Berkley Sensation, $5.99, ISBN 0-425-19327-6
Paranormal Romance, 2004

What do you call a witch that has lived for more than five hundred years but remain conspicuously devoid of any personality other than being a one-note tragedy of endless selflessness and an infinite capacity for martyrdom? “Dial Fed-Ex for a clue”? Sydney Wyrrd is that heroine. Because she doesn’t want to harm her true love by his being linked to a witch, the Scottish chieftain Duncan, she flees. But five hundred years later, as a token of gratitude, the Ancient One Tempest sends her back to thirteen years after she’s left Duncan.

Predictably, as witches in formulaic romance novels tend to be, she is soon under heavy suspicion from everyone when the they are plagued by a series of mishaps. What can Sydney do? Well, when she is not sighing at rabbits poking their heads out of the brambles in between running around healing everybody or sighing about her sad, sad life, she is pining after Duncan. Duncan, for his part, wonders whether she is an evil witch or a good witch even as he wishes that she will grab his broomstick hard and fly. The story is on full-blown autopilot, the identity of the villain is transparent from the get-go, the characters are dull beyond the pale, and at the end of the day, I can only look at the title of this book and wonder, “What magic?”

A thoroughly bland book that can be summed up succinctly in two words – stupefying, boring – Remember the Magic is like the three hundredth repeat viewing of that Bambi cartoon. It’s just so predictable and dull that eventually the whole staleness of the story becomes painful on my senses.