The Magic We Made by Meg Cabot Series: Witches of West Harbor #2
Published by Avon on August 11, 2026
Genres: Fantasy & Magic, Fiction, Love & Romance
Pages: 384
Buy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Bookshop.org
Find on Goodreads
Source: NetGalley
She doesn’t believe in magic. He is magic. But when they meet, a spark is lit, and neither will ever be the same—in this charming new stand-alone in the Witches of West Harbor series from New York Times bestselling author Meg Cabot.
Frankie
A trained therapist, Francesca Giovanni knows there’s a scientific explanation for everything. Unfortunately, she lives in West Harbor, CT, a town that’s recently exploded in popularity thanks to “witch tourism.” Suddenly, witches are everywhere, offering locals their psychic services. Frankie’s fine with this…until aspiring teenage witches begin to disappear, and strange things start happening in the lake house next door. Frankie begins to suspect not all newcomers to West Harbor have the good of the community in mind—especially not her new neighbor, Ash Merit.
Ash
Ash Merit finds lost things—and people—for a living. All he wants is to help his clients, and maybe get to know the stunningly beautiful (and newly single) Dr. Frankie Giovanni a little better. But thanks to some troublesome young witches—not to mention his often faulty psychic “superpower”—everything goes wrong. If only Frankie wasn’t so distractingly attractive…and so unwilling to admit there might not be a logical reason for everything, including the flames that ignite whenever the two of them kiss. Ash hopes to change that, but first he and Frankie have to find the missing girls, as well as the truth about what’s happening in West Harbor…a truth that could change everything they thought they knew about themselves—and the magic of love.
Despite being someone who grew up happily reading Meg Cabot’s Mediator and The Princess Diaries series, I realized I hadn’t read any of her books for adults. I stumbled across The Magic We Made,a romantic novel involving witches on NetGalley, and decided there was no time like the present. Like all of Cabot’s books, The Magic We Made has her distinctive blend of humor, quirkiness, and relatability.
The novel is told from two alternating perspectives of Francesca “Frankie” Giovanni and her next door neighbor, Ash Merit. Frankie is a newly divorced financial therapist, with a massive Italian family that has lots of opinions. Though she’s not one of the magical people in the novel, the amount of events she’s survived in her personal life without completely falling off feels nothing short of miraculous. I immediately admired what a strong woman she is. Her irritation with her peace-disturbing neighbor, Ash, is highly entertaining.
“So why can’t I leave it at that? Because I’m physically incapable of doing so. It’s my genetic destiny: no Giovanni can ever leave anything well enough alone.”
Frankie cannot stand his sound-barrier breaking truck or his loud music, and also how he rents out his property to summer tourists. Due to their town becoming known for its witches, tourism is definitely thriving. But to Frankie’s disbelief, Ash attracts more than just mildly curious vacationers. He has a knack, or magical talent, to find lost things. More specifically, these lost things find him.
This talent is crucial, as Ash is on the hunt to find one of many missing young women in the area. Before she knows it, straight-laced, skeptical Frankie finds herself confronting two very frighteningly real possibilities: a) the first man she’s fallen for since her divorce has a mental illness or b) magic is very real.
“‘I don’t have a cape or a police scanner. I do have superpowers, though. You do too.’
‘Do I?’ She raises a single questioning eyebrow.
‘Sure. Everybody does. You should know that; you’re a therapist. It’s your job to help people figure out what their superpower is.’
She looks surprised to hear this.
‘Is it?”
‘Yes, because most people don’t know. We’ve all got a little magical gift inside of us, something we love and can do well, but it can sometimes take a lifetime to discover it, let alone trust that it’s real.”
The Magic We Made is a fun read that is fast-paced, but still finds the time to flesh out its characters. Cabot tells the story in a way that makes you feel like you’re reading about your best friend’s life, or sitting in the main character’s passenger seat. Despite the fact that I had not read the previous book in the series (and was clueless that one even existed), I was perfectly able to understand everything important in the world-building. If I didn’t know the specifics of events in the first book, it felt like it was merely because Frankie wasn’t there and wasn’t interested in the supernatural. This prevented me from feeling like the odd one out and allowed me to better appreciate Frankie’s shock at actual magic.
Though I picked up The Magic We Made primarily for the romance, I was, surprisingly, more interested in the mystery involving everything to do with the witches! I found Cabot’s depiction of gods with familiar names and origins to be pretty original, and I’ve read a lot of them. The blend of realism and magic just feels so natural and matter-of-fact in this world. Instead of other novels that relegate magic to a hidden subsection of the world that must be kept secret, The Magic We Made provides an atmosphere that says, “well, of course gods, goddesses, and witches are real, but you still have to show up for work on Monday.” This approach felt like a breath of fresh air.
“Before I have a chance to assure my sister that nothing she says could ever offend me—after what she did as a child to my Barbie collection, I no longer value her opinion—Dina chimes in with, ‘A spell is definitely cheaper than therapy. Asking an online witch to cast a love spell on someone these days only takes a few minutes, and costs about twenty-five bucks. Therapy to figure out why someone doesn’t love you can take months, if not years, and cost thousands of dollars.’”
As far as the romance of The Magic We Made goes, I was a little disappointed. If you’ve read any of my other reviews, you know I’m a huge fan of the slow-burn. I could easily (and happily) read an entire series based on the will-they-won’t-they build up. Alas, in The Magic We Made the feelings are acted upon around the 50% way mark of the book. There are plenty of readers who will enjoy the direct communication about feelings between the characters (and their immediate acting upon said feelings), but I felt like all of the anticipation was gone and had a feeling of, “well, now what?”
In many stories where the love interests get together so soon, I feel like authors are forced to throw in a last minute conflict or miscommunication. This inevitably means the love interests we just spent all of this time rooting for get together, break up due to some contrived nonsense that was usually completely avoidable. Then they finally realize how stupid they were and reconcile by the end of the novel. I just really don’t care for that type of plot line. Personally, I would just rather spend the entirety of the novel wondering if it’s ever actually going to happen.
But thankfully, as it turns out, Cabot still had plenty to tell. Though the romance is doing a version of the plotline I don’t like, it’s handled in an adult way that does justice to the personalities of the characters. Neither character is doomed to suffer these circumstances in silence and still has full agency to make their next steps. It is at the moment that the supernatural comes to the forefront that the story between Frankie and Ash becomes less about romance, and more about love and what one is willing to believe, accept, and do in order to keep it. I don’t want to give too much away, but I really enjoyed everything about how the climax of all the different storylines came together, and was even delighted at a twist that I didn’t see coming.
All in all, The Magic We Made is a light and fun read that I would say feels pretty cozy. The true magic of the novel lies not in the magic itself, but in the uniqueness of how it is presented. It is a delight watching the characters, especially Frankie, rise to meet it. The Magic We Made honestly made me want to go back and read my favorites of Cabot’s other works. I will definitely read more of Cabot’s adult works in the future, especially in this series.
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Great review!
Anne – Books of My Heart
Thank you, Anne!