I’ll be honest, I haven’t read a lot of books about witches but they (at least the bad ones) terrify me. The dark and unpredictable power they hold over normal people is frightening, and everything about the setup for this book led me to believe I was in for a thrilling ride. It has an isolated cottage on a remote cliff, strange occurrences right from the beginning, and a back story about burned witches looking for revenge

Unfortunately, the story I got was less exciting than anticipated. Lots of crows, but not much in the way of scares. Loads of exposition dumps when I wanted more character development. And an ending that left me wanting and a little frustrated.

Despite its flaws the story kept me turning the pages to see what would happen. I liked the emphasis on spells/hexes/totems, and there were moments when I was genuinely concerned for Robyn’s safety. I also thought it was really neat that Robyn gains a powerful ally in the last third of the book. There were some cool ideas here, like the haunting of Robyn’s niece, but many weren’t fleshed out enough to fully enjoy. ( )

This was a creepy atmospheric haunting tale!



Robyn Crowe is trying to pick up the pieces of her life after losing her husband, Simon to cancer. She is wanting to just get away somewhere where she can have some solitude and grieve in peace.

Robyn's sister Holly and Holly's husband, Will own a small renovated cottage named "Malan Cottage" in a small village which sets by the sea and it is far away from everyday life. They think it would be the perfect place for Robyn to stay and they decide to leave to go on a three month holiday while Robyn gets comfortable in the cottage.

Though it seems to be the ideal place as Robyn settles in but then things go bad quickly as weird things start happening in the cottage with noises, foul odors, drafts, and stones that appear from nowhere in the kitchen.

Robyn quickly wants to know more about the cottage so she heads into town and what she learns from the villagers makes her head reel as where the cottage is built use to be land where witches had been burned.

Things go bad real fast from that point on in the story which kicks this book up into high gear!

Thoughts:

I loved this spooky tale of a witches revenge as that is basically what this story is about and the author, Catherine Cavendish just pulled me quickly into this world as the story grabbed me from the first page and kept me captured all the way to the end of the book.

It is sort of considered a short story as it around 130 pages, but I flew through it quick as so much happens within the story with the witch haunting that there is no time to come up for air as the haunting antics just escalates the more that the story moves along!

Giving this book five "spooky" stars.

Highly Recommend!

My thanks to NetGalley and Silver Shamrock Publishing for letting me review this ARC. ( )

After a gentle start this book snowballs into a wonderfully sinister witchy tale that will keep you glued to the page. Like witches and ghosts and haunted houses? You will enjoy this ride. ( )