Synopsis
A spooky, atmospheric, and fast-paced feminist tale about women called witches and the parts of our history we’d rather forget
Madeline is missing. Ordered to find her, Madeline’s estranged niece, Fade, must return to the lonely forest of Willow Sound, Nova Scotia. There, Fade discovers her aunt’s once-cozy cottage empty and rotting. The ominous smell of something burnt hangs in the air.
In her search for answers, Fade clashes with the people of Grand Tea, a nearby village struggling under the shadow of a massive, looming rock that could tip and crush them all at any time. For generations, they’ve invented bizarre lore about Madeline, calling her a witch and blaming her for their misfortunes. They’ve had more misfortunes than ever lately. And a hurricane is coming.
Inspired by real East Coast traditions and witch lore, The Witch of Willow Sound is a modern gothic tale that explores family lost and found and throws firelight on dark truths about what societies do with the people, and the past, they don’t want.
Review
I loved this book. There’s still a lot of horror that I won’t touch with a stick, but this fits well into the categories that I enjoy: nature, witchy, historic, generational trauma, and somebody said gothic, though I don’t have a good grip on that descriptor yet myself. While this wasn’t super scary, I still liked the creeping dread and unexpected craziness of it. I might even call it… cozy horror?
I liked that I could imagine everything so easily. It was just the right amount of descriptive for me without distracting from the story itself. While the writing style, which sometimes felt a bit choppy with its short chapters, wouldn’t always work for me in other books, it fit well for this one. It lent the book an unsettling feeling that wasn’t overwhelming but still put me on the suspicious side the entire time. The short chapters also kept convincing me to continue, to read just one more chapter. Just one more. Or three.
Some of the people in this book were straight up nuts. Wow. But I really enjoyed the fMC and her don’t give a fuck attitude and the saner people that she met on her search for the Witch of Willow Sound. One was so damn adorable (he actually reminds me of a side character in a romance I just read).
While I can’t say that any twists in this book took me completely off guard, I do like the surprises that we got. They fit well into the narrative, which I appreciate. It was a compelling story and pushes me further in the direction of “I need more nature horror.”
It seems like Canadian authors are really working for me too. The list just kept growing when I mentioned it to some friends. And I’m glad to add Vanessa F. Penney to it. I’m really looking forward to reading whatever comes next.
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