Day: November 6, 2016

Book Review: How to Hang a Witch

I don’t typically read horror novels, as they’re just not something that I enjoy – kind of like my feelings in regards to horror movies. I’ll be honest, I am a scaredy cat and so I would rather not put myself in that situation. However, when I first saw How to Hang a Witch by Adriana Mather at the bookstore and read the synopsis, I was immediately intrigued.

It’s the Salem Witch Trials meets Mean Girls in a debut novel from one of the descendants of Cotton Mather, where the trials of high school start to feel like a modern day witch hunt for a teen with all the wrong connections to Salem’s past.

Salem, Massachusetts is the site of the infamous witch trials and the new home of Samantha Mather. Recently transplanted from New York City, Sam and her stepmother are not exactly welcomed with open arms. Sam is the descendant of Cotton Mather, one of the men responsible for those trials and almost immediately, she becomes the enemy of a group of girls who call themselves The Descendants. And guess who their ancestors were?

If dealing with that weren’t enough, Sam also comes face to face with a real live (well technically dead) ghost. A handsome, angry ghost who wants Sam to stop touching his stuff. But soon Sam discovers she is at the center of a centuries old curse affecting anyone with ties to the trials. Sam must come to terms with the ghost and find a way to work with The Descendants to stop a deadly cycle that has been going on since the first accused witch was hanged. If any town should have learned its lesson, it’s Salem. But history may be about to repeat itself.

The Good

  • Setting – I’m a bit of a history nerd. I love any place that has history coming out the wazoo, and Salem, Massachusetts? Yeah, that town definitely has some history. It really added to the plot and was able to give it that spooky edge, even for just only being the location for the story. Now I want to go there for a mini vacation in the fall. Who wants to join me in 2017?!
  • Pacing – I really appreciated that this book was solidly engaging from the beginning till the end. In my experience, debut authors can sometimes struggle with their pacing but I didn’t find that to be an issue for Mather. I never found myself bored and or struggling to make myself pick up the book. Instead, I hated when I had to make myself put it down! I just had to know what was going to happen next!
  • The Plot – This was the best part about this book. It’s quite obvious that Mather is well-connected to the entire Salem Witch Trials, as she is able to really mix some minor stories and details from that era within the plot. I loved how she was able to use the different causes of the Trials, and expand upon how they are still issues in today’s society. I think it made Sam’s struggles and own persecution within the high school and community much more real and terrifying. It’s extremely easy to see how something like that has the potential, at any moment, to return in modern society. And I even agree with Mather that a high school or small town would be the most likely arena in which to take effect.

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The Bad

  • Samantha – In all honesty, I almost DNFed this book after the first chapter. As intrigued as I was in the plot, Samantha’s character was annoying as hell. I cringed almost every single time that she had an inner thought. And trust me, there were way too many of those in this book. I feel as though Mather was attempting to have Sam talk like what middle aged adults think 17 year olds talk like. Except Mather can’t be older than her early 30’s? So yeah, it was just really awful. And talk about a whiner… I wanted to slap Sam every time she had a poor-pitiful-me moment. Ugh, I hate those kind of characters.
  • The Romance – Jaxon was just too perfect, too much of the good guy. He was boring and I never felt like there was much of a buildup between him and Sam. Almost kind of instalove, because she thought he was OMG SO HOT the first time that she saw him. Plus, I was a huge fan of the dead guy. He was a sarcastic jerk, and we all know how I feel about that type. Yummm.

Overall, if you’re looking for a fairly fast read full of mystery, ghosts, and witches – then I think you will find How to Hang a Witch fits exactly what you’re looking for. It will never win an award for best writing, but it will surely entertain you on a cold dark night.

Final Verdict: 4/5 Stars

Have you read How to Hang a Witch? What did you think about it? Did you find Samantha as annoying as I did?

Spotlight Sunday – November 6th, 2016

Spotlight Sunday is a weekly meme created by Balie @ Nerd in New York & Closet Readers for their Goodreads book club, Nerdy Reads. Each Sunday share a book that you think is underrated and needs to be read ASAP – put it in the spotlight! *wink-wink, nudge-nudge*

Rules:

  1. Make sure to link back to the original creators in your post.
  2. Share your post on the Goodreads page so that others can read your post.

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Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

If you’re like me, then you are pretty big fan of the classics. Austen, Tolstoy, Dumas, etc. are some of your favorites and you can never tire of rereading some of them. However, I feel that some of the books from this period tend to get lost in the crowd, especially from the lesser known writers. So if you’re interested in expanding your knowledge of the classics – I highly recommend you pick up Vanity Fair next. And when you’re finished reading the book, watch the film adaptation starring Reese Witherspoon as Becky Sharp. It really is a fantastic movie!

Warning: This book isn’t one of Austen’s happy ending fairytales, this one is a bit more realistic and dark.

“I think I could be a good woman, if I had five thousand a year,” observes beautiful and clever Becky Sharp, one of the wickedest—and most appealing—women in all of literature. Becky is just one of the many fascinating figures that populate William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair, a wonderfully satirical panorama of upper-middle-class life and manners in London at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Scorned for her lack of money and breeding, Becky must use all her wit, charm and considerable sex appeal to escape her drab destiny as a governess. From London’s ballrooms to the battlefields of Waterloo, the bewitching Becky works her wiles on a gallery of memorable characters, including her lecherous employer, Sir Pitt, his rich sister, Miss Crawley, and Pitt’s dashing son, Rawdon, the first of Becky’s misguided sexual entanglements.

Filled with hilarious dialogue and superb characterizations, Vanity Fair is a richly entertaining comedy that asks the reader, “Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?”

What book do you think is underrated and deserves the spotlight? Have you read Vanity Fair before? Leave a link to your own Spotlight Sunday post in the comments!