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Witchfinder
95 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
11 people want to read
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October 15, 2023
I hate this book so much i cant let it rest peacefully.
Let's start with the plot. The book follows two plotlines. The first one is about an antiques seller Andrea Elsen who is given an old chair which makes her have "nightmares" about a girl falsely accused of being a witch. The second is of said girl Mary.
Andrea's storyline was completely unnecessary. You could've taken it out completely and nothing would change. You know why? Because nothing happened.
Some rich asshole Charlie Harden gave her an old chair he was going to burn. She takes the chair home and has a bad dream. In the morning she works on the chair and after taking off the layers of paint she finds that it has beautiful carvings of heaven and hell on if. She tries to search for the chair in her antique books and can't find it. At night she has another "nightmare" and it scares her so much she refuses to sleep and decided to do what any sensible person would which is to drive full speed thru the countryside when distressed and unfocused. And she ends up crashing into a fence. Why did this happen? I couldn't give you a single reason. There was no conflict because the person who's fence it was wasn't even angry at her and they resolved the issue in 5 seconds. And she wasn't even bothered by it. Like yeah i just drove full speed into a fence so what. This whole accident never came up again. And right afterwards she just rented another car and continued to drive around full speed. So what was the point of this???????????
Anyway, she decides to visit her best friend and ask her for advice. Lucy Locke (the best friend) tells her to talk to her dad because he for some reason should know how to help. When Andrea refuses she tells her to talk to Charlie. So she does. Charlie tells her that he found the chair in an old house and it gave him nightmares so he tried to get rid of it but the dreams didn't stop. And he refuses to help Andrea. So then Andrea finally goes to her father who does nothing and asks some friend of his to help. In the end her dad tells her to sleep and finish the story. And she does and it all ends well and she gives the chair away to a museum. It didn't add anything to the story of Mary, the chair was barely even mentioned in the second storyline. It was said that by dreaming those dreams Andrea was giving Mary closure which didn't make sense because it's not like Mary died, she escaped and lived happily ever after. So again, WHAT WAS THE POINT. The only reason this storyline existed was because the idea of a magical chair is cool.
Now moving on to the second storyline. I will say, this one was a bit more interesting. 15 year old Mary is a servent in some lord's house. She is secretely dating the lord's son and has beef with the lord's daughter. This was happening in the middle ages when the witch trials were happening and some guy named the Witchfinder who was feared by all and was very religious and believed satan was everywhere killed thousands of witches. And the Witchfinder was visiting the castle that Mary worked at. Since Elizabeth, the lord's daughter, hated Mary she told the Witchfinder that Mary was a witch and he believed her. There was a trail and she was declared a witch. She was going to be burned to death, but her lover Thomas faked her death and helped her escape England.
And now lets talk about the characters.
Mary and Andrea were literally the same person and not in a cool, intentional, "they mirror eachother" way, but in the way that they have the don't have an actual personality. Andrea was said to be this fair, honest person but it didn't add anything to the story and was only said so people would root for her. She was also said to be quite a loner, which, again, doesn't matter and adds nothing to the story. But i guess that's better than Mary, who has absolutely no distinguishing personality trait at all. Neither of them take even a second to think about literally anything they do, ever. They don't think about anything they ever say or act or how it would change things and why would they, nothing they did had any lasting consequences. Nothing they ever did or how they felt had an explanation, nothing was backed up with any sort of reason. Like why was Andrea a loner? Why was she drawn to the chair in the first place?
Then there was Elizabeth and Thomas who truly had no personality except being evil and rude and bitchy (Elizabeth) or heroic and brave (Thomas).
Andrea's dad had the potential to be a really intresting character but it just fell flat and he was only in the book for like 5 pages. He was really into helping the world and making a difference but because he was so focused on helping the masses he neglected his family. And it was written as if he wanted a second chance but he apologised once in a very rehearsed, robotic way and then the fact that him and Andrea havent spoken in 2 years and their entire relationship was just forgotten and they just became a supportive father-daughter duo.
Charlie Harden was your typical millionaire, rich but sad character who likes money and EVEN FLOWERS! HOW CRAZY RIGHT?! (That was sarcastic). It seemed like the author wanted to make him seem like a secretely good guy who you should feel bad for but hes really just pathetic.
The Witchfinder was your very typical evil guy who had no motive for what he did other than he thought he was being a true Christian. He was a brainless evil zombie.
