The Witchery by S. Isabelle

Welcome Back, Booklovers! March has been one of those crazy months where my reading mood has been all over the place. So I decided to pick up the arc I received of The Witchery because I was in the mood for some contemporary fantasy with Black girls. This book releases this summer from Scholastic.

The Witchery follows Thalia, Iris, Logan, and Jailah who are witches attending Mesmortes Coven Academy in Florida. Each girl has their own set of secrets they try to hide as they team up to try and break a curse placed on the town long ago. In addition to the girls we also follow two boys Trent and Mathew, who go to the boy's boarding school across the way. They aren't magical though despite the small town being a hub for witchery. The Haunting Season is approaching and the wolves are roaming the swamp luring people to their deaths. 

It's hard to write a story with six different point of views and the initial chapters were very info dumpy to introduce readers to everyone. I honestly feel like number of characters this book focused on could've been cut down to just two. There wasn't that much of a difference between character voice. And I feel like for stories like this especially you need very distinct and standout voices. Yes, this book had plenty of dark vibes but most of the characters weren't luring you in.

Iris and Thalia had the most compelling storylines and it felt like we got the most from their chapters. Iris is a deathwitch and a natural leader driving the search to find the Wolf Boy and break the curse. She also finds herself connected to Mathew by magic and it's hard for her to come to terms with. Thalia is living with the fear of being found by her father who is on the hunt for her. Their magic also seemed to have the most impact.

I really didn't like Logan. Every one of her chapters was someone calling her baby witch and her whining about not being able to control her magic. There was a point in part two where I felt I was finally seeing why we needed her POV but in the end we really didn't and I would've been fine with the role she played just being explained in the chapters of the other girls. 

I wasn't a fan of the whole three Black witches bringing this new white girl into the fold plotline. It didn't help that a couple of times there were some lines sprinkled in about racism that felt like they were thrown in to remind the audience that these girls are Black. Thankfully we don't actually witness any character being racist towards them which made me wonder why we had Iris mention the townspeople looked at her and saw a stereotypical mean Black girl. It's also always interesting to me when there's nothing identifiable with cultural Blackness in a story. Obviously no Black author should feel the need to have to include their identity into their work but I was hoping since the author is Haitian that one of the girls would be as well. The magic here was very uniform despite this being a school filled with witches of all different backgrounds.

I really can't remember anything about Jailah besides she's super powerful. Even her secret didn't really compare to the others. 

The boys didn't add enough to have chapters from their point of views. Everything they were experiencing could've been and often felt better explained through the girl's chapters.

Trent was supposed to be Black British and nothing felt remotely Black British about him. The kids in the UK aren't calling anyone love or twit so it's time to retire those phrases as British boy identifiers in YA. Why have a character of a very particular background if you aren't going to do research to make them actually feel like that background? No, everyone doesn't talk alike however Black British people have their own unique vernacular. I'm no expert but I do have the internet at my finger tips that gives me a peak into other places across the globe. The only word I recognized as modern slang you would hear in the UK is "innit" and it was only used in this book once. 

Also his mother was a witch which could've been interesting because she placed this weird protection over him that has gotten him out of literal life and death situations. But I don't feel that was explored enough. Like many things in this book the bare bones were there but it didn't seem like there was time to explore all these story threads on page. 

Mathew is tethered to Iris and it seems like there's more to their connection. A romance is teased but never actually goes there for reasons I don't understand. It just felt like a waste to wade in the water and not go all the way.  

I feel like more could've been done with the magic school concept. It could've gone hard building the dark atmosphere. The pacing could've been faster.  The council wasn't involved enough, the other witches at the school weren't involved enough. There were many things to potentially build a series upon here but from my understanding this book is a standalone. There were some vibes but this ended up not being the page turner I was expecting.