Shadow Spell by Nora Roberts is the second book in The Cousins O’Dwyer Trilogy series. The first book The Dark Witch was a bestseller and fans were eagerly waiting for the next title to release so was I. Though I was mildly impressed with Dark Witch but still was looking forward to read it.

I was excited when I started reading Shadow Spell. Finally I came to know about the fate of Sorcha’s three kids Brannaugh, Eamon and Teagan. All the three kids reached safely too their cousin’s place and spend five years before moving out. All three kids will grow up to look like Branna, Connor and Iona respectively.

Something which I find interesting in the story was that all three children of Sorcha and the three O’Dwyer cousins were related. Branna come from Brannaugh, as Connor come from Eamon and Iona come from Teagan. The three kids passed their looks,power and also pets to their representatives. But how they are connected is not explained fully. May be Nora has left that for the final book.

Also Connor and Eamon regularly  meets in dreams. It is a way to give readers informations about how the children of the Dark Witch Sorcha are faring after her death. Also it is a way for Cabhan to attack Sorcha’s kids. Cabhan uses shadow spell to travel with Connor in his dreams and tries twice unsuccessfully attacking Eamon. Having Eamon and Connor able to meet and converse added an extra element to the story and helped to tie it all together. This was something completely missing in the first book.

Otherwise Shadow Spell is written with the same pattern as the Dark Witch. The first book concentrated on Iona one of the three witches and her love story with Boyle. She was also Cabhan’s, evil sorcerer soft target. In the second book, focus was on  Connor’s love story with Meara Quinn and also became the favorite target of Cabhan also he manage to almost kill her as well. So we can expect in the third book of The Cousins O’Dwyer Trilogy series we could expect some flames between in Branna and Fin.

Love and romance heavily dominated the plot of the book. Just like out of blue Boyle get frustrated with his relation with Iona in Dark Witch so does Meara. She almost paid the price of getting mad with Connor for no reason with her life but was timely saved by Connor.

If the third book is also written in same pattern then we can expect some great tiff between Fin and Branna as Cabhan manage to create some misunderstanding between the two which won’t be very difficult as Fin belongs to Cabhan’s blood. This is purely my own assumption. 

The bond between all the three characters is well written but the supernatural element which should be the main core of the book doesn’t comes out so well. Love stories and friendly bonding could be found in any novel but its dark magic and supernatural element could have been the ex factor of its plot. But sadly is not horned properly.

Verdict: It is a love story wrapped up in magical setting. And there are far too many questions which are unanswered in the Shadow Spell. That actually makes me eager to read the final book Blood Magick: Book Three of The Cousins O’Dwyer Trilogy which will be releasing on 4th November, 2014.

Other Two Books in the Cousins O’Dwyer Trilogy