There were other character’s but they were so irrelevant and forgettable they're not worth mentioning.
The thing is, none of the characters were fleshed out and thats because there were too many of them. The book itself is only like 86 pages and its a small book. So why did the author think it was a good idea to have like 20 different "important characters". There were so so many characters who could've been easily merged or just cut out entirely. Like for example, in Mary's storyline there was some random girl Jenny who testified against Mary in court and that was one of the most useless interactions ever. There was no reason for that scene and absolutely no reason to spend a page describing her personality when you could've been giving more depth to Mary, or give the readers any reason to care about Mary and Thomas and make the readers believe they were actually in love.
There's more but im lazy.
The writing:
The writting was bad. Really bad. I didnt spot any obvious grammar mistakes (thank god) but damn was the writting bad. Such a large portion of the book was just the same things said over and over and over and over and over again. There must have been at least 15 times when it was mentioned how much Andrea's dad talked about her. And there were so many instances when a character thought about something and then them or another character said the same exact thing, worded the same way. Why? I have no idea. Wouldn't it have been better to spend this time oh i dont know maybe giving your characters actual personalities and goals and fears and flaws and relationships. There were so many weird paragraphs that were written about god knows what and it had nothing to do with the story and were never brought up again.
Oh my god the dialogue. The fucking dialogue. It was horrible. I mean no one talks like that. No one.
And i was sitting here, thinking about how could someone write this book, look at it and think "yep, this is the final version". Then i looked on the back and saw it was never edited. And it all made sence. A good editor is such an important part of the book and is really really necessary. Saying the book wasnt edited really isnt the great thing that its made out to be on the back cover.
And now to finish off the review i have some suggestions on how to make the book better plotwise.
Imagine everything is going the same as it was at the start and then Andrea goes for a drive and she ges distracted and hits a car. And its her dad's car. And that's how they meet after 2 years. And he asks her whats going and she tells him and then they work together to solve this and end up fixing their relationship. And during Mary's storyline Mary does die. Maybe Thomas even helps kill her. Doesn't really matter. And then Andrea helps her have her revenge and find peace. Now doesn't that sound more interesting?
Thank you for reading and goodbye.
Let's start with the plot. The book follows two plotlines. The first one is about an antiques seller Andrea Elsen who is given an old chair which makes her have "nightmares" about a girl falsely accused of being a witch. The second is of said girl Mary.
Andrea's storyline was completely unnecessary. You could've taken it out completely and nothing would change. You know why? Because nothing happened.
Some rich asshole Charlie Harden gave her an old chair he was going to burn. She takes the chair home and has a bad dream. In the morning she works on the chair and after taking off the layers of paint she finds that it has beautiful carvings of heaven and hell on if. She tries to search for the chair in her antique books and can't find it. At night she has another "nightmare" and it scares her so much she refuses to sleep and decided to do what any sensible person would which is to drive full speed thru the countryside when distressed and unfocused. And she ends up crashing into a fence. Why did this happen? I couldn't give you a single reason. There was no conflict because the person who's fence it was wasn't even angry at her and they resolved the issue in 5 seconds. And she wasn't even bothered by it. Like yeah i just drove full speed into a fence so what. This whole accident never came up again. And right afterwards she just rented another car and continued to drive around full speed. So what was the point of this???????????
Anyway, she decides to visit her best friend and ask her for advice. Lucy Locke (the best friend) tells her to talk to her dad because he for some reason should know how to help. When Andrea refuses she tells her to talk to Charlie. So she does. Charlie tells her that he found the chair in an old house and it gave him nightmares so he tried to get rid of it but the dreams didn't stop. And he refuses to help Andrea. So then Andrea finally goes to her father who does nothing and asks some friend of his to help. In the end her dad tells her to sleep and finish the story. And she does and it all ends well and she gives the chair away to a museum. It didn't add anything to the story of Mary, the chair was barely even mentioned in the second storyline. It was said that by dreaming those dreams Andrea was giving Mary closure which didn't make sense because it's not like Mary died, she escaped and lived happily ever after. So again, WHAT WAS THE POINT. The only reason this storyline existed was because the idea of a magical chair is cool.
