*Note: Digital ARC provided by Simon and Schuster Canada. I would like to thank the publisher for the copy.*
Be careful of the dark, dark wood . . .
Especially the woods surrounding the town of Fir Haven. Some say these woods are magical. Haunted, even.
Rumored to be a witch, only Nora Walker knows the truth. She and the Walker women before her have always shared a special connection with the woods. And it’s this special connection that leads Nora to Oliver Huntsman—the same boy who disappeared from the Camp for Wayward Boys weeks ago—and in the middle of the worst snowstorm in years. He should be dead, but here he is alive, and left in the woods with no memory of the time he’d been missing.
But Nora can feel an uneasy shift in the woods at Oliver’s presence. And it’s not too long after that Nora realizes she has no choice but to unearth the truth behind how the boy she has come to care so deeply about survived his time in the forest, and what led him there in the first place. What Nora doesn’t know, though, is that Oliver has secrets of his own—secrets he’ll do anything to keep buried, because as it turns out, he wasn’t the only one to have gone missing on that fateful night all those weeks ago.
3 Stars
🦋🦋🦋
Was it predictable? Yes. Did that make me put it down? No.
“Because I am more darkness than girl. More winter shadows than August Sunlight. We are the daughters of the Wood, my grandmother would whisper. “
This was another extremely intense and atmospheric book by Shea Ernshaw. I love dark, broody forests which have a life of their own, and complicated fairy tales settings that transport me to a cloudy rainy day in a small wooden cabin. And that’s exactly the feeling that I got from the book.
It follows two characters, but mostly our rumoured witch, Nora Walker. Nora Walker finds a missing boy in the woods, on a full moon night – which is the only time that the Woods are sleeping and anyone can walk through them without harm. The mystery in the novel begins as soon as Oliver, the boy, is found by Nora. The Woods in particular are a separate character – they are a living breathing presence, in the stories and the asides that the author provides of the previous Walker Witches help build the power of the Woods more. I loved the atmosphere – the darkness of the woods almost gave me J.R.R Tolkien vibes.
There’s not a lot to say about the book. My biggest issue with the novel, is that the characterization was not at all satisfactory. Apart from some tiny details, I don’t really know anything about Nora. She is pretty one –dimensional; in that she is focused only on finding her magic, and solving the mystery, everything outside of these two things doesn’t matter to her and over time she started mattering less to me too. I couldn’t feel anything for her, because her motivations are so unclear. In all honesty, the ending was predictable. I like it when writers leave clues for their readers to pick up on; but when the clues become too frequent it is easy to guess that they’re going to be a huge part of the narrative, just for instance Nora’s powers, and the Woods and the bottomless Lake. Very Very obvious clues.
“The snow falls and the power blinks out and the road down the mountain is blocked. But she doesn’t seem surprised – not by the storm, not by any of it.”
The only thing that kept me going was to finally see the awesome power of the Woods, but that too disappointed me in the end as there was enough build up, but the end was so anti-climatic.I did like some bits, like the friendship between the girls, which builds much later. And Fin, the wolf-dog. However, in the end, I did feel like the book borders more on fairy tales rather than spooky fantastical mystery.
However, the setting and the way the world is described, and even the initial mystery around Oliver, is enough for me to rate this book as 3 stars. Moreover, it is a good book to immerse yourself in, especially around Halloween.
Samidha 🦋
paperbacks for life 