Review by Elizabeth C. Bunce
Think school drama was bad when you were a student? Try navigating the cliques, bullies, sports, extracurriculars and final exams as a twenty-first century parent. Add in a hearty dose of the supernatural with a bonus helping of a doomsday prophecy, and you have all the ingredients for Caitlin Rozakis’s hilarious and heartwarming new suburban fantasy, The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association, out now from Titan Books and available here at Amazon. Its magic school is a good follow-up for fans of Netflix’s second season of Wednesday who wish they didn’t have to wait another year for more of Nevermore Academy.
Sending your kindergartner off to school is supposed to be a symbolic rite of passage—not a literal rite. But that’s exactly what Vivian Tanaka encounters when her daughter Aria, your typical happy-go-lucky five-year-old werewolf, starts at Grimoire Grammar School in the exclusive enclave of Veilport, Connecticut. The Tanakas are newcomers to the magical community of fae, mages, vampires, and shapeshifters, and Vivian is eager to forge a place for herself and her daughter, who became a werewolf in a recent hiking mishap. As the parent of a scholarship student, Vivian can never forget her unfortunate mundane upbringing, and arrives riddled with guilt over Aria’s accident and a crippling inferiority complex. Desperate to smooth the path for Aria, Viv throws herself into every activity and cozies up to the best families, queen bee moms Cecily and Moira. The one place she feels she excels is at her former career of accounting, so she leaps at the chance to serve as the bookkeeper for the Parent Teacher Council.
But it turns out mean girls don’t get any less mean when they grow up and snobbishness doesn’t expire when you graduate—and it’s only compounded when it’s rich witches you have to please. Viv finds herself in the same school drama she and husband Daniel experienced in their own youth, and nothing she does is good enough. To make matters worse, Viv uncovers irregularities in the PTA accounts, her daughter can’t hope to pass an exclusive admissions trial that will keep her in the only school suitable for a young scholarship werewolf, and there’s that pesky prophecy. Veilport has been bracing itself for signs of The Reckoning, an apocalyptic vision from the town’s founding days, and as cataclysms mount, those signs begin to point directly at little Aria. Can Viv unravel the school’s books, make the right friends, secure her daughter’s place in the werewolf pack, help her pass kindergarten, avert an apocalypse, and bring the right gluten-free, silver-free, and garlic-free snacks for skirmedge practice? Without her marriage falling apart in the process?
No. No, she cannot. And you will laugh, groan, and swear along with Viv as she staggers from one disaster to the next through Aria’s first year at Grimoire. The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association is a funny romp through a different side of dark academia—the parents’ side. Highly recommended for Wednesday and Harry Potter fans whose own school years are mercifully behind them.
