Scan barcode
A review by ssheehan1
Winterwood by Shea Ernshaw
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
The good: I fell in love with this book instantly just on vibes alone. The author’s writing is incredibly beautiful and atmospheric, and she made a blizzard on an isolated lake into something so much more. I think the Wicker Woods are my favorite creepy, sentient forest that I’ve encountered yet, and I felt for them more than some of the actual characters in the book.
The bad: this book (at least the edition I have—the OwlCrate edition) needed another run through an editor. There’s some sentences that are blatantly missing a word in order to make it a complete sentence, and it happened enough that it would pull me out of the story each time. And as much as I adored the prose of the book, it became incredibly repetitive at points. Some of the repetition could have been the author’s attempt at a callback to something that happened early on in the book, if only she hadn’t mentioned it twenty other times since the first time. It was bad enough that it made the book feel slow at points, and it got to the point where I got tired of reading the same sentence about miners offering items to the forest, even though it does play an important part in the plot. The repetition seemed to cause the author to lose the plot at some points, and I had to remind myself a few times what the central plot point of the book was supposed to be.
Overall I definitely enjoyed the book, and look forward to future releases from Ernshaw.
The bad: this book (at least the edition I have—the OwlCrate edition) needed another run through an editor. There’s some sentences that are blatantly missing a word in order to make it a complete sentence, and it happened enough that it would pull me out of the story each time. And as much as I adored the prose of the book, it became incredibly repetitive at points. Some of the repetition could have been the author’s attempt at a callback to something that happened early on in the book, if only she hadn’t mentioned it twenty other times since the first time. It was bad enough that it made the book feel slow at points, and it got to the point where I got tired of reading the same sentence about miners offering items to the forest, even though it does play an important part in the plot. The repetition seemed to cause the author to lose the plot at some points, and I had to remind myself a few times what the central plot point of the book was supposed to be.
Overall I definitely enjoyed the book, and look forward to future releases from Ernshaw.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death and Alcohol