De beginners

by Rebecca Wolff, Wim Scherpenisse (Translator)

De vijftienjarige Ginger werkt in een diner in Wick, een slaperig stadje in Massachusetts. Ze is een dromerig meisje met een grote verbeeldingskracht en ze verslindt boeken. Zo probeert ze de kilte die haar familie omgeeft sinds de dood van haar oudere broer te ontvluchten. Nu haar beste vriendin Cherry liever met jongens praat dan met haar omgaat, is haar leven nog saaier geworden. Dan komen Theo en Raquel Motherwell de diner binnen. Ginger voelt zich onmiddellijk aangetrokken tot wereldwijze uitstraling van dit opzichtige jonge stel. Ze zijn in Wick voor een onderzoek naar de geschiedenis van het stadje, en Ginger wordt meegezogen in verhalen over de heksenprocessen van Salem en een verzonken stad. Ze verliest zichzelf in haar bewondering voor de Motherwells en gaat contact met anderen steeds meer uit de weg. Haar wereld wordt kleiner en duisterder, en verleidelijker. Maar waarom beginnen de Motherwells een vriendschap met een naïef vijftienjarig meisje?

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Literary Fiction, Young Adult, Supernatural, Adult Fiction, Witches

290 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Rebecca Wolff is the editor of Fence and the author of Manderley, Figment and Continuum. She lives in Athens, New York, with her family and is a Fellow of the New York State Writers Institute.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book has a beautiful cover.

upon a cobalt blue background, a young girl in a black bathing suit appears enraptured. over this is a gilded overlay depicting a forest of bare-branched trees, and what appears to be a fox treeing a cat. this book has 291 pages and costs $26.95.

this book has a beautiful cover.


**a quick addition after reading some other goodreaders' reviews of this. this is most emphatically NOT a YA title. any book that has the following passage:

My hands gripped the maplewood board and I felt his long, iron-stiff cock pressing against my ass, between the cheeks—could he get in? I wasn't sure it was physically possible, but then I felt his finger there, all slick with some kind of jelly—I saw the tube on the nightstand out of the corner of my eye—and he slipped his finger into my anus and worked the jelly around; then I felt the pressing, the pushing, and then more, filling me, and a feeling like I would be paralyzed from the waist down, or like I had an extra spine in me and would be held erect forever on the length of it. He reached around with one hand to use the headboard for leverage and with the other he squeezed my breasts, mashing them against the wall of my chest and then releasing, pinching my nipples and then releasing. All the while slowly in and out of my asshole. But now I wanted to feel him inside me, in the other place—I needed him to fuck me—and told him so.

is probably not intended for a YA audience.

come to my blog!

[Mary · Rating 1 out of 5]

I want to go back and find the person who recommended this book to me before I bought it a year ago and shake them. SHAAAAAAAAKE.

Reasons I bought the book (on deep discount, in a going bye-bye Borders): promise of ghosts, promise of New England coming of age for a bookish ginger girl, promise of history re: Salem Witch trials (my fav!).

Now... the ghosts and the Witch Trials are in peripheral bits that are not followed through on at all throughout the book, and the "coming of age" part is steeped in tremendously weird and, I felt, gratuitous sex, that also happens to be somewhat amoral, confusing, and (possibly) criminal. So... the book basically doesn't make any sense at all.

It's also one of those books that clearly is trying to seem literary- it sounds poetic. And sometimes this works for it. Sometimes the prose is beautiful. Other times, it's clunky and awkward because it's *so* obvious and deliberate.

I could go on and on about the inconsistencies in the plot- if I had written this before I went to bed last night, I might have given it two stars, but now I've had time to sort it out and realize that nothing connects.

[Joel Brown · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this eerie thriller based on a review (NYT?) and because it's set in a thinly disguised version of Massachusetts' Quabbin reservoir area. I lived near there at one point and became fascinated with the story of the drowned towns. There was also supposed to be sexy supernatural evil in the book. And there is some. But it's so lyrically written that I'm still not exactly sure what happened toward the end.

It's the story of a teenaged girl in this dead-end town who becomes fascinated with a pair of enigmatic newcomers, sort of a creepy couple, more Jack and Meg White than Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Some sex and evil happened, but how it connected to the many, many poetic, vague, supernatural spooky visions was unclear to me. I was left wondering if perhaps the evil was banal and the supernatural was all in the girl's head? The descriptive, concrete parts were beautifully written, but there was way too much vague, abstract, ominous blather. In the end I was a little disappointed after the rave review I read.

