Death Card by Jasmine Smith ~ a Review

by MK French

Mikaela Broussard reads Tarot in her family's shop, and suddenly has a vision of the customer stabbing her. Trying to figure out what causes it, Mikaela soon spends time with Joelle. At the same time, witches are turning up stripped of their magic. Mikaela is poised to be the next Witch Queen of her coven, so she's asked to figure out what's happening with the magic, a task that will put her own magic to the test.

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. A free book was provided for an honest review.

August 2026; G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
978-0593858295; audio, ebook, print (304 pages); YA fantasy

This story is geared more toward a YA audience, since Mikaela and her twin brother just graduated high school. She chose to defer going to college out of continued grief for the loss of her grandmother a year ago, and Orion tends to drink and party too much. Their coven is descended from a powerful witch who had been brought to America generations ago, and the Witch Queen is a title passed along matrilineal lines to the eldest daughter of the bloodline. She is starting to be introduced to ruling concepts now that there is a distinct danger to the witches. Joelle is an ordinary human interested in witchcraft who came to New Orleans to study, and when their paths cross with a Tarot reading, Mikaela gets a strong vision of Joelle stabbing her in the chest. As much as she wants to avoid Joelle, her grandfather wants her to discover what the motive would be. Her grandfather also wants to keep the coven safe, and believes the increasing loss of magic within the community is due to a competing coven that once used demons and sacrifice to gain power. He also tasks Mikaela to look into it as the danger escalates for her community.

Heritage and grief color a lot of Mikaela's world at the start. Her grandparents raised her and her twin brother after her parents' deaths when they were babies, and their tight-knit family makes up the entire coven. The older generation didn't share the past, so Mikaela has to dig through their misperception and her own. There are different ways to do magic and to build a community, and keeping it hidden doesn't help when that secrecy complicates Mikaela's life. The humans around her haven't always helped, either; her grandfather has opposition running for public office in a racist and homophobic human whose daughter had been Mikaela's academic competition in school. She worries about them, about her future, and what the other coven will do; the worry blinds her to what's happening until the final quarter of the book. We're carried along with her as she investigates the demon angle and suffers through further loss. There's a happily ever after by the end, with growing hope for the future.

Buy Death Card at Amazon

Born and raised in New York City, M.K. French started writing stories when very young, dreaming of different worlds and places to visit. She always had an interest in folklore, fairy tales, and the macabre, which has definitely influenced her work. She currently lives in the Midwest with her husband, three young children, and a golden retriever.

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