darkly magical city of New Orleans, where the final showdown will determine whether VenCo will usher in a new beginning…or remain underground forever.
For the Reading Challenge(s):
2026 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #16: Deus Ex Machina)
The Reason
I saw it on my library’s featured bookshelf.
The Quotes
“She breathed deep, appreciating the moment of solitude. Silence in an outdoor space had a presence instead of an absence.”
“Her grandmother liked to remind her that gratitude was the strongest spell, one that attracts, that transforms, that makes clear.”
“Anxiety makes everything feel very big or very small, depending on which is more hurtful in the moment. Being suddenly relieved of anxiety in this moment gave her a clear understanding that this was the life she had been running towards.”
“At one point, Lettie would have said indifference was worse than cruelty, because cruelty is at least full of passion. Now she knew different.”
The Narrator(s)
Michelle St. John. It was fine.
My Thoughts
I feel like I might have liked it more if I hadn’t gone in with high expectations. It wasn’t necessary a bad story, but it was a slog to get through and a lot of the plot points were more convenient than plausible. A lot of details were also inconsistent, some more obviously so than others; the initial impression that Venco was a big, rich and powerful company only to later seem like they were all alone and had no other help, all the Christian practices in what’s supposed to be a paganistic coven, the antagonist’s behavior in his encounters with opposition, the way the witches were discovered versus the last one.
There was a lot of potential for this story but the characters felt unrealistic to me, the things that happened to keep the story going were drawn out too long, and I didn’t like all the way things just conveniently happened to move the story along. The final quarter of the story got a little more interesting, and I was hopeful for a strong ending but it ended up feeling convenient also. I was really hoping for something good since I love stories about witches and magical heritage, but I feel like this story is all over the place and has no idea what its own message is. It’s quite a disappointing read for me.
My Rating
⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