[Virginia · Rating 2 out of 5]

groan. ugh. sigh. blah. oh come ON.

and that about sums it up. look, i respect a book with ambitions. really i do. i was an english major! i live for that shit! but please, like, don't insult me, you know? everything in this book was just so...just so. a young girl's sexual awakening in a town with a history of witch persecutions (gee, what could those two things have to do with each other? that's so original and subtle!). the protagonist sees two crows described in a sinister way, only to have the sinister new couple described as crows about four chapters later. the female half of the couple with her bizarre pronouncements that simultaneously seemed to be uterrly unconnected to anything going on and weirdly similar in tone to the protagonist's narration. the similes that don't stand up to examination. the reaching, grasping for something interesting to say, and failing that, at least for an interesting way to say it, and failing that, at least for a confusing way to say it, so that maybe you'll trick someone into thinking you're being quite deep.

so why did i even give this two stars? basically, i wanted to see those jerks get their comeuppance. which, spoiler alert, you don't get to see. but at least it kept me reading until the end.

[Courtney · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just had to check out the reader reviews for this book after finishing it. I felt confused and sort of let down with the ending and the way it was written. I was hoping to find some answers in the reviews assuming that I must have overlooked some imortant passages revealing the plot of the story. Turns out everyone had the same problems I did. I was an english major and I have to say the extensive use of language in this book, although impressive, had me glossing over many words I did not know, which were many. I felt like I had to brush up on my vocabulary reading this.
There were promises of supernatural beings and witchcraft with a little history mixed in. But this book has me believing that the author googled a place in New England and got any info she could from wikipedia and stopped there. There were a good two sentences that referenced Salem history and the witch scare and then it turned into two insane asylum escapees raping children and getting them pregnant.
I finished it because I kept waiting for the story to get better, to conclude. It did not. The only reason I gave it two stars; great cover art, and it fooled me into believing it would have some gratifying climax or conlusion right up to the end.

[Leila Cohan-Miccio · Rating 1 out of 5]

What the fuck?

I mean, I like ghosty literary fiction as much as the next girl, but I like mine peppered with any realistic sense of how people speak, think, or behave. This read like someone's dream journal after they'd read Notes On a Scandal while watching The Crucible.

[Catherine Siemann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised at the low ratings this one is getting here; I'd never heard of it until I found it browsing at a small local bookstore, but I found it immensely readable. While it uses some of the same formulas popular in YA fantasy/horror -- bookish small-town girl, not quite ready to figure out the practicalities of getting out of town but uneasy with the limitations of her community -- it turns them to impressive effect.

Part of what works so well is the narrative voice: Ginger, the first person narrator, is a small-town misfit who immerses herself in books and is happy with the company of her best friend rather than in the social whirl, but she doesn't have secret powers or some special legacy. She's beginning to think about sexuality in all its confusion and messiness, not falling in love with some mysterious but ideal boy. She reads indiscriminately -- she's smart, but not intellectual. In other words, she scans like a real girl, not a formula heroine. When a rather glamorous twenty-something couple moves to town, a picturesque but isolated New England town which has been economically static since the textile mills closed down, Ginger gets caught up in her fascination for them. There's an element of haunting, of horror, but it's subtle and ambiguous -- which seems to be a major problem for many reviewers here, but for me made it less formula and more exploration. The writing is evocative -- I read it relatively quickly but found its imagery to be haunting and vividly drawn.

Despite the overall opinion here, I do recommend this book.

[Virginia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing. Boring. Predictable. One review said it had a nice cover.
The cover says it is a story of a 15-year-old girl in a small town who meets a young dashing, worldly and sophisticated couple who are new to the town, and they discover "the town's darker history back to the days of the Salem witch trials" (that's a quote from the cover--ha!) It is about a 15-year-old girl in a small town, who is immature for her age. She and her best friend still play make believe castle games. She becomes obsessed with a young couple, who are so weird and creepy her best friend won't visit them. The girl's parents let her do whatever she wants, even staying out all night. At one point her father says he done being Mr. Nice Guy, but that plot line is never carried through. Every time you think the book will start on the witch tales, it stalls. The only plot line that is followed through is the sex one . . . get it . . . beginners. Yeah, they all get pregnant. The cover says it is "a lyrical coming-of-age story and a spine-tingling tale of ghostly menace." If lyrical means big words, yeah. Coming of age . . . beginner, wish I had picked up on that. Ghostly menace . . . outside of a few bad dreams there is no "ghostly menace". In other words, skip this book.

