Spoiler-free // I adored this book! Ghosts, old houses, light witchery, slow uncovering of forgotten stories, sweet light romance. I was particularly impressed by how well the pacing and split-narrative were balanced through this book, only one clue-finding moment my brain felt was a little too convenient. I found the characters all convincing - well-rounded, making believable choices, etc. - I was never taken out of the story by anyone's actions, which was excellent. It is a short novel, so there will likely be aspects a reader wants more of - I personally want to read all the found notebooks and letters in their entirety, but understand that would've made for very bad pacing. ;) Really enjoyed the insider details of museum work the author brought to this, an excellent touch for the historical setting.

If you read the back-cover summary and thought "ooo that sounds up my alley", you're in for a nice historical gothic romance time with this one! Extremely glad I picked up a copy for my home library, I thoroughly enjoyed it. ( )

I really enjoyed Hester Fox's The Witch of Willow Halland have read all of the books she's written since, but none of them have compared, sadly including this one. This particular book felt a bit messy and incomplete, like there was more that should have been discussed but it was swept under the rug (case in point: Augusta's eating disorder. Why did no one talk to her about it? It was obvious and uncomfortable, but everyone danced around it, despite Leo's ex-girlfriend having issues that also affected her health.) That aside, Margaret wasn't very likeable, and having her 1st-person POV occupy half the book made it rather a slog to get through (especially when you know that Jack isn't all that great either.)

I feel bad that I keep trying to enjoy Hester Fox's other books but they just aren't clicking with me anymore. It might be time to stop trying and just reread The Witch of Willow Hall the next time I want something a little gothic and witchy.

(Also, am I missing something? How does the cover art connect to the story - did I miss a clock tower? Is this supposed to be an image of Tynemouth? I don't get it.) ( )

One hour into the audiobook and I just can’t.

In the present day portion of the dual timeline, the main character is in a starter job she hates but has stayed in for three years. She worries about “losing everything” and starting over at 22. At 22 years old, you haven’t really started and don’t have much to lose. Now, I get it. Math is hard. She has an advanced degree - master’s or PhD, I forget - and got this dead-end job after graduating. At a minimum, she would be around 27. Unless she’s a prodigy for which there is no indication.

The next strike against her: she resents her boyfriend because he makes good money and corporate headhunters pursue him while she struggles to make ends meet. Let’s see ... he chose computer engineering for his degree; she studied art history with a focus in pottery/ceramics. Wow, I just can’t understand why she isn’t raking in the dough. /sarc For those more open to learning from experience: This is known as a consequence of choices. Either change your situation or learn to live with the result - don’t go around hating and resenting those who appear better off than you.

In the historic timeline, the main character is almost as bad. She inherits a magical talent but has no teacher until she’s well into her teens. In the meantime, she manages to teach herself to wield enough power to throw grownups around like rag dolls. Her mentor teaches her how to not get pregnant, but she forgets everything and gets knocked up by the first boy to pay her any attention, but only where no one can find out about it. Surprise! He dumps her.

Then, in a world where her behavior would already have resulted in her being closely supervised and married off at the first opportunity, she decides to keep the baby.

No matter how interesting the plot might have sounded, the required suspension of disbelief is too much for me to sink into the story (and I am pretty good at disregarding reality). The flip-flopping from one time period to the next doesn’t help. ( )

DNF! I have around 2 hours left to listen to but I just can't bring myself to continue. Not a single character that I liked, mostly because they are awfully flat and annoying. The story is so boring... ( )

A Lullaby for Witches definitely had an interesting concept: a haunted house, a mystery, secrets, some difficult relationships, pretty much everything I like about this genre. This is why I keep returning to this author's books, but no matter how interesting the concept and how much potential there is in the story, I always come away feeling somewhat disappointed. In this one, I really disliked one of the story lines and really wished the author had focused on Augusta's search for information and her paranormal activities instead. It took everything I had not to just skip over the chapters featuring Margaret.

First of all, I really disliked Margaret as a character. I think the author wanted the reader to feel sympathetic towards her situation so that we would be more understanding when we finally met her again later on, but all it did was turn me right off her character. Her behaviour, her thoughts, and how she dealt with people were just too much and I actually felt sympathy for her paramour which is not how I think I was supposed to feel. The scenes where Margaret was making 'eyes' at him in the store still make me cringe, so awful. I feel like the author was trying to make her seem independent and strong during a time when women didn't have a lot of independence. Unfortunately, this affected other parts of the book for me as well as the ending as I did not feel any empathy for this character whatsoever.

Because of this strong feeling for Margaret, I was a bit more receptive to Augusta and the other characters during the present time, simply because it was a breath of fresh air to read about people who were not so narcissistic. To be honest, I would have preferred the entire book to be about Augusta and her search through the documents to find more information about Margaret as that would have been less cringe worthy and far more interesting. However, Augusta had the personality of a wet mop. Despite my dislike of Margaret, she definitely had more personality and spunk.

The book is written in a dual timeline format and I am fast becoming annoyed by the overuse of this format. Does it work in certain cases? Yes, absolutely, but not here. I think it would have been more mysterious if we learned about Margaret as Augusta researched her and through some more paranormal activity. There was little to no suspense in this book, and I found it to be quite predictable. The interesting stuff, like Augusta's heritage, was rushed and some of the story line was a bit messy, with little to no explanations for how the character came up with the conclusions they did.

Verdict
A Lullaby for Witches had all the elements for a potentially good book, but it failed to deliver on many levels. While the writing wasn't bad, it had more of a telling style rather than letting the reader explore and figure things out with the main character and the dual time lines certainly didn't help. There were some huge plot holes that were not explained very well and one of the main characters was not very likeable. The author definitely does her research however, and puts a lot of effort into making sure the reader has an understanding of the time periods and the settings. I was looking for that eerie Gothic feeling, and unfortunately, this book did not quite do that for me. ( )