Keeping your magic a secret is hard. Being in love with your best friend is harder.
When We Were Magic is a 2020 Young Adult Urban Fantasy novel written by Sarah Gailey (Magic for Liars).
Prom Night. Supposed to be the most magical night of a young girl's life. For Alexis, it's anything but, because the boy she attempted to lose her virginity to is currently bleeding out on his bed. And it's her fault. Panicking, Alexis calls her five friends - Paulie, Roya, Iris, Marcelina, and Maryam - to get rid of the body with the help of their shared secret - their magic powers.
Of course things go horribly awry and now Alexis and her friends are stuck with a magically torn apart corpse. Alexis decides to accompany each of her friends as they hide away their part of the body and in the process her perspective of both herself and her friends undergoes some changes.
When We Were Magic contains examples of:
- Accidental Murder: The Inciting Incident of the book. Alexis' magic goes haywire due to her conflicting emotions when she tries to sleep with Josh Harper, resulting in her brutally killing him on accident.
- Asshole Victim: Completely averted with Josh Harper. Alexis makes it a point several times that Josh, as far as she knows, wasn't a bad person at all. In fact, he noticed she was uncomfortable about sleeping with him and even offered to stop, but she declined. What makes his death so tragic is the fact that he did absolutely nothing to deserve it. He was just literally at the wrong place at the wrong time.
- Bittersweet Ending: In the end the horrifying ordeal the girls went through brought them closer together and their friendship is stronger than ever. Alexis finally managed to confess to Roya, the group gained a new member in Gina, clearing the air between them, and no one suspects or can prove they had anything to do with Josh's death. However, Alexis still has to live with the knowledge that she killed an innocent kid and getting rid of the body has cost each of the girls something valuable that they'll never get back.
- Cast from Hit Points: After the girls fail to make Josh's body disappear, the resulting strain from the spell begins to take a heavy toll on Iris and she has to lay off magic for quite a while.
- Disposing of a Body: The overarching plot of the book. After their first attempt to magically teleport Josh's corpse away only results in the body getting horrifically torn apart and reappearing, the girls decide that each of them should separately get rid of the body parts.
- Everyone Can See It: Pretty much everybody in the group is aware of Alexis' crush on Roya and is just waiting for her to finally get the courage to confess.
- Groin Attack: Poor Josh Harper gets his dick exploded by Alexis at the start of the book and dies from blood loss.
- Happily Adopted: Alexis' dads are very kind and understanding people who love their kids very much.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: Poor Alexis does not take Josh's death well and spends almost the entirety of the book berating and hating herself for what she did and trying to atone for not only his murder but also the fact that she pulled her friends into it.
- Hope Spot: After the girls have gotten rid of all of Josh's body parts, except for the heart, and are conscripted into a search party they come across Josh's body, now whole again and warm. Alexis speculates that they could bring him back to life if they hurry, but her attempt to reunite the body with the heart fails and Josh stays dead, with the girls forced to pretend they just found his corpse.
- Karma Houdini: Zig-zagged. The girls in the end do get away with murdering and then trying to cover up the death of Josh Harper, but it's made very clear they'll be carrying the psychological scars of it for the rest of their lives. Plus, dumping the body parts has literally taken something out of each of them that they'll never get back.
- The Leader: Iris is seen as this by the rest of the group, as she's the most confident and driven one of them. This is reflected by her magic, which lets her direct the other girls' magic powers and makes them capable of working greater spells. It's deconstructed later on, as Iris confesses to Alexis that the pressure of always having to be the one who pulls the group out of everything and who is expected to have all the answers hasn't done wonders for her mental state and that she feels like she failed them because the transportation spell didn't work right.
- Operation: Jealousy: The real reason why Alexis was so adamant about sleeping with Josh Harper. She was upset that Roya was taking another boy to prom and wanted to get back at her by losing her virginity to a boy, any boy and Josh was just convenient.
- Red Herring: Gina is build up as an antagonist for the majority of the book, being the only one at the girls' school who suspects they might have something to do with Josh Harper's disappearance, along with implying and then outright stating that she knows about them having magic powers. In the end it turns out she, too, is a witch and was only trying to make contact with other people like her. She does briefly become hostile to the girls when their secretive behavior makes her believe they murdered Josh Harper and are trying to cover it up (which isn't wrong), but once the girls come clean to her about what really happened she's understanding and even joins their circle.
- Speaks Fluent Animal: Alexis' magic manifests in her being able to communicate with animals.
- Sympathetic Murderer: The book is all about Alexis and her friends trying to cover up that Alexis' magic killed Josh Harper. However it's clear Alexis is traumatized and feels horrible for his death, making her pitiable rather than someone you want to see busted and punished. The fact that it was an accident brought on by Alexis' at the time troubled emotional state helps.
- Teleporter Accident: The first attempt to magically teleport Josh's corpse away results in the body getting horrifically torn apart and reappearing.
