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Title: Winterwood
Author: Shea Ernshaw
Publication Date: November 5, 2019
Sub-genre: Fantasy-lite (urban fantasyish?)
Alright, so I received this copy of Winterwood in the November Owl Crate and at first glance, absolutely loved this cover to pieces. It’s gorgeous. Sometimes I don’t like the Owl Crate covers as much as the originals, but I love love love this one. I haven’t read Shea’s other book so this was my first experience with her. I’m not sure how to classify this book, sub-genre wise. It has magical, mystical elements, but takes place in today’s world, so I guess it’s mostly urban fantasy, but it’s not a genre I read too often so I was unsure.
Nora Walker is a witch-lite. She comes from a line of women with special abilities, they have a spell book, but a lot of their “magic” is more herbs and tinctures rather than spells. But one clear magical ability Nora has is the ability to walk in the Winterwood, but only during a full moon. In the wood, Nora is able to find all kinds of lost items. One night, she finds a boy, who is nearly frozen to death. Nora takes him home and helps him recover. He is from the camp across the lake from Nora’s cabin, a camp for “wayward boys”. Oliver returns to the camp, but he and Nora keep having encounters with each other as they try to unravel what happened the night Oliver went missing from the camp. Obviously, things are not as they seem on the surface and Nora and Oliver have to unravel the mystery of not just the Winterwood, but the camp, and the other campers.
So not going to lie, I figured out the twist here by about the third chapter. I don’t know if I am too smart (bahahaha, that’s not it) or these twists in YA are supposed to be obvious, but this happens to me a lot. Maybe it’s my writer brain. I don’t know. But it definitely took something away from the book for me because I wasn’t wrapped up in the mystery of what happened. I knew what happened, and I just wanted to get there already. I liked a lot of the world-building, and the descriptions and voice are lovely, but this seemed to be a plot driven book for the most part, and since the plot didn’t captivate me, it was hard for me to love it. I liked it, but it’s not one I would read again.
Overall rating: 4 stars, mostly for the descriptive imagery
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