Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorned. Or so the poem goes. One lying man is about to find out that when the woman scorned is a witch, Hell’s fury is only one of his problems.

As a crusader for justice in the name of women, the main character of Payback’s a Witch falls well short. Her casual contempt for the proverbial Las Vegas pole dancer with artificial boobs is a bad start. What makes some women worth avenging and some women cheap props? The casual misogyny in a story that is billed as being in defence of vulnerable women is especially hard to take.

Payback’s a Witch never manages to create the moral balance necessary to function as a revenge story. It doesn’t seem to be aware that it needs to. The setup is quickly sketched and incoherent. Sentences like “I’ve done all of this, yet you refuse to explain what’s going on show proof on anything” are no help. The only thing that is clear is that she deceives the target of her “revenge” and then blames his damnation on his lack of understanding. Not turning the target of the revenge story into a victim that the audience feels sorry for is Revenge 101, and Payback’s a Witch fails spectacularly.

Payback’s a Witch is also plagued by errors. It looks like an amateur effort, and not even an effective amateur effort. Attacking it on the grounds that it is badly copy edited is outside our scope though, because editing would have flagged the character problems (heroine is hateful) and story problems (everything else) long before anybody should care about the spelling.

This guest review was contributed by Fiorella Mauro. Writer. Editor. Sassy auntie. Your tell-you-the-truth friend. Official book reviewer at theromancereviews.com. Blogs at MonsterOfArts.com. You can follow her on Twitter @monsterofarts, which she knows looks like Monstero Farts and she is at peace with that.