The Ex Hex

“Rhys knew his father was an incredibly powerful witch, but he didn’t have to be such a cliché about it.”

The Penhallows are powerful witches who take themselves seriously and look disdainfully upon the commercialization of witchery, as in the gimmicky merchandise sold in shops like Something Wicked. However, Simon Penhallow, the patriarch, lives in a house that looks so much like a stereotypical witch’s home that Rhys wonders how their family ever avoided persecution. Penhaven Manor’s outward appearance (and interior decorating) embraces as a point of pride the same stereotypical witch imagery that Vivi’s family monetizes in Graves Glen, which makes Simon seem hypocritical and snobbish.

“And while he never used magic on the women he dated, he might’ve used the occasional charm to make sure he could get a reservation at the restaurant he wanted, or that traffic would never be a hassle. He didn’t abuse his powers, but there was no doubt that magic made the path smoother.”

Although Rhys revels in how magic enhances his day-to-day life and helps him run a successful travel business, he sets a boundary: He never uses magic on other people, especially women he dates, in order to get his way. By setting this hard rule for himself, Rhys establishes himself as a person who values individual autonomy. Although he has the power to do so, he never takes away a person’s right to choose for themselves, even if that choice means they do not want him. Rhys may use magic to make sure people, including himself, get what they want, but he never uses magic to make someone want what they may not otherwise have chosen for themselves.

“[S]he’d always be grateful she’d landed here in this spot that felt tailor-made for her somehow. This perfect small town where she could balance being a witch and a regular woman. Best of both worlds.”

Vivi’s feelings about Graves Glen are comforting on the surface, but upon closer inspection, one sees an important piece of her characterization emerge. Vivi feels her witch life and her human life are separate and somehow incompatible; rather than two sides of the same coin, she views them as two different coins altogether. However, by having a foot in “both worlds,” she never truly embraces either, so Vivi ultimately has no true sense of belonging. She is too witchy for the human world and too human for the witchy world. In Graves Glen, she can experience both parts of her identity, but she does not hold them in simultaneity, and this is a source of internal conflict for her character.

“Gwyn always seemed so connected to her craft in a way that Vivi had just never felt. […] [E]very time Vivi used magic, even the little things like her anti-cheater spell, something in her…paused. Held back.”

Vivi’s identity conflicts become more apparent in passages such as this, when she directly compares herself to other witches she knows. Her cousin Gwyn grew up in a household that embraced magic, while Vivi did not. She feels disconnected from a fundamental part of herself, and when she does attempt to forge that connection, she feels as if she is doing something illicit. Much of this can be attributed to Vivi’s mother’s attitude toward magic, which led Vivi to grow up believing magic must be kept secret to protect oneself from magic’s inherent dangers. Vivi tarries with it only occasionally and feels held back by her mother’s fears.

“Gryffud Penhallow had died his first year here, after all, and there was a legend that his ghost still roamed the hills above the town.”

Although Gryffud’s ghost does not appear in the novel, the suggestion that his spirit wanders the realm of the living serves to highlight how the town’s treatment of Founder’s Day has shifted since Gryffud’s time. Although Gryffud died shortly after establishing the town, and earlier celebrations honored his legacy, the festivities have long since become commercialized. Gryffud’s real life (and possible afterlife) are reduced to local legend, part of the town’s autumnal and Halloween-y charm.

“One of her front teeth had the tiniest chip in it. He’d forgotten that. He’d loved that. That little imperfection in that sunny smile.”

Rhys’s momentary focus on the tiny chip in one of Vivi’s front teeth is emblematic of what many philosophers, both ancient and contemporary, regard as one of love’s defining characteristics. For these philosophers, love begins as noticing something specific about a person and finding it charming. It is in those quirks and individualities that one sees a unique individual. Rhys’s recollection of Vivi’s chipped tooth shows how while he loves her sunny smile, he loves it all the more for how that chipped tooth makes her smile unique. The chip is an “imperfection,” but instead of diminishing her smile, it makes it altogether more charming.

“It was like having a spotlight on you all the time, but not in a way that made you feel exposed or on display. It just made you feel…warm. Appreciated. Until it was gone.”

