Witch Way Books in Order

The Witch Way books are anthologies rather than a single continuous series, which is useful to know going in. The Answer You Are Looking For Is Yes and Grow Your Own Optimist! both gather stories tied to Blake's work with Witch Way Magazine, and the big promise is variety within a very specific mood. These are paranormal, romantic, oddball stories that like sharp feelings, bad judgment, and the moment ordinary life tips into something magical.

Because they are collections, the protagonists change from story to story. That is part of the fun. One tale follows a mystical anthropologist trying to find his lost brother after tumbling into another realm. Another centers on a witch who goes back to her remote hometown and gets stuck pretending to date a man while other complications pile up. Elsewhere, a journalist banished to an island ends up babysitting monsters, a very lucky Millennial politician falls for a disastrously unlucky neighbor, and a tech employee hunting revenge uncovers a secret her boss would rather keep buried.

So the books do not build one long arc. They build a world of expectations instead.

What you can expect, again and again, is Blake's interest in relationships under pressure. Even when the premises get surreal, the stories stay focused on people making messy choices around love, ambition, resentment, loneliness, or desire. Magic shows up in many forms, but it is rarely there just to decorate the page. It complicates dating. It makes professional grudges weirder. It turns emotional avoidance into an actual plot problem. That mix keeps the collections readable even when the settings change fast.

The second volume, Grow Your Own Optimist!, pushes further into that strange tonal range. Its frame points to demons, devil's advocates, dystopia, and dating, which is a pretty accurate map of what the series does well. These stories can be funny, romantic, melancholy, or quietly mean in the best way. The connective tissue is that Blake seems interested in how people keep looking for magic, or hope, or love, even in places that feel compromised or dark.

That makes the Witch Way books a good fit for readers who do not need one central cast and would rather browse a shelf of different doors into the paranormal. Some stories land like rom-coms with a hex hanging over them. Others feel closer to speculative satire or eerie fantasy. Across both books, though, the voice is recognizable: clever, emotionally alert, and always ready to let a supernatural twist reveal something annoyingly human.