It took me a bit to really get into this book, but once I did, I really enjoyed it.

Lily Ivory, a powerful natural witch from Texas, opens a vintage clothing shop, Aunt Cora's Closet, in San Francisco in hopes of starting a normal life after years of moving.  She's invited to Frances Potts' home to buy vintage clothing for her shop when she feels things are off.  When that woman dies, the next night, Lily is determined to find out what happened.  In addition to Frances' death, a neighborhood child has gone missing.  The Spanish community, and Lily, believe La Llorona, "the weeping woman" is responsible.

She shares her shop with Bronwyn, a wiccan, an herbalist and a friend.  Lily tries to keep her powers a secret because she wants to have friends and be as "normal" as possible in this "new life".  But, things happening around her cause her abilities to come out into the open more than she'd anticipated.

During her search for the missing girl and the cause of Frances' death, she meets Aidan Rhodes, a male witch, who brings her a familiar, Oscar.  Oscar provides some comic relief throughout the story.  He frequently transforms into a potbelly pig to keep his normal appearance, "...small and bent, with a muscular body and scaly skin, a large head, a snoutlike nose and mouth, and outsize ears like a bat's.  His fingers were long and humanlike ... but his enormous feet had three toes and long talons", from the general public.  She also meets Max Carmichael, a Mythbuster, who has Charles Gosnold, the neighborhood "charlatan", showing him around the haunted spots so he can prove them to be hoaxes.  He gets a little more than he was expecting when he starts hanging around Lily.

The mystery was ok, easily guessed (IMHO), but the story still held my interest.  The relationships between Lily and the other characters was interesting.  Max is trying to understand Lily's powers and come to grips with the fact that he's falling for a witch, of all things.  At times I felt overloaded with TMI about the vintage clothing, but overall I enjoyed the book.  Not dying for book 2, A Cast-Off Coven: A Witchcraft Mystery, coming out later this year, but I will probably read it.

{Reblogged @ 10/2013 to fix formatting issues due to GR import}