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.