Witches of East End by Melissa de la Cruz

Witches of East End is the first book (excluding the prequel) in a series about three witches living in the small Long Island town of North Hampton.  The three witches in question are sisters Freya and Ingrid Beauchamp, and their mother Joanna.  For centuries they have lived as ordinary human beings, forbidden from practicing witchcraft.  But the day comes when the three Beauchamp women decide to stop concealing who and what they really are.  Revealing their true selves has consequences, good and bad. 

I picked this up after watching the first episode of the new Lifetime series that is inspired by this book series.  Figuring that the book is usually better than the movie, or in this case the tv show, I figured I would give the books a try. 

The first three-quarters of the story is pretty good.  This is the first book I have read by de la Cruz and I can see why she has sold so many books.  The three main characters were intriguing.  I wanted to know more about their histories and how they handled having to suppress their powers for so long.  Where it began to fall apart for me was when the other supernaturals decided to join the party.  First there was talk of zombies.  Next the vampires came to town.  Then came Loki, some gods from Asgard, and a bunch of other characters from Norse mythology.  It was a bit too much.  I wish de la Cruz had stuck with the witches and explored that more.  Freya (love that name), Ingrid and Joanna were interesting enough without all of the other supernaturals thrown in.  Not that there couldn’t be a universe with all sorts of supernaturals.  Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire / True Blood series does this quite well in fact.  But Harris didn’t introduce them all in one book.  Adding in all these other characters and mythologies at once without exploring any of them in depth made them all seem a bit dull, and vampires and witches should never be dull.

So far only one episode of the television series has aired and I have only read this first book in the series.  Right now it is a toss up as to which version I'm going to like better, but I'm intrigued enough to keep watching and reading both.