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Witch #1
River Witch
Raised to be the finest pilot on the Hudson, Amanda Franklin had lost her heart to a high-born beau who left her and her well-loved father to his cutthroat enemies. Now this raven-haired beauty would fight back — and even the honey-tongued gambler who loved her could not stop her headlong passion for revenge.
- GenresHistorical
413 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 25, 2024
2 stars ⭐️
2 chili peppers 🌶️
Warnings for: rape and sexual assault; racism and ableism on part of the characters, including outdated terminology and rhetoric for both
Before anything else, it’s important to remember this book was written in the 1970s and is set in the 1860s. Not an excuse for anything (some of the language, tropes, or descriptions), but an explanation which helped me separate my narrative thoughts versus ones stemming from more modern expectations.
The cover led me to think this would be a mega-80s romance. That’s not true at all.
My favorite aspect of this story are the quiet moments; you can feel Andrews’ horror background as dramatic tension is built in the relatively vanilla plot. He’ll do things like withhold a new character’s name for a few paragraphs or spend extra time describing the darkness of the river to make a scene more suspenseful. The plot is a slingshot; there are pages of build up and something major will happen in just a few words.
That said, two major issues stop this from being a better book for me:
▫️Amanda is by far the least interesting character in this story, but Andrews doesn’t seem to know. She is also almost always yelling, negating, or running away from those around her; and when that doesn’t work, she resorts to sexual assault. She also has almost no reaction to major plot points, leading me to believe she cares more about her social appearance than (for example) her home burning down — and it never changes. I don’t read it as misogyny, though, there are other women in the story who operate like normal human beings.
▫️Also, the story wants to highlight how backward and ignorant the general belief is in Amanda’s Algonquin heritage lending her supernatural abilities. So it’s confusing that she leans into/also plays upon these beliefs — and not externally for their sake or the sake of deception, she really does seem convinced at certain points. If society was going to be bigots, and Amanda was going to doubt herself, I needed the narrator to choose a side and ground into it.
Overall, this is a two-sitting read that’s “okay”. I like the writing style far better than the characters. The touch of “studio notes” is too strong to ignore — Amanda becomes muddled, some of the minority characters toe the line of stereotype (when they’re set up better than that), and there is no change in the world as a result of this plot. There are two more installments in the series, but I don’t care enough about these people to move onto those over the plethora of this author’s extended works.
Totally separate: In the Libby edition by Crossroad Press, I had 10+ instances where the letter “h” was typed as “b” in words and it was very distracting.
2 chili peppers 🌶️
Warnings for: rape and sexual assault; racism and ableism on part of the characters, including outdated terminology and rhetoric for both
Before anything else, it’s important to remember this book was written in the 1970s and is set in the 1860s. Not an excuse for anything (some of the language, tropes, or descriptions), but an explanation which helped me separate my narrative thoughts versus ones stemming from more modern expectations.
The cover led me to think this would be a mega-80s romance. That’s not true at all.
My favorite aspect of this story are the quiet moments; you can feel Andrews’ horror background as dramatic tension is built in the relatively vanilla plot. He’ll do things like withhold a new character’s name for a few paragraphs or spend extra time describing the darkness of the river to make a scene more suspenseful. The plot is a slingshot; there are pages of build up and something major will happen in just a few words.
That said, two major issues stop this from being a better book for me:
▫️Amanda is by far the least interesting character in this story, but Andrews doesn’t seem to know. She is also almost always yelling, negating, or running away from those around her; and when that doesn’t work, she resorts to sexual assault. She also has almost no reaction to major plot points, leading me to believe she cares more about her social appearance than (for example) her home burning down — and it never changes. I don’t read it as misogyny, though, there are other women in the story who operate like normal human beings.
▫️Also, the story wants to highlight how backward and ignorant the general belief is in Amanda’s Algonquin heritage lending her supernatural abilities. So it’s confusing that she leans into/also plays upon these beliefs — and not externally for their sake or the sake of deception, she really does seem convinced at certain points. If society was going to be bigots, and Amanda was going to doubt herself, I needed the narrator to choose a side and ground into it.
Overall, this is a two-sitting read that’s “okay”. I like the writing style far better than the characters. The touch of “studio notes” is too strong to ignore — Amanda becomes muddled, some of the minority characters toe the line of stereotype (when they’re set up better than that), and there is no change in the world as a result of this plot. There are two more installments in the series, but I don’t care enough about these people to move onto those over the plethora of this author’s extended works.
Totally separate: In the Libby edition by Crossroad Press, I had 10+ instances where the letter “h” was typed as “b” in words and it was very distracting.
November 1, 2015
This is a re read from many years ago. It was okay, somehow I think I liked it better when I first read it. I guess you could say it is your typical romance book.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews