Reviews - The Bewitching | The StoryGraph

678 reviews for:

The Bewitching

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

4.23 AVERAGE

christdavis034's review

4.0

emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Great characters, and the excellent golden age of Hollywood / noir approach to writing that we’re used to from Silvia Moreno-Garcia. She’s such a cinematic writer that it’s impossible not to feel in her stories at all times.

mjdurbahn's review against another edition

4.0

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

abookishmagpie's review

4.0

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

After really enjoying my first Silvia Moreno-Garcia earlier this year I was eager to get to her newest release when I saw she had it coming out. Especially when I read she was doing a multi-generational type story with witches involved. We have three timelines and three women we follow during tumultuous times in their young adult lives. Minerva is what I’d consider our “main character” and she is a graduate student in Massachusetts in 1998, working on her thesis that focuses on niche horror writer Beatrice Tremblay who attended the same college Minerva is at in the 1930s. Beatrice is another POV we follow during her time at Stoneridge college when her roommate and friend Virginia Somerset mysteriously vanishes, thus inspiring Beatrice’s most notable work ‘The Vanishing’. Our third timeline and POV is from Minerva’s great-grandmother Alba who is living in Mexico in 1908 after the sudden death of her father and a sequence of events that haunt and change her for the rest of her life. The writing is again very well done and Moreno-Garcia crafts a well plotted, detailed story with rich historical elements that bring an added layer of life to the novel. I did pinpoint the “baddies” pretty early on, but that almost made their sinister actions to the unaware POV character even more chilling. It wasn’t a gory horror, but a suspenseful one most definitely. This solidified that I need to go back and read more of Moreno-Garcia’s work and be on the look out for any future books.

tinalouisereadsbooks's review against another edition

3.0

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Three women, three different timelines. 1908, Alba is living on her family farm and there are strange disappearances including her brother. 1934, Beatrice is attending school and her friend Ginny disappears. 1998, Minerva is working on a thesis about a horror writer.

I read Mexican Gothic a hyped book and felt it was just ok. This book, The Bewitching I felt sounded good and again for me it was just ok.

The story follows the three women and they are all connected by witchcraft. I have to say that I enjoyed the sections about Betty the best. It was Betty's story that really held my interest.

The story started off very slow and I felt that it didn't really pick up. Towards the end I was finding it a bit of a slog. There were sections I did enjoy, especially the witchcraft, superstitions and folklore.

In not sure if the author is for me but I am prepared to read more by her in the future.

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