Sea Witch Book Review

The Sea Witch by Sarah Henning

From Goodreads: Everyone knows what happens in the end.
A mermaid, a prince, a true love’s kiss.
But before that young siren’s tale, there were three friends.
One feared, one royal, and one already dead.

~~~~~~~~~~

Ever since her best friend, Anna, drowned, Evie has been an outcast in her small fishing town. A freak. A curse. A witch. 

A girl with an uncanny resemblance to Anna appears offshore and, though the girl denies it, Evie is convinced that her best friend actually survived. That her own magic wasn’t so powerless after all. And, as the two girls catch the eyes—and hearts—of two charming princes, Evie believes that she might finally have a chance at her own happily ever after.

But her new friend has secrets of her own. She can’t stay in Havnestad, or on two legs, unless Evie finds a way to help her. Now Evie will do anything to save her friend’s humanity, along with her prince’s heart—harnessing the power of her magic, her ocean, and her love until she discovers, too late, the truth of her bargain. 

The rise of Hans Christian Andersen’s iconic villainess is a heart-wrenching story of friendship, betrayal, and a girl pushed beyond her limits—to become a monster.

Thank you to Netgalley for an e-book copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is one of those books that you hear a lot of hype about for a while and then it all goes a bit quiet. I requested it from Netgalley on the back of that hype, and was pretty keen to see what it was all about.

The world in Sea Witch is pretty cool. There’s a lot of festivals and rituals and things going on, and I liked seeing all the island life being brought out. I liked how it had a Nordic inspiration to it, and how all the culture was well-written and interwoven in the plot.

That’s unfortunately all I really have to say. The characterisation just wasn’t there for me, and I didn’t really know enough about Evie or Anna or Nik or Ikar to care about what happened to them all. They’re just kind of there in silhouette form without really being fleshed out. I had the same issue with the magic system of the world and it just didn’t really make sense to me around 90 percent of the time.

My other issue is the plot twists. One of them is really good, and I didn’t see it coming which was nice. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it was a surprise and I enjoyed having my expectations altered by it. The other one though, the whole thing with the romance was just… I don’t even know what was going on. I could see the twist coming a mile off, but it was executed in a really odd way that didn’t make any sense and was very rushed, so it just seemed as though it shouldn’t have been in there at all? It made Evie come across as fickle and didn’t make me like her character any more than I already did. Also, I don’t want to use the word instalove because it isn’t quite, but it’s a very close cousin of it.

The writing style also let me down a lot. I was expecting some gorgeous descriptions of the sea and the world Evie lives in, but all I got was very simplified told not shown language that got a bit blah after a while. Maybe it was aimed more for a younger teenage audience and I wasn’t meant to be the target, but I’ve just read a lot of stuff which does the infodumps and lots of backstory to practically highlight current events in bright bright neon and I’m a bit over it.

Overall, I’m giving The Sea Witch a  4/10 stars. There were some good elements to it, but a lot of the magic system and characterisation didn’t make any sense to me and I found myself struggling to get into this book because of that.

The Sea Witch comes out in the UK on July 31st. You can pre-order it on Waterstones here, on Amazon UK here or through my Book Depository affiliation link here. 

Has anyone read this book already or has it on their wish list? Let me know in the comment section and join in the discussion there 😀