A review by rebeccatc
The Winter Witch by Paula Brackston

3.0

The story takes place in 19th century Wales, where a widowed drover named Cai marries the young, beautiful, mute and ominiously named Morgana. It turns out Morgana has magical powers, and Cai conveniently lives on a farm with a magical well. The narrative switches between the first person as told by Morgana, and the third person from Cai's point of view, told in an awkward present tense. Many novels create tension by having the characters fail to communicate with each other about important facts. This one has the perfect device for that built right in: Morgana cannot speak and can hardly write, so she can't communicate to Cai about the evil forces that are working against them. Of course, she manages to scratch out a few letters toward the end when the plot demands it to reach its conclusion. Since Cai is constantly clueless, he comes across as being kind of weak and not very smart -- he's not much of a romantic hero, in spite of the fact that the relationship between Morgana and Cai is at the center of the story. The descriptions of Wales were interesting but I found the interjection of Welsh words with no English translation to be jarring and useless. I also felt the book really could have used some editing. For instance, she explains why a head drover has to have a wife, and then explains it again a couple of chapters later. Some of the imagery was good and the setting was interesting but the tone was so somber I just didn't enjoy it. Really torn between 2 and 3 stars but I went with 3.