Vivi’s remarks about Rhys’s attentiveness further reinforce what the reader has already learned about Rhys as a person. When someone speaks, he listens—he does not interject or assert his view over theirs. His attention is entirely focused on them, which indicates he is not merely listening but really hearing what they say and putting in effort to understand them. In Vivi’s perspective, this attention is warm and flattering, and Rhys’s focus makes her feel appreciated and seen. She also remembers, just as sharply, the absence of his attention, a disinterest that left her feeling cold and unseen.

“Magic always had a physical effect. Some spells made you tired, some made you giddy. Some left you crying for reasons you didn’t understand. And some magic, for whatever reason, turned you on.”

While the novel does not delve too deeply into how magic in the story’s world works, the narration does briefly describe the effects magic can have on a person’s body. Some spells seem to affect the witch’s brain chemistry, raising or lowering chemicals like serotonin or dopamine to provoke emotional responses, which affect the body with physical symptoms such as exhaustion or crying. Other spells are capable of making a witch feel sexually aroused, likely through increasing adrenaline, testosterone, and estrogen in the body. The exact science is not explained in the novel, but passages like this make it clear that when one expends psychical energy to perform magic, the brain’s chemistry can be affected in unpredictable ways.

“Given that he was currently cursed, Rhys knew using magic on them was dangerous, but charm, he’d found, was a sort of spell all its own.”

Not only is Rhys a powerful witch, but he also proves quite adept at handling delicate social interactions, like reassuring human customers that the murderous skulls in Something Wicked were just faulty merchandise. The reader’s previous understanding of Rhys’s boundaries with magic usage (i.e., he never uses magic on someone he is dating) may feel slightly destabilized here—while Rhys will not outright use magic on another human being to get his way, he can and will use his charming demeanor to manipulate someone’s perception of an event. However, Rhys does so in a reassuring manner, implying that just like his actual magic, he uses his charm only for good.

“‘You’re a badass witch,’ Vivi reminded her. ‘Aunt Elaine is a badass witch. I’m a history teacher.’

‘You can be both.’”

Despite being a powerful witch, as proven by her “joke” hex actually working, Vivi still classifies herself as “just” a history teacher. The fact that she insists upon this classification even to her family members, who are also witches, shows how deeply this self-division runs within her. She fundamentally sees herself as an outsider, even among family, and this shows the reader how difficult it may be for Vivi to unlearn how she sees herself. She knows she is a witch—badass or not—and she knows she is a history teacher, so her journey is one of self-actualization rather than self-realization. She must learn to give herself permission to embrace both sides of herself as parts of one whole.

“This conversation was beginning to skirt too close to things Rhys worked very hard not to think about, so a little rakishness was needed.”

Rhys uses his “rakishness” and his charm to divert conversation away from topics that may encroach upon sensitive subjects. In this case, he playfully redirects the flow of conversation away from a discussion of his father and his hometown. Rhys actively avoids talking about his family, especially his father, and in this instance he covers up his sensitivity with a devil-may-care attitude. He adopts the persona of someone who does not care deeply about anyone or anything as a way to protect true areas of vulnerability, namely that he actually does care deeply. The state of his familial relationships matters to him, but he finds it either too painful or too nebulous to actually verbalize—so he avoids it with a joke.

“Rhys stared at the apparition in front of them, wondering how someone who grew up where he had had never seen a ghost before. Truth be told, he hadn’t actually believed the damn things were real because if they were, there’d been no better place for them than Penhaven Manor.”

This passage demonstrates a surprisingly subtle commonality between witches and humans in the novel: In both groups, there are skeptics and nonbelievers. Much in the same way that humans debate the existence of the afterlife, Rhys expresses past doubts about the legitimacy of the paranormal, namely ghosts, despite belonging to a demographic that would seem likely to believe in the existence of spirits. Rhys’s surprise at seeing Piper’s ghost—his first ghost ever—is just as surprising for the reader in that it disrupts stereotypical portrayals of witches in popular culture.

