Seventeen-year-old Esme Pearl has a babysitters club. She knows it’s kinda lame, but what else is she supposed to do? Get a job? Gross. Besides, Esme likes babysitting, and she’s good at it.

And lately Esme needs all the cash she can get, because it seems like destruction follows her wherever she goes. Let’s just say she owes some people a new tree.

Enter Cassandra Heaven. She’s Instagram-model hot, dresses like she found her clothes in a dumpster, and has a rebellious streak as gnarly as the cafeteria cooking. So why is Cassandra willing to do anything, even take on a potty-training two-year-old, to join Esme’s babysitters club?

The answer lies in a mysterious note Cassandra’s mother left her: “Find the babysitters. Love, Mom.”

Turns out, Esme and Cassandra have more in common than they think, and they’re about to discover what being a babysitter really means: a heroic lineage of superpowers, magic rituals, and saving the innocent from seriously terrifying evil. And all before the parents get home.

What do you all think about comparing books to other books, films, or shows? I’ve seen some authors on Twitter that are pretty vocally against the practice, but I guess I think it can be a helpful tool when it comes to selling a reader on a book. I mean, of course no author wants their work reduced to just a comparison of another book/story, but I do think it can work in certain situations.

Anyhow, my friend Ashley had recently posted a list of YA horror novels that she had enjoyed, and The Babysitters Coven by Kate Williams was among them. I hopped over to Amazon to read more about the book, and the first thing I see is “Adventures in Babysitting meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” and I was like…whoa.

It would be impossible for me to overstate how much I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer, my actual favorite show OF EVER. And Adventures in Babysitting is a movie I watched incessantly as a kid. I mean, don’t fuck with the babysitter.

So between a recommendation from a friend & that delightful comparison to two things I love, added to the fact that I was binge-buying books for, er…pandemic reasons, The Babysitters Coven made its way into my shopping cart.

This was a lot of fun! It’s not something that’s gonna wind up on my top ten list for the year or anything, but The Babysitters Coven a quick, clever, and pretty damn funny book!

Esme Pearl & her best friend Janis have their own babysitter’s club (and there are of course some references to The Babysitter’s Club books, which I never read as a kid, so they sailed over my head). They don’t really do a whole lot with their club, though. Mostly they just hang out after school & go thrift store shopping, or hang out with Esme’s gassy dog, Pig.

They do babysit, of course. And Esme is really great at babysitting. The book opens with Esme on the job, and the tone of the writing in that first scene really hooked me. It was honestly hilarious & sweet & also fully embraced the chaos that is looking after small children.

But something strange happens during that job. And then, well, stranger things keep happening in Esme’s life, leading her towards some eye-opening discoveries about good & evil, light & dark, and her own personal destiny.

Into every generation a Sitter is born? More or less.

There are more than a few similarities between The Babysitters Coven and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Williams doesn’t shy away from them. In fact, the show is directly referenced and things get all meta.

The Babysitters Coven was definitely a bit…fluffy? But not too fluffy. Like, a good amount of fluffiness, really. It’s got a healthy dose of teen angst & crushes, tons of snark, and a whole bunch of weirdness and magic. A fun book that I managed to read in one day!