Review: The Bane Witch

The Bane Witch by Ava Morgyn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

2.7 stars 

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

“Things are not always as they seem, Piers. Remember that. A very little poison can do a world of good. It’s all about how you apply it.” 

The Bane Witch was the story of a woman growing into her powers and learning to use them for the greater good. When Piers was little, she remembers her mother's fear when there was some incident with a man who died. Taken to doctors over and over until they diagnosis her with the eating disorder Pica, she feels compelled to eat poisonous plants, specifically pokeweed, Piers is then drugged to the point of not feeling anything to try and control the pica. When her stepfather, who she never liked, dies and then her mother commits suicide, she's all alone, except for a vague memory of a great-aunt who came to visit them once, before her mother chased her away. Determined to make a life on her own, she becomes an interior designer and marries a man named Henry. In little, almost unnoticeable ways, Henry begins to control her, then comes the violence. Off medication now, Piers' senses are showing her that Henry will not only kill her but other women in the future. Thinking the only solution is to fake her own death, she does just that and takes off to find the mysterious great-aunt. 

She smiles in the soft light. “We don’t fear men in this house,” she tells me. “Men fear us.” 

This story, pretty non-stop, discusses and shows violence against women and girls. Told, mostly from Piers' pov, there's her thinking about and recounting the violence Henry has committed against her (physical and sexual), her fighting against an attempted rape, thoughts and scenes from a serial killer, and stories recounted to her from the venery (a coven of familial witches) about why they killed their marks. So while this story is about a group of women who have magical powers to use their “allure” to draw abusive men to them and then use their poison eating magic abilities to kill them, the author sure leaned into recounting, describing, and go over and over what evil acts these men commit. This is probably a mileage will vary, and while I understand fictionally serving the story, the tone and way these awful acts kept getting descriptively written out, over and over, started to give me the feeling of desensitized true crime and faintly, horror movie torture porn creeping in. It was a lot for this genre of story and I wish we could have focused more on the victims or venery members. 

The hunt is beginning, and my prey is out there, hunting me in return. 

Some of this was Gone Girl-ish with Piers faking her suicide and we get a pov from one of the detectives that is working her, initially, missing persons case. It was brilliant how Piers planned everything out and getting to see the detective work through the clues. The other half is Piers learning about being a bane witch. Her great-aunt Myrtle works to train her after the venery of thirteen females, all related to Piers, mostly want to kill her off because they don't trust she won't get them exposed somehow, but with the matriarch behind her, Piers gets six weeks to prove she can successfully become one of them. Her magic has picked a serial killer that has been operating in the area and there's some thriller mystery as the two circle each other. There's a little romance thread with the sheriff and Piers, and while we get some emotional background on the sheriff, he's not completely a flushed out character. They spend some time together, have two quick kissing to door slammed bedroom scenes, and then it's “I love you” time that I didn't really feel. 

“[...] You either live as a bane witch, or you die as one. There is no in-between.” 

This had a tendency to meander and rehash enough that I do think the pace suffered at times, Piers could get ad nauseam back and forth over her bane witch powers, accepting and using them. The ending gave us final clashes and Piers coming into her own, along with a death that was brushed away pretty quick taking away it's emotional impact. The repeated bringing up and descriptive violence against women and girls wasn't a good feeling experience for me though, it's always tougher for me in fiction to strike that right chord, and it caused me to miss some celebrating in what the bane witches were doing. However, this did have a solid ending of where Piers was going to go in life and I liked that ending for her.

View all my reviews

Reading Update: Page 1

 

Chocolaty cookies with Halloween sprinkles and poison witches for this Thursday 

Poison has always been at the heart of her story 

Piers faked her own death to get away from her husband. And is now using her poison eater abilities to rid the world of evil men 

(Queen!) 

But the local Sheriff is starting to get curious about all the dead bodies she seems to be leaving in her wake, along with a serial killer that's in the area 

Time for this Bane Witch to get poisonous 

The Bane Witch by Ava Morgyn preorder (March 18th) link

Brownie Cookies recipe

Review: The Witches of Bone Hill

The Witches of Bone Hill by Ava Morgyn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

Close your eyes, Cordelia, her mother would say. Don’t look at them. But more importantly, Never, ever speak to them. 

The Witches of Bone Hill is a perfect story for the Halloween season with it's Gothic tone, supernatural mystery, and two sisters on their own trying to figure out and survive their family history and legacy. Told all from younger sister Cordelia's point-of-view, readers come into her life as it's completely falling apart. Her soon to be ex-husband has cleaned out her bank accounts and is currently destroying her credit as he gallivants around with her former assistant, that she caught in flagrante delicto with her husband in the kitchen. As she's trying to sell her house to stay ahead of the creditors, receiving a note from a bookie threatening that she is now on the hook for her husband's fifty grand owed, Cordelia receives a phone call from her sister Eustace, who she hasn't talked to in five years. It seems the great aunt that they have never met has passed away and left them her estate, which includes a house called Bone Hill. 