[Tracey]

This is one of those books that make me feel stupid after I read it. The premise of the story sounded good to me but, much like, A Reliable Wife, it seemed the story was lost in a lot of the detail. I expected there to be a mystery or a supernatural element in this book but I don't think there was anything. I didn't care about who the Motherwells turned out to be, I just wanted Ginger to stop hanging out with them so I didn't have to read anymore. I only finished this book because I kept telling myself it had to get better but, for me, it didn't. I didn't see how the mystery of the town played into the story. I had read reviews that said this would be frightening. I didn't feel that at all. Mostly I was bored. Maybe this book is too "high-level" for me. Also, I don't mind sex in a book but when it has a point. This seemed like gratuitous sex. Not good.

[Mandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This week’s headline? “He Touched Me”

Why this book? supposedly about witches

Which book format? Half Price hardback

Primary reading environment? an unflooded valley

Any preconceived notions? arrogant verbal hyperbole

Identify most with? “shiny twelfth-grade girls”

Three little words? " That’s called ‘dusk’”

Goes well with? “mulchy, nutritious odor”

Recommend this to? an MFA candidate?

“Listen,” she said, as I sat down. “If Cherry won’t tell hers, as host I feel as though I should offer one of mine. But the sad truth is that I never remember my dreams. They’re as mysterious to me as they are to you. You can’t imagine my dreams, can you?”

She talked like that throughout the entire book.

The narrator also observes that:

“Raquel spoke, all the time, in language calculated to impress. It was huge, and smelled of the future.”

So they both speak like assholes. Nearly 300 pages of those two babbling, interspersed with some infrequent action that is somehow both repellent and boring.

The narrator also loves to tell the reader about her dreams, sometimes – gasp! – without first signaling that it is a dream.

I’m pretty sure the first thing we learned in my creative writing course was that in literature – and in everyday conversation – no one wants to hear about your dreams. There is nothing more boring than listening to someone recount their dreams, unless you have made in appearance in the dream. Or you’re their therapist.

This is the first book in a long time that I considered not finishing. I NEVER do that, but this book offered me nothing, and I really needed something good to read this weekend. All I kept thinking, at the turn of every page, was This writer has an MFA. Five separate plot strands and the only thing I took away from it was the moment I finished, glanced at the back flap, and saw that yes, indeed, this writer has an MFA.

I kept reading because I liked the submerged towns that haunted the story, but nothing satisfactory came of that. I'm sorry to be so mean. This just wasn’t the book for me.


Other cultural accompaniments: Twelve and Holding (2005), In Dreams (1999), everything ever written in the debate over the value of MFAs and whether writing can be taught, http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/20...

Grade: C

I leave you with this: "'I could have been a country singer. I love the wordplay, the double entendres, the semantic reversals," she told me. 'Another microcosmic reduction of our experience into palatable dialect and trope.' I smiled and nodded, although I had no idea what she was talking about. Country music to me was just a sentimental outlet for people from the city."

[Glenda Christianson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I initially gave this book to my 15 year old daughter to read. She returned it and boy, am I glad she did. She said she just didn't get it and I agree with her.

This book is portrayed as a YA book that combines coming of age with the Salem witch trial/paranormal. Sounds like a great combination! It just never went anywhere. I kept reading, waiting for more information, more plot, more anything... It never materialized.

The 15 year old main character did not come across as a 15 year old, even a gifted one. Her thought were more adult than many adults I know. The Motherwell's, the new couple in town spoke as it they were paranormal philosophy majors. They weren't really all that paranormal. I'm not sure what they were meant to be, other than pedophiles.

Which brings me to the sex scenes. I am not opposed to graphic descriptions of sex in a novel if the sex enhances the plot, character motivation or in some way fits into the context of the story. The sex scenes in this book were none of the above. It includes descriptions of anal and oral sex that seem to be random and unrelated to the plot.

I am still disappointed in this novel. I really wanted to like it. I hate to write negative reviews. One positive: The cover art is beautiful. This is definitely not a YA book and I doubt that most adults would care for it.