“This is why we’re so strict about certain types of magic being forbidden. Mess with the wrong things, it kills you.”

Dr. Arbuthnot’s foreboding comment paints Piper McBride’s death as a cautionary tale: Piper delved too deeply in magic beyond her abilities, and it resulted in her death. This warning is all that remains of Piper’s legacy; no one expresses any interest in whom she was trying to contact on the other side and for what purpose. If the elder witches had not dismissed her as a foolish girl out of her depth, Dr. Arbuthnot herself might have gleaned some information that could be helpful to Rhys and Vivi in the present. That said, Dr. Arbuthnot’s warning unwittingly applies to Vivi too; because of her casual hex on Rhys, magic increasingly goes haywire, and his life and all of Graves Glen are in ever more danger.

“[T]hey didn’t like the store. Lord knew they’d never set foot in it. They were too serious, too academic about magic for that sort of thing.”

The witches Vivi refers to in this passage are members of the witchery faculty at Penhaven College, who in many ways reiterate Simon Penhallow’s attitude toward “hedge” witches like Vivi and her family. For the academic witches, magic is an art and a science, an object and a source of knowledge, and that knowledge and its creative power is not meant for everyone. Their serious attitude toward magic makes them look down their noses at the commercialization of witch aesthetics, especially the gimmicky merchandise at Something Wicked. In Vivi’s judgment, the academic witches’ refusal to treat “hedge” witches as equals makes them snobbish. On the other hand, her avoidance of academic witches because of their snobbery makes Vivi a bit of a snob too.

“It looked like something out of every bad horror movie he’d ever seen, and he was less afraid of ghosts than he was catching tetanus as he took in the crooked steps, the shutter slumping from one window, the front door hanging drunkenly on its hinges.”

The novel embraces the tropes of its genre in how the narrative describes settings, especially in scenes like Vivi and Rhys’s visit to the haunted house just outside Graves Glen. The cabin itself is located far in the woods, a solitary structure at the end of a winding path that weaves beneath the shadows cast by overhanging tree branches. The cabin is dilapidated at best, and demolition-worthy at worst. The haunted house’s overt disrepair is a direct nod to the “abandoned cabin” tropes in horror and paranormal genres, but as the novel is a romantic comedy, the frightening appearance is couched in a moment of levity, as Rhys believes he is more likely to be injured by the house itself rather than any ghost within it.

“What was wrong must be righted, what was taken must be relinquished.”

Piper McBride’s ghost issues a warning that sounds almost like a prophecy, and her words foreshadow how the novel’s main conflicts must be resolved. Prophetic speech, in any literary form, depends upon the power of language, and in Piper’s case, the words she uses in her speech signal to the reader that there is more at stake than just Vivi’s hex on Rhys. The “ex hex” has become entangled with something much larger than Vivi or Rhys ever anticipated. Although Piper does not speak directly to Rhys and Vivi’s interpersonal issues, it is logical to assume that those issues must also be resolved to restore peace in the town, as their emotional conflict is the root of the original hex.

“Vivi hadn’t done this much witchy stuff in ages. […] It was the kind of thing Vivi had thought of when she’d first learned about who—and what—she was.”

Vivi’s introspection indicates a slow acceptance of her “witchy” side, which she all but outright denied in the opening chapters. She recalls when she first learned about her abilities and how her mind flew to fantasies of casting powerful spells, communicating with spirits, and other images associated with being a witch. As she grew up, however, Vivi repressed that side of herself to the point of feeling guilty when she cast even a simple spell to reheat tea. Now she has a network of other powerful people whom she admires, respects, and loves, and those connections help make her “witchy” side more accessible. Still, she feels strange about the level of “witchy stuff” she has accomplished in recent days as she begins to exceed her childhood expectations.

“Cariad. He’d called her that, that summer.”

