The Shadow Cabinet - Juno Dawson (Book Review)

4.75 Stars on StoryGraph

The sequel to Her Majesty’s Royal Coven, Juno Dawson’s The Shadow Cabinet picks up shortly after the end of book one. Ciara has swapped her conciousness into Niamh’s body, and Niamh’s into hers. And then killed her sister to prevent her from coming back for her body. Helena has died after she summoned Belial, tried to kill Theo, and released Dabney Hale, the warlock responsible for starting a civil war fifteen years earlier. This leaves a gap for High Priestess of Her Majesty’s Royal Coven - and the Coven wants Niamh to lead. Meanwhile, Leonie’s brother has gone after Dabney so Leonie sets off across the world to find him. And Elle, who wants her normal life to remain normal, is on a crash course for that life to be forever changed.

I think one of the big topics that The Shadow Cabinet tackles is Nature vs Nurture. The story opens with flashback of Ciara and Niamh’s mother going to visit a witch when she’s pregnant with the twins. The witch tells their mother that one twin is going to be good and the other is going to be evil. And as we continue through the story, we get to see bits of Niamh and Ciara’s lives from Ciara’s point of view. And in these moments, we see how differently Niamh and Ciara are treated. When Niamh’s magic comes out and controls non witches, it is Ciara who gets in trouble for it. Ciara is not given the benefit of the doubt for many of things that go wrong in her childhood. And Ciara has internalised that to see herself as the evil twin and Niamh the good twin, leading to decisions to get involved with Dabney Hale before the war and eventually helping him during the war. As Ciara pretends to be Niamh, she gets to experience Niamh’s life and begins to re-evaluate her past decisions. There is regret. And there is hope that despite being brought back from her unconscious body with a bunch of hole in her memories and told to find Dabney, that Ciara could have a new, different life by being Niamh instead. Did Ciara become evil because she was born evil or because people in her life heard that she would be evil and therefore decided to treat her harshly that pushed her down the road to becoming evil?

Unlike Her Majesty’s Royal Coven, the main characters aren’t working together for the same goal in The Shadow Cabinet. And this is the downfall. Each of the groups are split up - Leonie leaves the UK to find her brother by herself, Ciara is focused on being Niamh and her upcoming coronation as High Priestess as well as recovering her memories, Elle is also feeling a little isolated, knowing that something is going on with her husband but unsure how to move forward with it, and even Holly and Theo have a wedge pushed between them over Theo and Holly’s older brother Milo and their feelings for each other. The isolation of the main characters makes for an interesting read, meaning that we as readers get to see how the group working together would have meant that things might have gone slightly easier.

The ending of The Shadow Cabinet made me excited to read the final book of the trilogy. Unfortunately, Human Rites does not come out until mid-July so I shall have to keep waiting.