Looking For a Good Book

What happens in the supernatural world if someone rats out someone else?  They get placed in the witches protection program, of course.  This is the basic premise.

Wes Rockville is given one last chance to redeem himself in his law enforcement career.  He’s bumbled almost every other assignment, but his father, and boss, grudgingly gives him a final opportunity.  Wes is transferred to a secret government organization that’s more than 200 years old – the Witches Protection Program.  Here he is partnered with a veteran and the two must infiltrate and stop a plot by a cosmetics company to use witchcraft to take over the world.  Wes gets a crash course on dealing with the supernatural.

The comparisons to Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files are certain to come from many directions.  Though Wes is a cop and Dresden isn’t, and Dresden has supernatural powers and Wes doesn’t, there is a similarity in that both are trying to protect the good and see evil punished.  Both also have a fair amount of humor, though I think author Michael Phillip Cash relies more heavily on the humor to move his story forward.

I was really looking forward to this book (the first in a series).  I love finding cross-over books.  This has the makings of just what I was looking for: supernatural/fantasy, mystery, and humor.  Cash moves the story along and there aren’t too many surprises here.  The focus is on introducing the readers to the new characters and setting with a few chuckles along the way.

My problem with the book is that it isn’t special.

Author Cash doesn’t do anything ‘wrong.’  The characters are fine, the story is fine, the mystery is fine.  But ‘fine’ doesn’t rise to the top of a crowded field of books.

This is the sort of book you might read if you like the genres and want something light, but once you finish, it won’t stick with you.  As I reached the last page, I wasn’t hungry for more.  I wasn’t deeply invested in the characters such that I couldn’t wait for the next adventure.  This was a shrug of the shoulders and thought ‘that was okay.’  But when you are reading something, especially in these three genres (humor, mystery, supernatural) you want … no, you need something extraordinary.

The series can probably get there, but it’s off to a rather uninspiring start.

Looking for a good book?  Witches Protection Program, by Michael Phillip Cash, is the first book in a new series that has potential but proves to be very average with this start.

I received an electronic copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Witches Protection Program

author: Michael Phillip Cash

publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

ISBN: 1511411341

paperback, 238 pages