Reviews with content warning for Grief - The Witchery

Reviews tagging 'Grief'

The Witchery by S. Isabelle

8 reviews

mari1532's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring lighthearted reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

#TheDiverseBaseline (learn more at: https://thediversebaseline.carrd.co)

I listened to this book through my library on Libby.

Brief Summary: Logan is a witch...at least that is what she tells herself. She is hoping that by attending Mesmortes Coven Academy she will learn to better control her powers. What she doesn't expect is that the Red Three (Iris, Jailah, and Thalia) will quickly take her under their wing and show her the ropes.

Iris, a death witch, has designs on breaking the town curse and thinks that befriending Logan might be the key. However, Jailah, the school's most powerful witch, and Thalia, a nature witch, are not so sure that Logan will prove useful. As the girls integrate Logan into their group and work on breaking the town curse, they must also learn who they can trust before events turn deadly.

Thoughts: I realize how annoying it is to start a review by saying I wish a book was longer, but I wish this book was longer, but I am happy that there is a second book in the series. While I enjoyed this book it felt a bit rushed at certain points and wanted more of each character. That being said, Isabelle did an excellent job of weaving multiple main characters and a complex plot into a single book without making anything confusing.

I think that Iris was my favourite of the four main characters. I thought that the way that she was learning to navigate her powers as a death witch as they grew was interesting and I was immediately on board with nearly any plan that she suggested throughout the book. Although, I did find the growth between each of the girls and their friend group the most compelling part of the story.

Also, the mysterious aspect of the town curse added such an interesting layer to this book and it kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. Isabelle is an excellent writer and I cannot wait to read more of their work.

I would highly recommend this book.

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kananineko's review

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adventurous dark hopeful mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

I want to start by saying this is not a terrible book and i think there will be lots of people who will love it. However, it just simply felt meh to me. Very mid. I also think I am starting to get too old for YA fantasy. The plot and location was interesting, but tbh the worldbuilding fell kinda flat for me. (I also was rushing a bit while reading, so that might be my fault for potentially skipping some things).

The characters were hit or miss for me. I didn’t like Logan at all and her dynamic as the “baby witch” was kinda annoying and i didn’t really get why the others invited her into their group? I actually did really like Iris, and kinda wish she was the main character. I loved what we saw of Jaila but I wish we got more or her—I feel like her story was underdeveloped. And I didn’t really like Thalia either although unlike Logan I couldn’t really tell you why. Both of the male characters were bland AF and I didn’t really care about them at all. None of the romances were compelling either, the only one I was semi invested in was Iris and that guy (forgot his name) but I only grew into caring about them a little bit (but not enough to read the next book lol).

The plot was pretty weak imo. I feel kinda bad giving 2.5 stars bc tbh I still enjoyed the book overall and I read it pretty quickly, it held my attention. But tbh it was much worse than some books I've given 3 stars... Someone said it was like a bad CW show and I agree. So if you like those kinds of shows, if you like YA fantasy and stuff, I think you’ll like this. I also kinda hyped this book up in my head a lot bc the description sounded so cool to me and it took me like a year to actually get my hands on it, so the disappointment factor is there too.

One last note, the word “witchy” was used wayyyy too often and annoyed me so much. Like literally everything was described as witchy, like a “witchy book” rather than a “witch book” or "witch's book" idk why but that annoyed me? Def a personal pet peeve but just wanted to say it lol.

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msradiosilence's review

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

TLDR; 3.5 rating, I love sapphics, I love Black witches, and I’m just…a lil disappointed.

Content warnings at the bottom. :)

The premise for this book sounded delicious. Magic school? A curse? Black witches?? Yes please! And then I get to the first chapter and I just feel like we have skipped several parts. Isabelle skips over Logan actually coming to the school and the months she’s been taking classes and drops you right into the story and it’s missing some key elements. A little bit is explained, but the feeling of missing pieces never leaves.

I love a good magic system, and one of my favorites is in Rainbow Rowell’s Simon Snow trilogy. This book seemed to have a very similar magic premise? I’m not sure, because it’s never really explained. From what I understand, there’s spell phrases that everyone learns and then when you completely understand them, you can change the words to make the spell work better with your personal magic. Which is very cool, except once again we’re not really told any of this. And since the Red Three keeps saying Logan’s proxy-ness breaks all the magic rules they have to follow, it would be very helpful to know the rules the Red Three have to follow, ya know?

