Fully Booked — Episode 18
Reading is something that used to be great, until life got in the way. But it doesn’t have to be like that — you can have a life and love reading, and we’re here to help. Welcome back to Fully Booked, the series for people who don’t know what to read or where to start.
For you horror fans out there, this one’s for you. I went trawling for some witchy horrors and boy did I find them. The Witch In The Well came to me from someone’s compilation reel of witch-themed books and struck me as interesting because it looked really different from the other books listed which were primarily romances — and it really was in a world of it’s own.
Very unlike my usual reads, the Witch in the Well is not high fantasy, and I’d be reluctant to even call it fantasy at all because it’s just so not. Even classing it as modern fantasy only really touches the edges of everything that’s going on in this. I’d probably file this best as a gothic-horror and thriller.
The Witch In The Well —Camilla Bruce
STATS
Borrowed from — my library’s E-resources
Pages — 296
Trigger warnings — suicide; mental health; miscarriage; violence; death.
Rating — 4 stars
The story is told through newspaper clippings, diary entries, and Facebook posts all stitched together to form a timeline of events of the strange and unfortunate history of the well on the old Nicksby farm. Ilsbeth Clark was drowned in the well centuries ago after being accused of practicing witchcraft and abducting children in the town of F — . Despite being acquitted by a judge, this did nothing to stop the townspeople from exacting their own justice upon her. In the present day, ex-childhood friends Cathy and Elena are now in a heated spat over who has a more accurate version of events of Ilsbeth’s haunting past, and who is going to publish their book first. What they are soon to learn, is that history has a funny way of catching up to the present…
This book gives off huge cryptid energy and I simply don’t know how else to explain it. It was so perfectly creepy and eerie, and from the perspective of an outsider to the town of F — I think we’re given a very interesting insight into the spat and how small towns can create big problems out of almost nothing. Part of the appeal to this story is knowing that what’s happening is foolish, but being unable to look away and knowing that the other townspeople in F — are also unable to go about their days without hearing about the drama.
There definitely was a lack of wider context provided early on in this book, which I didn’t necessarily appreciate at the time, but as the story went on I came to understand why that was done. Part of the fun of this book is that you have to do some sleuthing and guessing as to how everyone fits into the puzzle — and they do indeed all fit in, I promise you. The Witch In The Well is not necessarily a mystery book, but there are definitely mysterious elements throughout it that do an incredible job of adding to the overall sense of intrigue and insidious feeling of being one step behind. The pacing is done remarkably well, too, and despite us being left to our own guesswork and theories early on, the string of clues and context we are offered is consistent and very well laid out.
I give this a 4/5 because despite it being not what I’d usually read it wasn’t actually bad, and it was compelling enough to get me to read it on the weekend. Points deducted just because I still don’t get why the town just didn’t have a name, and also I wish there had been a little more information about Ilsbeth’s past than we were given.
