The Lost Art of Magic

Magic Comes to the Bayou

Review by: The Audiobook ReviewThe Lost Art of Magic, written by John Kovacich, is a coming of age story set (mostly) in the swamps of Louisiana and tells the story of Destiny Boutin, a young girl who lives with her nana. Her family has a long, rich heritage of being descended from witches from long ago, with only the faintest hints of magic ability now left.

The book opens with a bang, where Destiny is set upon by some unknown intruders into her house on the bayou, before quickly flitting back two weeks to show us how she got there.

Over the course of the book, we watch as she grows into her powers. While a lot of the book is set in the present time, much of it is spent in the past as Destiny uses her latent witchcraft ability to talk with witches from long ago, to experience and learn from them.

The witches have mortal enemies in dark wizards. For reasons as old as time, they've been at war, and at some point, their war brought the loss of magic from both sides.

There's a lot going on, but the plot is easy enough to follow along as it flicks back and forth through time. After the initial opening, I thought the book was going to be a little slow for my tastes, but it soon reeled me in like a bayou catfish. Kovacich built the tension slowly but with enough urgency and intrigue it kept me listening long after I should have gone to sleep.

Narration by Theresa Dale was excellent. With a lot of deep-south accents and phrasing, it would have been easy to trip over but I think she did well. A few minor quality issues I detected towards the end. Nothing major, just a couple of spots of background noise, not enough to pull me out of the story but enough to make a note of.


In all, this was an interesting story with interesting characters and a rich backstory for the world. The ending left me a little bit wanting. I thought there were a few loose ends that needed closing more than there was. We got glimpses of the future, and I think we could have done with a little more closure on these than we got.

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I was given this audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review. I have not let this gift affect nor influence my opinions of this audiobook and have left an honest review.