Thanks to LibraryThing for the opportunity to read and review this book.

[Merredith · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is billed as the story a young 15 year old girl in a small town who meets a young couple who are strangers to the town, and together they uncover a mystery about the town's past and wich hunting and witch practices. the first part is true. it's about a 15 year old girl in a small town, who is young for her age. she still plays make believe castle games, but she also uses really big words, like anne shirley in anne of green gables. like anne, she has a bosom buddy, her best friend, who is less of an outcast than the main character. they even mention this girl reading the anne series, so the author probably meant the similarities a bit. the girl's parents let her wander and do whatever, she doesnt even have to come home at night. she becomes obsessed with a young couple newly moved into town, who are also very weird and creepy. the mom is sorta suspicious but never acts on it. there is a bit about the history of the town's witch persecution, but it's never really explored. there was no mystery. there was a bit of a gothic feel to the whole thing, but what happens is only sad. not mysterious, in fact it was crystal clear predictable. the only confusing thing is the ending, which i couldn't even tell what happened. i would not recommend this book to anyone.

[Jessica J. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh, I gave this one up about a hundred pages in. I read some good things about this book, about a young woman uncovering secrets about the new neighbors in her small New England town, but man it just did not deliver. I hated the main character, Ginger. I thought that she took things way, way too seriously for a fifteen year old. I get that she was supposed to be bookish, socially awkward, an outside, but man - she reminded me of a character from my own life that a friend and I used to snarkily refer to as "The Angstrom." Her biggest problem was that she wouldn't get out of her own head long enough to actually look at the world. It made it very difficult to relate to Ginger. Wolff's narration was clumsy and I often found myself confused as to what was going on. Also - did anyone else notice that she'd occasional slip into a Yoda cadence - "Falling in love we were." Who the hell talks like that? It drove me nuts.

[Samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to say, I found this book rather unpleasant. I chose it for its cover, which apparently doesn't photograph well, because there's no green on it as in the picture. there is a midnight blue background, with a kneeling girl with a strange hairstyle, all overlaid with a metallic gold image of a forest with brush and trees, a fox and a cat. it's a beautiful cover.

the book is set in a small new england town, so isolated that the "antihero" protagonist, ginger (her best friend's name is cherry) has never met anyone new before the young couple that comes to town. she's 15, her best friend is 17, they still play make believe games about a castle down at the old mill.

back jacket blurbs describe it as a fever dream of adolescence, which is true, there's a lot of hallucinatory and dream stuff, there's an atmosphere that something horrific is going to happen but it never really does - or maybe ginger just didn't realize what the horrific part was. and I think the author takes cover under that unreality of the novel to excuse plot points that don't make sense. a couple in their 20s moves into town, when no one ever moves into town, and strikes up an intimate friendship with ginger and cherry, and no one else. their parents make a few ineffectual stabs at reining it in, but not really. ginger's family history would make you think her parents would be more protective than most. the small insular town would make you think outsiders would be under more suspicion.

ginger is described as an antihero mainly, I guess, due to her intense passivity. she generally has no idea what she is feeling, or else she feels two conflicting feelings at once. she just does whatever. her main actions are of exclusion, and even in these, she just doesn't make an effort, she fails to answer the phone.

so there's a general feeling of foreboding. there's a lot of totally unbelievable dialogue - just way too formal for speech. all relationships seem fragile. I was waiting throughout for some sort of murderous or supernatural climax, and although there is a resolution of the newcomers in town tension and ginger has progressed out of childhood innocence, there are many threads just left dangling and she is still apparently just as passive as ever.

it wasn't poorly written. the author is a poet, and although that didn't really show for me in the language or descriptions, maybe that is why the book is so atmospheric without much actual action. there's a lot that a classroom discussion or book group could talk about (it's very sexual though, so maybe not a high school classroom). for instance, ginger and cherry both have sexual experiences over the course of the book as direct or indirect results of the newcomers, but even before they arrive, ginger peruses pornography that the owner of the cafe she works in keeps under the sink in the employee bathroom. there's a lot to speculate on, there aren't a lot of answers.

[Ricki Treleaven · Rating 1 out of 5]

While on our road trip, I read The Beginners by Rebecca Wolff. I hated this book. I think this is only the second book I have blogged about that I hate because I truly try to maintain a positive blog, but I feel the necessity to warn you about this one.