Rhys calls Vivi “cariad,” a Welsh word that can be translated as “lover,” “beloved,” or “darling.” Until this point in the novel, Rhys has refrained from calling Vivi by this name, despite being aware of his lingering feelings for her. He has not yet fully learned where Vivi’s boundaries with him are, especially since he knows how badly he hurt her in the past. Rhys calls her “cariad” in a moment of emotional vulnerability on his part, in which he tells Vivi how deeply he still cares. Using this name shows Vivi that he remembers everything from their prior relationship—whether it is his pet name for her or the little chip in her front tooth—and that makes it clear that their time together did (and still does) matter to him.

“She felt like being a witch was…I don’t know, something that happened to her, not something she chose. But she was good. Really good when she wanted to be. She just chose another path.”

Elaine’s revelation about Vivi’s mother prompts Vivi to question much of what she thought about her upbringing. Elaine’s statement itself, though, demonstrates the value Vivi’s mother placed on personal choice. Her aversion to her own witchcraft was due to her feeling that she did not choose it for herself, that it was something dangerous inflicted upon her by a force outside her control, so she chose not to embrace it. The downside to her choice is that she did not seem to value the same personal choice for Vivi. Rather than teaching her daughter about her abilities and her ancestry, Vivi’s mother all but explicitly forbade magic in their household. She did not create for Vivi an opportunity to choose her own path, as she had done for herself.

“Elaine had drilled it into both Vivi and Gwyn that when it came to their bodies, they should always trust science over magic.”

It is not only personal choice that the Jones women value—it is informed personal choice. Elaine is well aware of the magical methods of contraception, but she urged Vivi and Gwyn to trust more scientific methods instead for their sexual and reproductive health. Options like prophylactic condoms or hormonal birth control pills are subject to testing and scrutiny that magical remedies simply do not undergo to the same degree, if at all. Elaine encouraged Vivi and Gwyn to trust science for health matters because there is simply more information about scientific methods. As demonstrated in an earlier chapter when a “Viagra” potion made a man’s entire body become rigid, magical remedies can and do behave unpredictably, and they have unforeseeable magical effects that scientific health methods do not.

“We do sell an awful lot of crystals and novelty T-shirts. […] We also sell fake grimoires and plastic pumpkins and pointy hats. The whole shebang, really. […] And yet we’re still the witches who managed to curse your son, and you had no idea it had even happened. So maybe back off a little.”

Vivi stands up to Simon Penhallow, and in a way, she also stands up for her family against every other witch who ever looked down their nose at them for who they are, how they practice magic, and how they choose to be witches in the world. They may be “hedge” witches who pander to human consumers to earn a living, but that does not mean they are any less powerful, clever, or capable than a “serious” witch like Simon or Dr. Arbuthnot. Vivi effectively puts Simon in his place by reminding him of how he underestimated her and her family; in so doing, Vivi moves closer to embracing all sides of herself: witchy, human, goofy, and serious.

“There’s really no good timing for this kind of thing, is there? Finding your person? It just kind of happens when it happens. Or so they say.”

Gwyn and Vivi commiserate over love’s timing, highlighting a sentiment commonly expressed in romantic comedies: There is no “right” time for the right person to come along. “The One” often arrives at what feels like the exact worst time, whether the protagonist is stressed, busy, grieving, traveling, or in some other way preoccupied so that finding love is the last thing on their agenda. This sentiment supports an unspoken belief in universal forces like fate and destiny, whereby love is not something one chooses when it’s convenient, but something that happens to a person at the moment when they need love’s challenges in order to grow.

“She was a powerful sorceress, polka dots or no, and if wearing her favorite dress would make her feel better, why not?”

By the novel’s concluding chapters, Vivi fully embraces her “witchy” identity alongside her humanity. She also recognizes that her journey of self-actualization includes embracing all parts of herself in a way that feels comfortable and true to who she is. Vivi initially skips the polka-dotted dress in favor of a more serious, plain black dress, but it is not something she associates with being herself. Her polka dots are a more whimsical version of femininity, and the dress is a garment Vivi feels at home wearing. It makes her feel confident, thus marking a noteworthy distinction between confidence and seriousness—she does not have to be a strictly academic witch in order to be powerful, nor does she have to change her aesthetic to fit someone else’s idea of what a powerful witch looks like. Vivi is a powerful witch, and the only image that matters for her identity formation is her own.