The first meeting goes wrong in slow motion. Lucy Ansari steps out of the storeroom of Crawley Books with an armful of romances and a mug of coffee balanced on top, looks up, and finds a tall blond stranger inches away. Her hands fly up and her magic catches everything in midair: books hovering, latte suspended like an ice sculpture. Then he introduces himself, she reaches out to shake his hand, and because a spell needs her attention, the whole lot drops. The mug shatters and the coffee lands on his expensive loafers. To Vex & To Hex by Neena Noon turns on that rule, and on the man standing in the puddle: Grayson Crawley, grandson of the shop’s owner, who has not visited in twenty years.
Vex First, Hex Later
The opening third is a comedy of sabotage. Charles Crawley, the old witch who owns the shop and who has been more of a parent to Lucy than her own, is recovering from hip surgery, and Grayson has flown in from Dublin to look after him. Lucy is certain he wants the business. He is certain she is crowding him out of his only remaining family. So she charges him four dollars fifty for a cup of English Breakfast, makes him assemble a daybed by hand while her magic pointedly does nothing, and turns his fresh tea stone cold. He strips the shop of fairy lights overnight and quotes Latin at her about preparing for war.
Noon has a real gift for this register, and To Vex & To Hex by Neena Noon is at its best when the two leads are simply trying to ruin each other’s afternoon. The scene in which a customer’s baby is sick all over Grayson’s cashmere, and he has to ask nicely for a cleaning spell, is properly funny, and it plants a line about begging that the final page pays off neatly. The bickering never feels cruel, partly because each of them sees the other at a weak moment early on. When a rude customer reduces Lucy to silence, it is Grayson who throws the man out.
The Loneliest People on Main Street
Beneath the slapstick, To Vex & To Hex by Neena Noon is a novel about two people who have never been sure anyone wanted them. Lucy grew up in a house so quiet she feared she might lose her voice, with two brilliant neuroscientist parents who love each other and treat their daughter as an afterthought. Books rescued her, and the bookshop became home. Grayson’s wound is older. His parents died when he was six, he was shipped to an uncle in Ireland, and he grew up believing his grandparents had simply let him go. One of the book’s quietest images is his memory of waking across cold hospital chairs on the night of the crash.
The book-magic is the clearest expression of that theme. Early on Lucy watches a teenage regular browse the thrillers, waits for the tug of a book recognising its reader, and gives it a nudge. The idea that every book has a reader and every reader deserves to be found is sentimental, but Noon commits to it, and it gives the romance a moral centre. These two are, in effect, a pair of books nobody has picked up. The novel never says so outright, which is to its credit; it lets the parallel sit in the background while Lucy fusses over a regular’s choice and Grayson, watching from the office door, wonders why a spell for strangers moves him so much.
The supporting cast of To Vex & To Hex by Neena Noon earns its space. Charles is mischievous rather than saintly, the old men of his poker table bicker like schoolboys, and a restaurant owner next door becomes the first friend Grayson has made in years. Best of all is the recipe Lucy inherited from Charles’s late wife, Sophie, whose real changes were whispered from mother to daughter and never written down. It says more about grief and belonging than any of the big speeches. So does Grayson’s first birthday in town, when his new friends crowd into the restaurant next door and a man who expected the day to pass unnoticed has to find something to say.
Where the Heat and the Plot Pull Apart
Readers should know that To Vex & To Hex by Neena Noon is a steamy book. The desire builds through near-kisses and a bitten lip, and once the two finally give in during a snowbound Christmas Eve in the shop, the scenes are open door, frank and frequent, with dominance, restraint and sex outdoors. Consent is handled with care, including a night when Grayson refuses a very drunk Lucy. Alongside the romance the novel deals with parental death, estrangement, grief, emotional neglect, illness and heavy drinking.
The trouble is structural. Twice the relationship collapses because neither lead will ask a plain question: once over a nervous laugh at Christmas, once over a single overheard remark in spring. The book’s thesis is that people must say out loud that they want someone to stay, and the climax honours that, but using the same misunderstanding a second time makes the final act feel engineered. Lucy’s parents also come round after one honest conversation, which is too neat for a lifetime of distance. And in the love scenes the vocabulary of burning, pooling and pounding repeats until it blurs.
Neena Noon Writes for the Lonely
Neena Noon is a Pakistani American writer from Long Island. To Vex & To Hex by Neena Noon is her first novel; St. Martin’s Griffin brought it out in the US on 3 November 2026, and HarperCollins publishes it in Britain. Her dedication is to anyone who feels alone, and her author note says she hopes her books bring comfort to people who are lonely or sad. That ambition is visible on every page. Lucy is the daughter of a Pakistani immigrant, and the novel uses Urdu, a shared delight in poets such as Elizabeth Bishop and the rituals of Main Street to show two outsiders building a common language.
The romance is also generous about work. A bookshop is treated as a serious place, booksellers as skilled people, and the novel’s quarrel with Lucy’s parents is partly a quarrel about what counts as a real life. What the book lacks in plotting it makes up in sincerity, and it is easy to imagine Noon’s next novels tightening the mechanics while keeping the warmth.
What It Leaves Behind
Readers who enjoyed Too Hexed to Handle by Charlotte Ingham will find the same blend of spells, sparring and spice here. Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman offers an older, more literary take on domestic magic and the families it shapes, while Beth O’Leary’s The Flatshare suits anyone who wants a gentler story of two strangers who come to rely on each other. To Vex & To Hex by Neena Noon is uneven, but its central image stays: a small shop where everyone, eventually, is found by the right book. The final pages end on spilled coffee and a slow grin, and Lucy has the last laugh, as she always intended.