Several months ago when this book was first released there was TONS of hype!!! I suppose that should have been my first red flag. But the fact that Wolff earned her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop (a program my daughter so badly wants to join as a graduate student) made me buy it.

The book is basically about a fifteen year old girl named Ginger who lives in a small New England town. She thinks and speaks *pretentious* which I refuse to learn. No fifteen year old thinks like this, even geniuses. And if she were that smart, she would not have found herself in a really stupid predicament. The cause of her trouble is a young couple: Theo and Raquel Motherwell. They are new to Wick, Massachusetts, and they are pathological liars. Ginger, if you speak pretentious so well, then you should recognize how disturbing your new friends are, lass. They are definitely psychopathic enigmas wrapped in a mystery, and Ginger spends all of her free time with these adults. Weird. Also there is supposed to be a supernatural element to the story. It isn't there, trust me. I truly thought that Wick's creepy history might provide the structure for a story, but the story was never fully developed.

This is a coming of age novel that you can skip because it is confusing, offensive, and a complete waste of time. I really want those hours of reading this book back because life is too short to read books like this one! Consider yourself forewarned.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The only reason I gave this book any stars is that it kept my interest. I found myself looking forward to picking it back up again. That said, it was unsatisfying in the end, and I spent way too much time skimming.

Most of the book I felt like the author was trying too hard. Some of the writing was special - and very beautiful. But much of it was just overwrought. Reading about dream sequences - not that interesting. Lots of pretentious BS sprinkled in. I found the pornography way over the top - if I want to read porno I'll pick it up, don't need it in my novels, TYVM.

Too many unexplained threads in the book. If there was an explanation of how a couple who was imprisoned/institutionalized respectively had the $ to buy a house, I missed it. And what exactly happened to them at the end? Why didn't any of the parents in the town invite them over for dinner- make an effort to get to know them? If the writer had a real sense of small-town life she would know that small-town parents will make a lot greater effort to get to know the newcomers than was evidenced in this book, particularly when the newcomers are monopolizing their children.

The book had promise, but I don't recommend it. I didn't really have the patience for it. I liked how the tension built and the twist I definitely didn't see coming - but there was no real payoff - the twist didn't go anywhere and the tension never climaxed, for me, anyway.

[Virginia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Already having loved the wry, darkly wrought voice in Wolff's three poetry collections, and the Victorian gothic bent of _Manderley_, my high expectation were met but in strange and unsettling ways by The Beginners (a title I assumed, perhaps correctly?, to be homologous with Zen "beginner's mind). Ginger and Cherry, young teens in a small town, cast spells such as "To Make Oneself Invisible, and Walk Amongst the People": throughout the novel, the horror and realist genres prove inseparable (as they did for Harper Lee), particularly in the dark imaginary of a sensitive girl, before contemplation and obsession with moral absolutes, such as evil, justice, and sacrifice, and the existence of suffering, give way to the status quo or Lethean forgetting through consumer objects. Wolff does a beautiful job at balancing the revelation of interior with forward motion, while showing childhood to be not only a timeless, spatially unmoored (sans context) state of being, and thus conscience (seeing the world through the eyes of Ginger) does make cowards - or more reflective humans - of us all.

[Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Goodreads Advanced Readers Copy

Terrible!
This book was not in the least bit eerie. Not even the slightest! Its about a 15 year old girl with the diction of a 45 year old who's basically raped. I would be ashamed to put this on the shelves for young adults to read! It's pure kiddie porn. Well-written, but why anyone would want to write about stagitory rape when we hear horriod stories like this in the news daily is beyond me. The author should choose a better subject and or a different audience because this story would only appeal to pedophiles and rapists! Disgusting! I am thoroughly apalled and doubt I will ever pick up another book by this author or recommend this book to anyone. It's garbage!!

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I heard Rebecca Wolff being interviewed on NPR, and the book sounded good. It wasn't. Very overwrought, pages and pages of gothic-sounding descriptions of ghosts and towns that were deliberately drowned. Ginger, the protagonist, is a fifteen year old girl with the voice of someone much older. She becomes obsessed with the Motherwells, a strange couple who move to town for no apparent reason, and devotes herself to them, losing her best friend in the process. Her loving mom and dad let her do this (although her mom has serious doubts). I liked the descriptions of the old mill in the town, and that's about it. A waste of $12.99 given to Amazon (again!). I'm thinking of going back to the library. Skip it.

