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?”
