Book Details:
Author: Deborah Wilde
Release Date: 15 March 2021
Series: Magic After Midlife (Book 1 of 7)
Genre: Women’s Fantasy, Paranormal Urban Fantasy, Humour, Jewish Folklore
Format: E-book
Pages: 342 pages
Publisher: Te Da Media Inc.
Blurb:
Middle-aged. Divorced. Hormonally imbalanced. Then she got magic. Underestimate her. That’ll be fun.
Miriam Feldman is ditching her shapewear and finally letting her magic fly free.
When Miri was a teen, her parents were murdered by magic assassins. These days, her aggressively normal job as a law librarian suits her just fine. Normal keeps her daughter safe. Normal means no one notices the dangerous power she’s spent years pretending she doesn’t have.
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That ends when her ride-or-die best friend vanishes after tangling with vampires.
To get her back, Miri unleashes the rare shadow magic she’s kept buried for decades. It’s intoxicatingly empowering—and impossible to ignore.
Plunged into a hidden supernatural world where not knowing the rules is a fast-track to a painful end, Miri’s audacity is both her greatest weapon and her biggest risk. She enlists help the only way she can: by blackmailing a grumpy French wolf shifter into her rescue mission. He has the infuriating habit of disagreeing with her every move… and a baffling drive to protect her, even though she doesn’t need it.
Then there’s their chemistry. Sharp, undeniable, and very much not on her To-Do list.
As threats multiply and secrets unravel, Miri discovers that magic doesn’t just change the rules—it changes her. But will claiming this second act cost her the people she loves… or finally give her the life she thought she’d missed her chance at?
Featuring a smart older heroine with zero effs left to give, laugh-out-loud banter, and a swoony shifter romance, this clever mix of urban fantasy and mystery will have you bingeing ‘just one more chapter.’
Read the complete series now.But in Constantinople, knowledge is the most dangerous weapon. And when those who hold power decide that silence must be enforced at any cost, Theophano must choose: protect what she loves, or expose the truth that could bring down an empire.
The Keyholder is a literary historical novel of intrigue, love, and moral complexity, set in the golden age of Byzantium. For readers of Umberto Eco, Hilary Mantel, and Madeline Miller.
Review
Throwing Shade by Deborah Wilde is a sharp, funny, emotionally warm paranormal women’s fiction novel that blends midlife reinvention, urban fantasy, Jewish folklore, murder-mystery energy, and snarky humour into a fast-paced magical adventure. The story follows Miriam Feldman, a forty-two-year-old divorced single mother and law-firm librarian whose carefully contained life is blown apart after an attempted assault forces her to unleash the shadow magic she has suppressed for decades.
Miriam is easily the novel’s greatest strength. She is not written as a polished, chosen-one heroine, but as a tired, funny, angry, loving, and overworked woman who is trying to survive motherhood, work, aging, dating disasters, old trauma, and the slow ache of feeling invisible. Her voice is wonderfully alive: sarcastic, self-aware, irreverent, vulnerable, and full of humour that often comes from a woman who has had to swallow her rage for far too long. Watching her reclaim her power, literally as well as emotionally, felt deeply satisfying.
The paranormal worldbuilding is also one of the book’s strongest elements. Author Wilde uses Jewish folklore and magical terminology in a way that feels fresh and distinctive, especially through the Banim Shovavim, Ohrists, dybbuks, golems, mazel, Gehenna, and the dangerous politics of hidden magical communities. The magic is not decorative but tied to identity, history, fear, survival, and inherited trauma. Miriam’s shadow, Delilah, is especially fun: part weapon, part alter ego, part visual manifestation of everything Miriam has repressed.
The mystery around Judith’s disappearance gives the novel strong forward momentum, while the supporting cast adds texture and charm. What I appreciated most is that the book understands midlife not as an ending, but as a threshold. Miriam’s journey is not simply about discovering magic; it is about refusing to remain small. The novel is at its best when it connects supernatural danger to ordinary female exhaustion: being talked over, underestimated, objectified, dismissed, over-responsible, and expected to stay pleasant through it all. The fantasy becomes a metaphor for reclaiming anger, appetite, visibility, and agency.
That said, the humour is very dominant, and readers who prefer darker, more atmospheric paranormal fiction may find the constant quips and pop-culture references a little too busy at times. The plot is also packed with lore, magical factions, emotional backstory, mystery threads, and romantic tension, so the pacing can occasionally feel crowded. However, the sheer force of Miriam’s voice keeps the story engaging even when the worldbuilding becomes dense.
Overall, Throwing Shade is a witty, energetic, and thoroughly enjoyable start to a series. It offers mystery, magic, monsters, friendship, mother-daughter tenderness, slow-burn romantic sparks, and a heroine who is gloriously done with being underestimated. It is funny without being shallow, emotional without being heavy-handed, and magical in a way that feels both entertaining and thematically meaningful.
The Reading Bud 
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