Review – Free as a Bird (Yard Birds, Book 3) by Hailey Edwards (4/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy/Paranormal
Length: 119 pages
Publisher: Black Dog Books, LLC.
Release Date: June 3, 2024
ASIN: B0CTHSS473
Stand Alone or Series: 3rd book in the Yard Birds series
Source: Borrowed ebook from Kindle Unlimited
Rating: 4/5 stars
“When an old friend reaches out to Ellie, asking for help locating her missing coven members, she’s ready for her big comeback. Witchlight is financing the op, and it feels damn good to be official again.
But when her friend’s lies begin to unravel, Ellie realizes she’s let her ego lead her into a trap. And she’s brought her coven down with her. With the girls’ lives on the line, Ellie has to decide what’s more important—reliving her glory days or saving her best friends from a permanent retirement.”
Series Info/Source: This is the third, and final, book in the Yard Birds series. I borrowed this on ebook from Kindle Unlimited.
Thoughts: This book did a very good job of wrapping up this series. I would love to have more of these characters, but this was tied up nicely.
Ellie gets a call from the leader of a different coven, some of their members have gone missing and Witchlight wants to reactivate Ellie’s coven to help figure out what is happening. Once there, Ellie and her coven realize they have been lied to and things are not at all what they seemed.
As with all the books in this series this book was fun, highly entertaining, and humorous. I loved all the family and friends involved. Ellie’s husband’s soul is now bound to a charm around the neck of a kitten named Scrappy and this was hilarious. Scrappy is a, well, scrappy kitten and causes loads of trouble.
I enjoyed how this took a look at trying to reclaim your glory days and then realizing that maybe they weren’t so glorious after all. Maybe the glorious thing is the very thing you have normally, day to day. This is a wonderful message and was a great way to tie up this series.
The world building is light here. I would have liked to learn more about Witchlight and seen Ellie get more resolution around her husband’s soul being bound to an object. However, I also really enjoyed how things were wrapped up.
My Summary (4/5): Overall I really enjoyed this series. There is a lot of humor in here and a lot about family and aging. The mystery here is decently done and keeps you guessing. I love that this takes a look at aging and reliving glory days in a way that is heartfelt and honest. I would love to read more adventures about Ellie and her coven, but I do think they deserve the retirement they worked so hard for. This series definitely made me want to check out more of Edwards’ series and I plan on doing that in the future.
