A review by bravemaeve
Conversion by Katherine Howe

3.0

I've always been interested in books with supernatural elements, especially witchcraft and the Salem witch trials. Naturally, I was excited for this book! After reading the summary, it seemed exciting. What I got was a boring, confusing, and oddly insane book. All of the witchcraft doesn't even come to play until the last 1/5 of the book. I just couldn't get into the book! It just continued to drag on as people in the town tried to diagnose the mysterious "illness" affecting people. While the teenage language and lifestyle was accurate, I was incredibly bored reading about all the teenage drama. Plus, there's also an odd student-teacher relationship that just adds more absurdity to the book and plays a much bigger part than it should. When the main character finally figures out that witchcraft is the cause, I became excited because the climax was finally happening! What happens? Everyone thinks she's crazy and the whole thing dissolves. At the very end, the mother of the accused witch does acknowledge that she, like her daughter, is a witch, but it is never mentioned again. And that's how the book ends. Everyone thinks she's insane, witchcraft isn't revealed, and life moves on. Seriously? That was the climax I got? Meanwhile there consists of a side story that describes actual witch trials. While the ending was somewhat exciting learning about the trials, there were so many characters and the situation was so absurd that I was incredibly confused. While the book sounded like it'd be a good story, I was sadly disappointed, left with a sense of boredom and confusion.