This place, with its gothic sensibility and family history, might hold the only answers she could hope to find about who and what their mother was, why she left, and what happened to her. 

Right away the story sets the tone as the sisters are driven up to the old Victorian looking home, with it's gables, turrets, and antiques. Once inside, they discover a picture of women standing in a circle and one in the middle levitating, along with a pentagram looking shape on the floor of one of the rooms. I could feel the spookiness already creeping in and when Cordelia looks up the stairs and sees a woman in black dress and white hair, I knew the chills where on the way. Cordelia and Eustace's mom always kept them on the road, never settling for too long and never talked about her family. The sisters are confused as the home and antiques seem to point to the family having money and they start to wonder why their mother kept them from it. Cordelia sees this as an opportunity to sell and get the money she needs to pay everyone off but the estate lawyer, who claims to come from generations that have served her family, tells the sisters that they must stay at the house, as there is a contingency against them selling. The will obviously is a way to keep the sisters at the house and while it generally worked, the contingency talk later on got a bit messy and I felt myself just having to go along with it. 

What concerned her more was the hulking groundskeeper and his bedroom eyes, the things he wasn’t saying more than the things he was, the effect he had on her. Men like that didn’t roll out of the womb covered in ink and defiance— they were damaged somewhere along the way. And Cordelia hated to admit just how much she yearned to know what his damage was. 

Along with the estate lawyer that will have you wanting to keep your eye on him and his nephew that acts like a chauffeur, there is the groundskeeper, Gordon, who makes you want to keep your eye on him for a different reason. Adding in some romance, Gordon is a former rock star who's mother worked on the estate as a maid and then had her own mysterious death. Gordon seems to be working there as a way to grieve and maybe find out what really happened to her. Cordelia and him have some instant attraction and then it becomes what all does Gordon know and can Cordelia trust him. Since I was mostly here for the chills, I really enjoyed this little romance additive but it's definitely not the star of the show. Cordelia and Eustace trying to figure out their family history and the supernatural elements are the spotlight and they delivered. 

When she opened her eyes again, she read the answer in the mirror before her, her heart icing over. In the blood dripped and spattered across the opposite wall, righted only by the reversal of its reflection, one gruesome, gut-twisting word had formed. 

Witch. 

The first half of this book had me thinking this would be a five star because I love Gothic mystery and this had the setting and the tone but the second half meandered a little too much and then, along with the contingency, some threads got a bit too disheveled in trying to keep the mystery alive. Cordelia and Eustace's family history was fascinating and I liked how it brought in an unexpected element of old Norse history with the supernatural. I thought the villain of the piece was pretty obvious and then when we got the whys, they had gotten too lost in stretching the story out for a little too long. The whole mob, owing money to the bookie thread really seemed unneeded to me and shared some of that messiness I was talking about, it could have been removed in favor of streamlining, cleaning up the story; Cordelia already had enough reasons to be desperate for money. 

“I am what lies behind,” the woman said. “And I am what lies ahead. Hella of the Bones. Speaker for the dead. I wield the Seidr.” She drew near to Cordelia, placing a finger between her breasts. “And you are of my vӧlur.” 

 

Cordelia and Eustace's relationship added some heart to the story, with the sisters coming together again after the five years of estrangement and Eustace had her own magical journey. While most of the tone of this was Gothic, the second half and ending did bring in some horror elements, there was very descriptive scenes of animal cruelty and general blood and gore. The magical lore created, ghosts, and human relationships all made this a spooky seasonal read that I highly recommend. 

“Don’t you want to know?” 

“If we’re witches?”

View all my reviews

Reading Update: Page 1

 

Reading this for the  Halloween Bingo square!


I love Sunday Fall, getting in some spooky reading before football 

👻📖🍲🦇 

Cordelia's perfect life is crashing down around her with a cheating, criminal husband. Surprisingly, her older more carefree sister has an out for her, their great aunt they have never met has just died and left them a Victorian mansion in Connecticut. 

However, the mansion is bringing more problems, the attorney says they have to inhabit it to retain it but doesn't tell them the peculiar rituals of their ancestors. 

Hopefully less problematic, a sexy tattooed groundskeeper with a shrouded past who refuses to leave the carriage house. Both sisters are going to have to face a haunting family secret and a generational enemy. 

Fantasy, paranormal, witches, and romance! 

The Witches of Bone Hill by Ava Morgyn preorder (Sept. 26th) link

Peanut Butter Curry recipe

Mine is a little thicker because I get heavy handed with the peanut butter. This was easy and yum!