The Witch by Freida McFadden Review

Reading The Witch closely

Pemberton is a better reason to pick up The Witch than its modern-day romance. Julia Barlow returns to her family's seventeenth-century Massachusetts estate after losing her job and apartment, supposedly to check on her grandmother, though she needs somewhere to stay herself. The house gives that fallback an unpleasant edge immediately. A grandfather clock keeps stopping at 3:41 a.m., and noises in the attic make it hard to settle into the idea of shelter. I liked how quickly the setting becomes uncomfortable. Gram and Ethel add enough unease of their own that the family can be as troubling as the building.

Caroline, in the 1692 timeline during the Salem witchcraft era, is the character I cared about most. She has more nerve and presence than Julia, and her part of the story carries far more emotional weight. Julia gets the job of moving the modern mystery along, but too often that means reacting to a scare or reading someone else's letters. There is a difference between being trapped by circumstances and barely shaping what happens next. Julia spends too much of the novel on the passive side of that line. Moving between the two women makes the imbalance especially obvious.

The present also struggles to sustain the seriousness of the past. The ghost-hunting subplot, complete with cheap equipment and apps, sometimes pushes the investigation close to absurdity. Those scenes took some of the menace out of Pemberton for me. The romance with Henry does little to compensate. It is there, but there is no real spark between them, and it never becomes a relationship worth caring about in its own right. Caroline's chapters are much more convincing company than either the ghost hunter or the romantic subplot.

McFadden keeps everything moving anyway. The chapters are extremely short, with blunt endings that make the next one easy to start, and there is almost no boring filler. That speed helps carry the weaker material without fixing it. Her prose is simple and unpretentious, which suits Julia's quick reactions and the sequence of discoveries. The historical passages are less comfortable stylistically: an occasional period expression bumps against a rhythm that still feels thoroughly modern. It is an odd fit rather than a serious obstacle to reading.

Some twists are foreseeable if you know McFadden's habits, but the family mystery does fit together. My reservation is what happens to the atmosphere once the explanations arrive. The noises and apparent hauntings are more effective as questions than some of their answers are as revelations. The climax rushes through its chaos, and I wanted the resolution to have a little more room. It still entertains. At 3.5 stars, I'd choose this for a fast, spooky autumn read, with Caroline and Pemberton as the main attractions. The modern characters and the final rush keep it from becoming a stronger recommendation.