Threadneedle

The Craft gets a Gen Z update in Thomas’s uneven contemporary fantasy debut, the first in the Language of Magic series. Anna Everdell, 16, has lived with her abusive aunt Vivienne ever since her father killed her mother and then himself in a crime of passion. Vivienne, who believes magic is sinful, wants Anna to become a Binder like her, a witch who ties up her magic in a knotted cord that will strangle the wearer if she tries to use it. But when new-girl-at-school Effie invites Anna to join her coven, social “nobody” Anna can’t resist having friends for the first time. The coven fractures, however, when a curse against the school’s mean-girl clique goes too far, and secrets from Anna’s and Effie’s pasts threaten their futures. While the different types of witchcraft are fascinating, the prose is uneven, and the plot drags in the school sections. The ending is especially frustrating, leaving so many mysteries unsolved that it reads less like a cliffhanger and more like Thomas just stopped writing. It will successfully get readers invested in book two, but at a steep cost to the present volume. Still, Thomas’s dark supernatural teen drama has promise. Readers will hope she finds surer footing in the next installment. (Feb.)