By: Freida McFadden
*This post contains spoilers for The Witch
“But I never expected to be slaughtered in Town Square. And certainly not for being a witch.”
The Witch
Overview:
When Julia Barlow loses her job and her apartment, she has nowhere left to go but Pemberton, her family’s sprawling seventeenth-century estate in rural Massachusetts. Officially, she’s there to check in on her aging grandmother. Unofficially, she’s hoping the old house will give her a place to disappear.
The Witch
Instead, Pemberton begins to unravel her.
Every night, the grandfather clock stops at exactly 3:41 a.m. The lights flicker without warning. And a disembodied voice cries for help outside Julia’s bedroom door.
As Julia digs into the house’s dark history, she uncovers the story of a woman executed for witchcraft in 1692―and realizes the past may not be finished with Pemberton yet. When decades of family lies begin to surface, Julia must confront a terrifying truth: Pemberton may be haunted by women whose voices refuse to stay silent.
I was so hoping that Freida McFadden was going to fully embrace a paranormal mystery. Instead just like always with her books it is just regular, boring humans behind everything. *sigh*.
Regardless of that let down, this book was actually one of my favorites from her. I liked the parallels that were made between what was happening in Julia’s life in modern time and Caroline’s in the 1600s. I was however more invested in Caroline’s story and could have read an entire book just about her. I think that would have been a really cool deviation from her usual writing to focus only in the 1600s.
This book did a really good job of not being obvious but also not having a twist that is completely unbelievable. I was convinced that Ethel being Julia’s actual grandma was going to come into play in a different way. Pemberton was left only to Letty and therefore would be passed onto Letty’s descendants. It would then make sense that Julia and her father then had no claim to the property and wouldn’t be able to sell it.
However, I do think the Mick and Celia storyline could have been omitted altogether. There were easier ways to explain Celia being in the sister’s lives and taking Ethel’s place. It seemed like an afterthought needed to draw a direct correlation to Caroline.
Finally, I have to talk about the fact the Freida McFadden knows her audience so well and is plays games with the reader. For example she was leaving clues throughout the story that Henry was a ghost. When his assistant pretends Henry is a ghost it becomes obvious that he is not very quickly. This interaction is pretty much Freida being like “you thought he was a ghost, admit it”.
She really just needs to lean full into a supernatural mystery. I think she could really shock her readers by the twist being that all the spooky ghost suspicions are completely true. If Caroline was a witch, that would have been awesome. Trick us by not tricking us.
Overall,
I think this is one of her stronger books. I just wish she would have fully leaned into the supernatural element.
I really enjoyed Caroline’s story and how it tied in with the modern timeline.
Freida McFadden’s more recent books are a little more fun. It feels as if she is experimenting a bit because she can. She knows that we read her books because they have crazy twists and you never know where they could be going. Her success has given her such a freedom that she can take big risk and we will all be here to devour ever single book.
Rating: 4/5 stars
