This was recommended, based on some of the other books I've read recently, so I decided to give it a go. With a seemingly-promising story, it nonetheless never really delivers. Several other readers have described it as a "slow burn," but that's generous, honestly, It's a VERY slow burn at that. In fact, the fire never gets going at all: a hundred and fifty pages in, I was still waiting for something, ANYTHING, to happen. It's not bad writing, per se... it's just thoroughly boring, honestly, and something of a chore to read. I promised myself that if I started a book, for the GoodReads challenge, I would both finish and review it, but getting through this one definitely felt like work, and, if not for that, I would definitely have given it up about halfway through. The ending doesn't justify the means, frankly.
The premise of the novel is that Nora Walker, coming from a long line of purported "witches" (the term here never really clearly defined, other than that her ancestors were "women of the woods" who engaged in folk medicine and maybe magic - which always really irks me: if someone is going to allude to their characters being "witches" of some descript, they at least need to be respectful and do them justice, as opposed to just using the term as a sales pitch to a genre), herself endowed with a unique "gift," as the other female members of her family, is traipsing through the scary woods with her wolf-dog (familiar?) one day and comes across a 17-year-old boy half-frozen in the snow, whom she then brings home to spend the night while her mother is out of town. Hmmm... Nora has long lived in the woods, with her single mother, who rejects her gift, HER "nightshade," and seemingly any and all aspects of the supernatural, and who is rather dismissive of the ancestral folk medicine/magic, which Nora had been learning from her grandmother prior to her recent death.
Near their generations-old home is a camp for "wayward boys" (brat camp?) who sometimes escape, disappear into the woods, and aren't seen again until their bodies are found in the spring after the thaw. The boy she finds covered in the snow was seemingly one of the lucky ones, although he had been missing for nearly two weeks. Nora also reluctantly invites a girl from the camp to spend the night with her, when Oliver, the boy, shows up again. Although some effort is given to the main characters, I agree with several of the other reviewers who stated that there is very little character development, aside from the rather stereotypical "stock" characters of a "mystery" novel: the mysterious young girl with special powers, sort of; the mysterious young boy with a secret all his own, the third wheel in the form of some girl from the camp, who is never really developed at all, her wayward, drunk companions from the camp, and of course, "the boy who died," which is pretty standard in this trope as well.
The majority of the novel is largely comprised of a single scene, a single setting, and an endless supply of banal banter which is simply not engaging. It's also told from a rather cumbersome "split" perspective, in the characters of Nora and Oliver. This technique is difficult to pull off under the best of circumstances, as the dialogue should be sufficiently distinct between the two so as to be believable that the accounts are being told from two different perspectives, which doesn't happen here. It's written in the same style, using the same language and vocabulary, as well as the same simplistic dialogue, which makes it obvious that the same person is writing it, with very little effort paid to making it believable. There are some four-letter expletives thrown in for good measure, because these are wayward teenage boys, after all, but, as with everything else, much of the strained dialogue just seems like afterthought.
The book is also billed as something of a modern day fairy tale, primarily because of the interesting "twist" at the end, which was engaging, but it's not worth the entirety of the novel. Nothing really happens until at least 200 pages in, and when it does, it's not really believable. There is some action in the last quarter of the book, but it was rather predictable. Overall, the entire wasn't really worth the read.
The premise of the novel is that Nora Walker, coming from a long line of purported "witches" (the term here never really clearly defined, other than that her ancestors were "women of the woods" who engaged in folk medicine and maybe magic - which always really irks me: if someone is going to allude to their characters being "witches" of some descript, they at least need to be respectful and do them justice, as opposed to just using the term as a sales pitch to a genre), herself endowed with a unique "gift," as the other female members of her family, is traipsing through the scary woods with her wolf-dog (familiar?) one day and comes across a 17-year-old boy half-frozen in the snow, whom she then brings home to spend the night while her mother is out of town. Hmmm... Nora has long lived in the woods, with her single mother, who rejects her gift, HER "nightshade," and seemingly any and all aspects of the supernatural, and who is rather dismissive of the ancestral folk medicine/magic, which Nora had been learning from her grandmother prior to her recent death.
Near their generations-old home is a camp for "wayward boys" (brat camp?) who sometimes escape, disappear into the woods, and aren't seen again until their bodies are found in the spring after the thaw. The boy she finds covered in the snow was seemingly one of the lucky ones, although he had been missing for nearly two weeks. Nora also reluctantly invites a girl from the camp to spend the night with her, when Oliver, the boy, shows up again. Although some effort is given to the main characters, I agree with several of the other reviewers who stated that there is very little character development, aside from the rather stereotypical "stock" characters of a "mystery" novel: the mysterious young girl with special powers, sort of; the mysterious young boy with a secret all his own, the third wheel in the form of some girl from the camp, who is never really developed at all, her wayward, drunk companions from the camp, and of course, "the boy who died," which is pretty standard in this trope as well.
The majority of the novel is largely comprised of a single scene, a single setting, and an endless supply of banal banter which is simply not engaging. It's also told from a rather cumbersome "split" perspective, in the characters of Nora and Oliver. This technique is difficult to pull off under the best of circumstances, as the dialogue should be sufficiently distinct between the two so as to be believable that the accounts are being told from two different perspectives, which doesn't happen here. It's written in the same style, using the same language and vocabulary, as well as the same simplistic dialogue, which makes it obvious that the same person is writing it, with very little effort paid to making it believable. There are some four-letter expletives thrown in for good measure, because these are wayward teenage boys, after all, but, as with everything else, much of the strained dialogue just seems like afterthought.
The book is also billed as something of a modern day fairy tale, primarily because of the interesting "twist" at the end, which was engaging, but it's not worth the entirety of the novel. Nothing really happens until at least 200 pages in, and when it does, it's not really believable. There is some action in the last quarter of the book, but it was rather predictable. Overall, the entire wasn't really worth the read.
