Review: Short story: "Twice in a Blue Moon" by Jess Lourey

Twice in a Blue Moon by Jess Lourey
Published June 2026 via Amazon Original Stories

Magic is a way of life for the Blackthorn women—but magic doesn't always make their lives easier.

This is something of an oddity of a short story (not a bad thing), drifting from one sister to another, to a woman who is part villain and part wronged, letting the story expand and contract as needed. When the story opens with Helena forgetting to put the window up at the car wash and simply accepting that she (and the interior of her car) will get drenched as a result, you know this is not going to be entirely normal; when a woman appears at their doorstep, painful tattoos appearing one after another across her skin, and nobody seems terribly alarmed—well, it keeps things interesting.

I'm intrigued here by the moral ambiguity; there are mentions of past events that will make a lot of readers unhappy, but I really do appreciate it when moral ambiguities are presented neutrally, in a matter-of-fact way, largely setting aside right and wrong and moving forward anyway because humans are, by and large, morally ambiguous creatures. I don't think I'll read the full-length book that is connected to this short story, but it was an interesting deviation.

A note: Goodreads has this listed as a new edition of "Seven Daughters", but I think it may have had significant revisions, as some of the things mentioned in the description of "Seven Daughters" (think: snakes) aren't present in this story, and there's a significant page difference—but if you've previously read "Seven Daughters", you might find it interesting to make a comparison.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.