Witchful Shrinking

• Author: Jen B. Lassalle
• Genre: Fantasy
• Publication Date: June 23, 2026
• Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
• Series: Midlife at the Magnolia #1

Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for providing me with an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

It’s never too late to find your voice. Especially when magic gets involved. 48-year-old Simone Bardot’s life is a junk drawer of a mess. Her husband is having an affair. Her son barely talks to her. And her therapy clinic is failing.

But a mysterious inheritance is about to change everything. As long as she’s willing to return to the hometown she’s avoided for thirty years to claim it.

Once there, Simone discovers she’s inherited more than a building. Inside this sentient house she now calls home is a thriving wellness center that caters to a very exclusive the supernatural. She’s a dormant witch, there’s a makeover-obsessed talking cat who wanders the grounds, and her high school heartbreaker is the head of security.

Succeeding in this strange new world means finding her voice even though she’s feeling small, which doesn’t exactly make her the best therapist. And when the other division heads challenge her ability to run a business she didn’t know existed, she’ll have to dig deep to heal from the wounds that sent her packing in the first place.

Can a middle-aged woman rediscover her sense of self in the world she left behind?

Welcome to book one of the paranormal women’s fiction series Midlife at the Magnolia. With light humor and keen insight, Witchful Shrinking delivers a refreshing and magical look at middle-aged self-esteem and learning to believe in yourself.

As I get older, I’ve started enjoying books with older main characters. This book centers Simone, a woman who is 48 and follows her journey to rediscover herself when she goes through a messy divorce and her whole life basically feels messy. But I can’t resist a cozy fantasy novel, especially when reading books featuring heavier topics like the one I was reading concurrently with this one. 

To start with, we meet Simone just after her life has basically unraveled. When she discovers that her husband is having an affair, she winds up sleeping in her therapy office. Which is failing. It takes more time to uncover why her son won’t talk to her in the wake of her discovery of the affair, but in that time she also finds out that an enigmatic client who came to her office has left her a surprise inheritance. The only catch is that she has to return to her hometown that she hasn’t been to since leaving thirty years ago.

As someone with nothing to lose—no marriage to save, no friendships, a business that is slowly going under, and a strained relationship with her only child—the timing is perfect for her to pick up and restart her life in the town where she grew up, left, and hasn’t looked back at since. While the cheating husband and surprise inheritance are common tropes in cozy fantasy, I enjoyed seeing how Simon basically reinvented her life. I especially loved seeing a middle-aged protagonist facing life challenges that you don’t usually find in YA or NA stories.

Once Simone arrives at the Magnolia, she quickly becomes aware that there are some things that don’t make sense about the Magnolia. The way the building itself seems to be sentient, the talking cat that lives there, the fact that she’s a dormant witch, and the unusual clientele—they’re supernatural creatures that Simone didn’t even realize existed in real life. And while she’s at it, she’s doubting her abilities as a therapist. The way things were done previously involved long periods of talk therapy where clients revisited their trauma or problems in detail, weekly. Think Freud, not modern therapy, which is focused on treating the issue through more updated techniques, a focus on developing coping skills, and a shorter period of therapy that is more effective and designed to move recovery along faster.

She discovers that the therapeutic techniques she relies on can still work on a range of supernatural creatures, but she also discovers her own latent power as a word witch, and both require a lot of work and tweaking. Something that really stood out about this book compared to this with other books about therapists is that it rang true. It actually felt like Simone had a background in psychology, and I loved seeing one of the topics that was often repeated in my own mental health counseling education—the magic question. This asks if you woke up one morning and a miracle had occurred, how would you know? What would you do? And it made me feel like Simone’s profession was realistic. I was able to identify with her about getting distracted during sessions, celebrating the big and small achievements, making that initial connection between therapist and client, and that frustrating feeling where you know a client can be helped, but they just aren’t ready or willing, or you just haven’t found the right technique that works for them.

I also loved the focus on self-discovery and reinvention, showing that life doesn’t stop after your 20s or 30s. The same things come up over and over again, and Simone knows that she needs to work on herself to make a positive change in her life. She’s feeling very down about her skills, and is thrust into a managerial position, overseeing all the different aspects of the Magnolia, especially with some employees that have doubts about her that echo her own doubts. 

This story reminded me of the Greta Helsing series by Vivian Shaw, except dealing with supernatural mental health and wellness rather than the focus on medical care. I liked getting to know Simone and the Magnolia, both the building and the people who inhabit and work in it. It moves a little slowly in the beginning to detail the mess that her life has devolved to, and puts her in a position where there is nowhere to go but forward. There are humorous sections in the story, and I found myself chuckling plenty of times while reading. It made the slower paced beginning feel more comfortable, allowing us to get in touch with Simone and the rest of the cast of characters without feeling rushed. 

Overall, I found this to be a thoroughly enjoyable read. It’s paced a little more slowly than something like a cozy mystery, but it really felt like a journey through a friend going through a tough time and then slowly awakening to the immense possibilities in front of them. The older main character made it so relatable for me, along with the fantastic representation of what therapy should be—it was beautiful to watch Simone wake up to the fact that she’s a good therapist and start her life over again at 48, something no one thinks they will have to do. There’s a strong sense of found family between the characters; and since Simone grew up here, there are plenty of people who know her and she knows, despite having some kind of block on her memories of the town she left so long ago. I loved watching the found family dynamic develop, as different characters go from strangers or distantly remembered to found family, and it is one of my favorite tropes. There wasn’t a lot of high-stakes action, so it didn’t take a lot of mental investment, and this became one of the most enjoyable books that I’ve read this month. I’ll definitely be looking for future books in the series.

Bottom line: A fantastic start to a series featuring a magical therapy and wellness practice, a sentient house, a talking cat, and a woman forced to reinvent herself in midlife, this is a story not to miss!

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