Brom

This is one of those stories that stay with you. For me, it was a book I had to put down, I couldn't read it all in one sitting. But it's also a book that I'm not going to forget tomorrow either. The characters are vivid and the story is so good. It has you questioning, who truly are the bad guys? The creatures that are supposedly "the devil" or the towns people who kill their own who don't fit into a neat little basket.

Abitha is an amazing main character who you are just rooting for the whole time. She's a kick ass strong female who you want to make it. I was nervous along the way that she wasn't. There were many close calls. And the revenge she got on the town and on William in particular in the end just felt so good.

I read a library copy of this book but I have it on my list to purchase. The illustrations only made this better!… (mer)

**SPOILER**
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I enjoyed it. It took me a little to get into the Jesse story, but, overall, I liked him as a character. All of the characters were pretty well-rounded, except the very minor and cameo characters. I liked that even the semi-side characters had depth. The biggest part that was hard for me was Linda's mother. As a mother of a 20- something, I 100% would NEVER encourage my daughter the get involved with a rumored crooked cop who was also rumored to murder his first wife who was ALSO in his 60s. Seriously. That seemed completely unreasonable to me as a plot point, no matter how "well-off" he was, but the whole county is effed up so… (mer)

What if The VVitch was written very straightforwardly with no surprises? It'd still be better than this turned out to be.

By very straightforward, I mean that the story holds very little tension and after the meeting of the main character with the other main character you know how the story is going to play out. Setting the story in 17th century New England with the Puritans is easy fodder. It's no surprise the stereotypical Puritan would be used (ahistorically) when it came to ideas of personal relationships, public decorum, and sex. There's a scene where a married couple engages in sex and the man apologizes because it's not appropriate. The Puritans had a lot of great things to say about sex in the confines of marriage and this wouldn't be the case. The story also treads on the very publicized but in actuality low number of witch trials that occurred in Salem. This shows the storywriting cannot build drama at all because the witch trials grew out of drama and hysteria and frenzied stories. Here, you just have to say, "Those crazy Christians be burnin' dah witched all dah time" and you've got your realism". But historical realism is not where I'm going to hang my hat for my review.

I'll hang my hat on the fact that the story doesn't even believe in its own worldview. Without getting too much into spoilers, this is a story of revenge, and yet the first human killed is brushed off by the main character because "he just didn't know" yet revenge is taken on everyone else who "deserved it". In a world where the characters are alleged to attribute all bad and shortcuts to the devil, all the events in the story match exactly what the devil would do and believe. The story could have taken a great turn if this realization turned out to be the real case, but this is so straightforward storytelling that it could never be that cool. The enactment of revenge is one done to the extreme and overtakes the main character to physical changes occurring. Again, without spoilers, the realization the main character comes through about the reasons for Slewfoot and others is some pantheistic revelation even though the exclusivity of many of the "others gods" are a primary concept. Here, again, we see the desire of belief in the "noble savage" to be the thing to set on the pedestal. The revelation of Slewfoot just happens even though there seems to be other bad gods that speak against to the pantheon message. All these plot elements point to the Puritans being correct - a demon is killing innocent people and witchcraft is making it stronger and is corrupting the individual and the society.

With all these things and the unimaginative storytelling, there is no need to compare this to The VVitch or read something you've seen in Carrie. Final Grade - D… (mer)