Reviews

Help The Witch by Tom Cox

styxx's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

1.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Sexual content, and Death of parent

martinclark's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

leni67's review against another edition

4.0

Overall I did enjoy this, especially the first story. A couple of the stories didn’t do anything for me, though.

fee_jay's review against another edition

3.0

The longer stories in here work best, I think, especially the title story and Helen's mysterious boyfriend. The shorter ones have kernels of lovely ideas but for me needed to be drawn out more. Cox has some fantastic observations about geography and the natural world: says much in a few chosen words - but it's not matched by a similar observational pithiness about characters, and I think that's why the shorter ones don't really work for me.

cocotux's review against another edition

4.0

Whimsical. Interesting. I laughed a lot but it took several sittings to get through. The beginning was fantastic, and some of the short stories were very captivating - especially “The Pool” and “Just Good Friends”. I was frustrated to not get many endings, though I suppose that’s part of the folksy charm.

jenion728's review against another edition

3.0

For me, "Help The Witch" and "Just Good Friends" were the strongest of the stories. In fact, if I had stopped reading after the first story, I'd likely have given 4 or 5 stars!

doowruc's review against another edition

1.0

Am I missing something?

I just did not get this at all. The stories don’t go anywhere. They’re not really interesting. Not spooky or scary in any way. Only finished it out of sheer bloody mindedness

bricepudding's review against another edition

5.0

easily the best book I’ve read this year, and the PERFECT October book!!!

bryce_is_a_librarian's review against another edition

3.0

Tom Cox writes about England, nature, hiking and folk horror, which are four of my favorite things. He writes relatively well. So you can imagine how annoyed I am that I don't actually like him.

Help The Witch, which is billed as a collection as folk horror is not. They're not weird stories, or uncanny, or whatever pet phrase you'd like to use. What they are is underbaked to an insulting degree. Calling them sketches feels almost as big a misnomer as calling them horror. They're doodles not stories. And frankly Tom, at this point if you can't be arsed than neither can I.

archergal's review against another edition

4.0

What lovely, quirky stories! I saw this author on Twitter and was curious about his work.

These stories prompted me to do more of something I do rarely: highlight passages to remember.

Like this:

People are expected to be the same person all their life, but different places make us different people.

Or this:

... she would always feel oddly grateful to the property world as, had she never been in it, she would never have recoiled from it in such a way that prompted her to boldly do something she had always really wanted to do, which was dye her hair blue and play the harp.

I really enjoyed the subtle things that happen here. I did find that I preferred to read a bit and think a bit, instead of reading straight through.

A delightful find, will look for more by Mr. Cox.