Enchanted, Inc.: A Novel [Paperback]

Kathleen "Katie" Chandler lives in a one bedroom apartment, with two roommates, in New York. Her awful boss goes from hot to cold in an instant and treats all her employees worse than any animal.

Suddenly Katie begins getting job offers, via email, from MSI, Inc. It has the feel of a scam, but Katie is getting desperate to change jobs. So she goes to an interview. Turns out that MSI stands for Magic, Spells, & Illusions. It is a company that sells tricks of the trade to the magical beings in the community. Katie does not take much persuading. She has been seeing people with wings (whose feet do not touch the ground), a stone gargoyle that changes positions and buildings (and seemed to wink once), and many other odd things. Katie has always assumed no one else seemed to notice because they were used to it and she had just not been living in NY long enough.

Katie takes the job and begins working in the department of Verification. Katie's ordinariness is rare. Few people, such as herself, lack even a drop of magic. Magic will not work on Katie. Therefore, she can easily spot a fake spell, see hidden clauses in contracts, detect any magically disguised intruders, and more.

The company needs "immunes" like Katie very badly. An ex-employee is threatening to sell black magic on the streets. If the magic community begins using dark spells, it will harm more than just the magical people in the world. Katie and her new bosses must save the world as we know it.

***** This is a stand alone novel, but I sure hope it becomes the first of a series. Katie's love life is not mentioned in my synopsis because she has her sights on more than one potential guy. I am told that this is Shanna Swendson's debut novel. I would never have known by reading it. The writing is superb and the story is seamless! Fans of Charlaine Harris's "Southern Vampire" series will especially enjoy this new author! A fun and witty read! *****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

Enchanted, Inc. is the delightful fish out of water tale of Katie, a single girl from rural Texas trying to deal with the weirdness of New York City without looking like too much of a yokel. No one told her when they warned her about the strangeness of New York that the sights she would have to be blasé about included roller skating fairies, elvish park rangers, and a gargoyle named Sam who talks like Humphrey Bogart and keeps appearing on different parts of the building he guards. The thing is, Katie seems to be the only one who notices that some of the people on the subway have fairy wings, and she's starting to wonder if the strain of big city life is too much for her.

Katie's gift of seeing things exactly as they are soon attracts the attention of the personnel department at Magic, Illusions, and Spells, Inc. It's not every day a girl gets a job offer from a sexy super wizard working for a company where Merlin is the CEO. Since her present job is slightly less enjoyable than being mugged on the subway, she decides to take them up on the offer despite her fear that they cannot possibly be serious. But her completely non-magical nature, and her down-home common sense make her a far more valuable asset to her new company than she ever would have thought possible. They even give her an unlimited MetroCard.

While Katie really enjoys designing a marketing campaign to help defeat evil magic in the world, her new job has some unfortunate effects on her private life. She can't exactly tell her roommates how her day went, and magical nuisances keep cropping up during her attempts to find a boyfriend. A frog prince serenades her while she's trying to make a good impression. Her office crush causes an indoor snowstorm on her date, and she keeps getting hit on by a sleazy guy who looks like Johnny Depp to everyone but Katie. Things start looking up, though, when she meets a cute intellectual property attorney who starts cleaning his glasses every time a fairy walks by.

This book is an easy read with a witty style and a sense of wonder that really makes the pages turn. Anyone who enjoys the new chick lit genre will probably get a kick out of Enchanted, Inc. I can't wait to read the next book in the series. It has much of the light humor, the single girl point of view, and the mix of the fantastic and the mundane that makes Mary Janice Davison's "Undead and ..." series such fun. I highly recommend it to fantasy fans, adventure fans, and romance fans ... and to anyone who has ever felt like the only one who can see that the emperor is actually naked, and could stand to lose a few pounds.

Katie Chandler is immune to magic. She can see through any enchantment and no spells can affect her. Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc. (MSI) recruits her for this very reason. After all, her gift makes her essential for their verification department. Katie is ecstatic her first day of work; even though her new boss turns green when angry, he is still significantly better than her previous boss, Mimi the human monster.

Things aren't as good as they seem, however. MSI has a competitor (a disgruntled former employee) who is marketing evil spells and MSI is determined to stop him. Katie decides she wants to assist MSI with this endeavor while maybe also catching the eye of that cute R & D department head, Owen. Little does Katie realize just how much her world will change once magic becomes an everyday part of it.

ENCHANTED, INC. is a cute chick lit story. Katie's growth from a downtrodden secretary to an executive assistant is fun to watch. She copes perhaps a little too easily with the idea of magic being real but her attempts to keep the magic world separate from her ordinary life are very believable. Her struggles with dating are ones most single females (and many married ones) will relate to and her bad dates certainly make most others seem tame in comparison. After all, who else ends up stalked by a former frog?

Ethan's reaction to the world of magic is more of what this reviewer would expect and is perhaps why he was so likeable. Katie goes on a date with him, primarily to find out more about his expertise with legal matters, but finds that she enjoys spending time with him. Ethan had noticed the oddities around, such as the wings on the fairies, but had assumed he was either hallucinating or going crazy. His perceptions make him an endearing character and this reviewer could certainly understand Katie's dilemma of choosing between Owen and Ethan!

Shanna Swendson's first book in this series is a delight to read. Her characters are charming, if a bit quirky at times, and she perfectly meshed the genres of chick lit and the paranormal. ENCHANTED, INC. is a book that is enjoyable to adults while also being suitable for teenagers interested in the genre.

COURTESY OF CK2S KWIPS AND KRITIQUES

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 124 reviews  4.7 out of 5 stars