[Nicole · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fifteen year-old Ginger, who sounds nothing like a fifteen year-old in her narration, becomes instantly infatuated with the new couple that moves to her small hometown in Massachusetts, and the ensuing story is supposed to be one of coming of age. However, at times I began to wonder exactly what I was reading. Ginger claims to be very mature for her age, yet her complete acceptance of the Motherwells, no matter how bizarre their behavior seems to carry her 'innocence' a step or two beyond believable, and the overly flowery writing makes the rest of the story difficult to muddle through. The idea itself is intriguing, especially the line involving the town's history, but in the end I walked away with no sense of closure, as the execution of the story was poorly done.

[Susan Wyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was stunned by the beauty of this book, one of the most memorable I've read in a long time. Her writing is lyrical, the characters shaded and moving about in a haunted landscape. An internal experience, and a story that's evocative.
It saddens me to see the ratings it's getting. I fear we've lost our way, in the last century, in trying to teach writers to write and winding up with writers who so often write the same way, so when something lovely and fresh comes along we can't even see it.
Rebecca Wolff is a born writer, a poet who has retained a sense of the world's mystery. If you haven't read this yet, read it and be filled with wonder.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

At a certain point, I couldn't put this book down because I wanted to see the conclusion, but I began to skim the parts where the character Raquel was speaking because she was exhausting and a bore. Which may have been Rebecca Wolff's point.

There was much left to the reader's imagination. I'm okay with that.

[Julie Haydu · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am only a few chapters into this book and will not be finishing it. Already I can tell it is perverted and creepy (not in a good way). This is not a YA book. Although the characters are teens and it's described as "coming of age" it's not written for young adults. The dialogue is terrible and completely unrealistic--no one talks this way.

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

i can't believe this book has such low ratings! i hope you will believe me when i say this book is very, very excellent. it is incredibly beautifully written- clear and narrative but with descriptions and tone such that you know a poet wrote it. a strange and careful story, spooky and tense. one of my favorite novels of last year.

[Matt Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tore through this in just eight days. Spooky as hell.

Oh, and to all the Goodreads reviewers rating this 1 or 2 stars, you are all illiterate morons who have no business writing a fucking GROCERY LIST let alone a book review.

Have a nice day.

[Gwen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horrible, weird and disturbing...

[Madeline]

Update, February 2024:
Copying this review from a notebook I was keeping at the time. I have no recollection of reading this book and it sounds wild. Re-reading my notebook review, what are these character names?

**
Original Review, August 2013:
Another $3 find. This book was...weird. It tells the story of Ginger Pritt and her best friend Cherry Endicott. Living in Wick, Massachusetts, they meet two strangers, Theo and Raquel Motherwell. I've never fallen into a book the way I did with this one, but I think I missed something the way I missed something with Kate Chopin's "The Awakening." Maybe coming-of-age stories elude me.

Wolff is a poet by trade and that clearly shows in her lyrical prose. But still, I don't know. This feels like something someone would have assigned me in 12th grade English class. It's pretentious but relatable with the themes - witchcraft, sex, dreaming, death, Ginger's dead brother Jack, the towns under the reservoir, ghosts and rape - stand out so clearly. It's basically screaming to be explicated in a 5-paragraph essay.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

I originally picked this novel up because it had the words "salem witch trials" in the description and I adore anything about witches and witch history. Sadly, I feel like I was lied to. The story has a sliver; a teeny-tiny mentioning of the trials and that's about it. I was promised fantasy as well, but it read more like a graphic porn novel than anything.

Also worth mentioning: what exactly was the ending? I'm still confused about what happened. Although, reading others reviews I am not the only one.

[Kelly McCloskey-Romero · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very disappointing. The writing is mesmerizing, but the characters are opaque and the plot is needlessly disturbing. We never really understand why the protagonist or even the antagonists act as they do. The novel is skillfully woven and so many of the sentences are entrancing, but for what purpose?

[Lauren Stewart Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was all over the place. Not my cup of tea when it comes to writing style. Maybe you’ll like it.
I continued to read the book despite the bad reviews… if you are here and deciding if you should continue the book I encourage you to stop.