Third Time’s a Charm – A rare chance at closure

Letting go is something difficult when you’ve been carrying a torch for 20 years. Yet, this is what Vivien Stone has to do in Third Time’s A Charm, the second of Michelle M. Pillow’s Order of Magic series, which just came out and which I’ve read over the last 24 hours (and a bit).

As we found out early on in the first book (if you haven’t read Second Chance Magic, worry not: you can follow what happens, although I do recommend reading it prior to Third Time), Vivien has lost her husband, Sam, to cancer 20 years ago. Since then, she has been married again, and divorced, and this was followed up by many affairs, usually with younger, commitment-phobic men.

My review of the first of the series

Still, Vivien kept on carrying a torch for Sam and wished him to come back to her. Now that she and her friends, Lorna and Heather, have those magic rings, can it be the chance she was waiting for? Maybe a rare chance at closure? And what about this hot neighbour of hers, who makes her psychic go missing every time she’s around him?

All questions, and much more, find their answers along the 300 pages of the book.

Empathy, emotion, and more

I said it in my reviews (both on Goodreads and Amazon): give me Michelle M. Pillow’s sense of humanity. I mean it. It is her profound humanity which gives each of her books this feeling that you are in real life, not on Qurilixen, not in Green Vallis, not in Freewild Cove, not anywhere but in the here and now, living each character’s emotions.

Which is probably why, at some point, I got so frustrated with Vivien that I wanted to throw my Kindle out the window. I did not. Good for me, because I would’ve missed a moment of great emotion, which made me cry so much and so long that I simply had to stop reading until I calmed down.

Call it magic. Michelle M. Pillow has it, buckets full of it. As the pages go, it is impossible not to feel empathy for Vivien, just like it was impossible not to feel the same for Lorna in the first book, either. Because they feel like friends of yours, not simple book characters. They feel real. They are real. Maybe because we all know a Vivien or a Lorna or a Heather. But especially because they are given a life that is true to reality.

Yet again, a must-read by a beloved author. The great part? Heather’s story, The Fourth Power, is coming out in a month. The sad part? It will be the last book of the series.

Some of my favourite quotes

My Goodreads review

Third Time’s a Charm by Michelle M. Pillow

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Give me Michelle M. Pillow’s sense of humanity, because this is what makes her books so vivid and ring so true.

Yes, there were times when I got so frustrated with Vivien that I wanted to throw my Kindle out the window. Worry not, I didn’t. I hung on and it paid off, to the point that a moment made me cry so much that I had to stop reading for a while.

A fantastic book.



View all my reviews