The Near Witch
by Victoria Schwab
Summary by Goodreads
The Near Witch is only an old story told to frighten children.
If the wind calls at night, you must not listen.
The wind is lonely, and always looking for company.
And there are no strangers in the town of Near.
These are the truths that Lexi has heard all her life.
But when an actual stranger—a boy who seems to fade like smoke—appears outside her home on the moor at night, she knows that at least one of these sayings is no longer true.
The next night, the children of Near start disappearing from their beds, and the mysterious boy falls under suspicion. Still, he insists on helping Lexi search for them. Something tells her she can trust him.
As the hunt for the children intensifies, so does Lexi's need to know—about the witch that just might be more than a bedtime story, about the wind that seems to speak through the walls at night, and about the history of this nameless boy.
If the wind calls at night, you must not listen.
The wind is lonely, and always looking for company.
And there are no strangers in the town of Near.
These are the truths that Lexi has heard all her life.
But when an actual stranger—a boy who seems to fade like smoke—appears outside her home on the moor at night, she knows that at least one of these sayings is no longer true.
The next night, the children of Near start disappearing from their beds, and the mysterious boy falls under suspicion. Still, he insists on helping Lexi search for them. Something tells her she can trust him.
As the hunt for the children intensifies, so does Lexi's need to know—about the witch that just might be more than a bedtime story, about the wind that seems to speak through the walls at night, and about the history of this nameless boy.
Recommended for: amateur YA readers, those that like a taste of mystery with no kick
Read count:1
Read on May 04, 2012
I wanted to like this book, I really did. The book held quite a bit of promise. Unfortunately the author just didn't deliver.
Let's start with the cover. It is absolutely breathtakingly beautiful! And it doesn't represent the book in any way, shape or form. One of the most disappointing things for me is to finish a book, put it down and see the cover and realize that it doesn't portray the book in even the slightest sense.
Next, the summary. It sounds exciting! Haunting! Mysterious! In reality, you know who the near witch is within the first chapter, and there is absolutely no mystery at all. The book is never really haunting, barring one passage late in the book. Rather than focusing on the mystery of the Near Witch, we are instead forced to focus on the mystery of the mysterious boy for chapters upon chapters of repetitive action involving Lexi sneaking out of her house, running into the boy, and trying to hide from her Uncle. This happens no less than 4 times, in detail, throughout the book.
Finally, the neat of the book, the story. *sigh* I don't even know where to start. The protagonist, Lexi, is completely flat. She had some potential, but she falls into the general YA trope of a girl who needs a man's help and love to do anything/everything. Her inner thoughts are also rather irritating. Rather than self-confidant, her stubbornness leans more towards childish willfulness. Her Uncle Otto is extremely sexist and surrounded by a gaggle of sexist men who loudly protest if a woman is seen outside of the house not doing her "womanly duties".
Lexi's father was extremely interesting, and at first you think she may break the mold and follow in his footsteps, but she instead decides to fall instantly in love with a mysterious ghostly boy, and abandons the issue of children going missing in the village to try and protect her new love interest from her Uncle and his gang. With no information about the new boy, Cole, she decides that there is absolutely no way that he can be involved in the children's disappearances and makes it her sole mission to prove him innocent.
This book suffers from the INSTANT!LOVE that seems to be predominant in most YA fiction right now, and it was truly frustrating in The Near Witch because it just came out of nowhere and slapped you in the face. You went from the two main characters tracking children to all of the sudden they are kissing and she's "in love". It felt hasty and pushed on the reader, just so that the author could say that her fairy tale had a romantic aspect. For me, the story would have held truer if she had just left the character's friends.
This story held so much wonderful potential, but it just fell flat. In fact, I found myself bored for about 3/4s of the entire novel. The one thing that Victoria Schwab has going for her is that her way with words is gorgeous.
“Maybe one day the words will pour out like so many others, easy and
smooth and on their own. Right now they take pieces of me with them.”
"Of
every aspect of the moor, the earth and stone and rain and fire, the
wind is the strongest one in Near. Here on the outskirts of the village,
the wind is always pressing close, making windows groan. It whispers
and it howls and it sings. It can bend its voice and cast into any
shape, long and thin enough to slide beneath the door, stout enough to
seem a thing of weight and breath and bone."
“The
music continues, clearer than ever, and it’s hard to listen with only
the edges of my ears, because I never noticed how beautiful it is. It’s
still on the wind, made by the wind itself, but its wafting toward us
like the scent of my mother’s bread, oddly filling.”
Schwab just has a way of stringing words together into sentences that are ripe with scent and taste and texture, sadly, she needs a little more practice in taking each sentence and turning them into a story that contains the same aspects.
Victoria Schwab has potential, and I will give her next book another try in the hopes that her writing will strengthen and grow and The Near Witch will just be a blip in her history.