Now moving on to the second storyline. I will say, this one was a bit more interesting. 15 year old Mary is a servent in some lord's house. She is secretely dating the lord's son and has beef with the lord's daughter. This was happening in the middle ages when the witch trials were happening and some guy named the Witchfinder who was feared by all and was very religious and believed satan was everywhere killed thousands of witches. And the Witchfinder was visiting the castle that Mary worked at. Since Elizabeth, the lord's daughter, hated Mary she told the Witchfinder that Mary was a witch and he believed her. There was a trail and she was declared a witch. She was going to be burned to death, but her lover Thomas faked her death and helped her escape England.
And now lets talk about the characters.
Mary and Andrea were literally the same person and not in a cool, intentional, "they mirror eachother" way, but in the way that they have the don't have an actual personality. Andrea was said to be this fair, honest person but it didn't add anything to the story and was only said so people would root for her. She was also said to be quite a loner, which, again, doesn't matter and adds nothing to the story. But i guess that's better than Mary, who has absolutely no distinguishing personality trait at all. Neither of them take even a second to think about literally anything they do, ever. They don't think about anything they ever say or act or how it would change things and why would they, nothing they did had any lasting consequences. Nothing they ever did or how they felt had an explanation, nothing was backed up with any sort of reason. Like why was Andrea a loner? Why was she drawn to the chair in the first place?
Then there was Elizabeth and Thomas who truly had no personality except being evil and rude and bitchy (Elizabeth) or heroic and brave (Thomas).
Andrea's dad had the potential to be a really intresting character but it just fell flat and he was only in the book for like 5 pages. He was really into helping the world and making a difference but because he was so focused on helping the masses he neglected his family. And it was written as if he wanted a second chance but he apologised once in a very rehearsed, robotic way and then the fact that him and Andrea havent spoken in 2 years and their entire relationship was just forgotten and they just became a supportive father-daughter duo.
Charlie Harden was your typical millionaire, rich but sad character who likes money and EVEN FLOWERS! HOW CRAZY RIGHT?! (That was sarcastic). It seemed like the author wanted to make him seem like a secretely good guy who you should feel bad for but hes really just pathetic.
The Witchfinder was your very typical evil guy who had no motive for what he did other than he thought he was being a true Christian. He was a brainless evil zombie.
There were other character’s but they were so irrelevant and forgettable they're not worth mentioning.
The thing is, none of the characters were fleshed out and thats because there were too many of them. The book itself is only like 86 pages and its a small book. So why did the author think it was a good idea to have like 20 different "important characters". There were so so many characters who could've been easily merged or just cut out entirely. Like for example, in Mary's storyline there was some random girl Jenny who testified against Mary in court and that was one of the most useless interactions ever. There was no reason for that scene and absolutely no reason to spend a page describing her personality when you could've been giving more depth to Mary, or give the readers any reason to care about Mary and Thomas and make the readers believe they were actually in love.
There's more but im lazy.
The writing:
The writting was bad. Really bad. I didnt spot any obvious grammar mistakes (thank god) but damn was the writting bad. Such a large portion of the book was just the same things said over and over and over and over and over again. There must have been at least 15 times when it was mentioned how much Andrea's dad talked about her. And there were so many instances when a character thought about something and then them or another character said the same exact thing, worded the same way. Why? I have no idea. Wouldn't it have been better to spend this time oh i dont know maybe giving your characters actual personalities and goals and fears and flaws and relationships. There were so many weird paragraphs that were written about god knows what and it had nothing to do with the story and were never brought up again.
Oh my god the dialogue. The fucking dialogue. It was horrible. I mean no one talks like that. No one.
And i was sitting here, thinking about how could someone write this book, look at it and think "yep, this is the final version". Then i looked on the back and saw it was never edited. And it all made sence. A good editor is such an important part of the book and is really really necessary. Saying the book wasnt edited really isnt the great thing that its made out to be on the back cover.
And now to finish off the review i have some suggestions on how to make the book better plotwise.
Imagine everything is going the same as it was at the start and then Andrea goes for a drive and she ges distracted and hits a car. And its her dad's car. And that's how they meet after 2 years. And he asks her whats going and she tells him and then they work together to solve this and end up fixing their relationship. And during Mary's storyline Mary does die. Maybe Thomas even helps kill her. Doesn't really matter. And then Andrea helps her have her revenge and find peace. Now doesn't that sound more interesting?
Thank you for reading and goodbye.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 of 1 review