I think it boils down to wanting more details as a whole. Balancing six POVs (I’ll get to that in a minute) means that there are a lot of descriptions that would round out the characters, the setting, the magic, everything, is sacrificed in favor of bouncing between Trent, Matthew, Jailah, Iris, Thalia, and Logan. It took me almost the entire book to realize this wasn’t like Harry Potter and the whole world is aware of witches. Thalia’s storyline suddenly made a lot more sense.

Six POVs is so much to juggle, and the book probably would’ve benefitted greatly from following three, or just being an omniscient narrator instead of omniscient about one person at a time. The POVs aren’t in first person. It took a lot away from the story, and I really think the plot and the details could’ve benefitted greatly from cutting down or cutting out POVs.

Also, by the end, I wanted to bop Logan on the head. She was incredibly selfish, incredibly naive, and she deserves a bop.

Because I do plan on reading the sequel (out in Sept 2023), I do have several questions not plot related I need answered:

How exactly does the school work?
How does magic work, exactly? Be specific, please.
Why do Thalia and Lilly have familiars but not anyone else?
Is there a limit to the magic witches can perform? How do they know the limit? Is there a way to increase the limit?
Does everyone have a Pull? If they don’t, what happens? Are people with Pulls rare?
What exactly do witches as a group do out in the rest of the world? How has the world changed from what we know irl?
Are tethers a thing everyone has? Is it rare? How often are witches and mundanes tethers? What does it entail for a witch and a mundane to be tethered?

Please I have so many more, I would just love a lore dump or something.

Once I articulated my main problems with the book, I could push them aside (for the most part) and enjoy what I was reading, even if I was still confused, hence the three stars. There is a solid plot underneath, if we wanna go bare bones. Powerful witches willing to do dubious magic to save their school. None of them are all good, they’re not all bad, and I like that.

Rating: 3.5

Would I recommend? A tentative yes, but this is one the reader just kinda has to push through.

Content warnings: Injury/Injury detail, Racism, Toxic relationship, Violence, Hate crime, Blood, Body horror, Death of parent, Grief, Murder, Toxic friendship, Animal death, Child abuse, Cursing, Alcohol, Religious bigotry, Torture, Bullying, Car accident, Death, Emotional abuse, and Gore

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thatbookishwriter23's review

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adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

"History was always labeling women as mad, whether they were witchy or not." -Iris Ch 2, pg 14

Perfect for Halloween and black witch rep

Honestly this book kinda of surprised me, I wasn't feeling it at first, beavuse of the writing style, it took me a minute to used to it but I pushed past the 6% mark, I'm so glad I did.

This is the first book I've read featuring witches and I liked it. I can definitely see it as a series on Peacock similar to Vampire Academy. I really liked it was a great introduction to the theme and aesthetic.

I don't how to describe the writing style but with it being in third person as well, it's not for everyone and it may takes some getting used to.

Jailiah and Mathew was my favorite, I see myself most in Jailah and Mathew was kind and supportive.

Logan was the worst. Her chapters were full of self-deprecating and "woe is me". Then she, one of the only white characters of the main cast, was suppose to be this super special powerful Proxy witch. She never accepted anybody encouragements or compliments. She withheld information just because she wanted to prove herself first.

"She didn’t want to hide this, but she couldn’t tell them, not until she felt like she could be the witch that they wanted her to be."

I hate it when characters in books withhold information from everyone else for reasons that don't make sense. Especially when the info would be super helpful.

She really got me with these two lines:

"Not only was Logan terrible with a wand, but she wasn’t even special in her awfulness."

Like, what? I was literally baffled when I read this line. Like you want to be awful and special, what?

"It was easy for Logan to detach herself from the heirloom’s grip. It wasn’t like with Iris, all violence and horror, maybe because as a necromancer, those things were already in her. Or maybe it was Logan’s ability to proxy that protected her.

[Thinking] Maybe I’m more special than even Iris."

More special? *Eye roll*👀

I could go all day about Logan.

Anyway, I loved the magic, like most of the characters, and loved reading a story about black witches.

In my opinion, this book should have been a duology, it felt a bit long for a standalone and it could explore it's characters a bit more. Hopefully we get a novella or something. Looking forward to it.

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