NetGalley Review: The Honey Witch by Sydney J Shields
Hey all, Sam here.
Oh yeah, the reviews just keep coming in, and I’m trying to focus on books that are releasing around now. But I do still have a nice backlog that I also need to get around to, and I’ll hopefully be able to do that a bit more in the next couple weeks. My hope is to have more of a balance between new and upcoming releases and my review backlog moving forward.
As you can probably tell by my monthly TBRs, I usually have 4-10 NetGalley releases each month, so once I’ve caught up a little bit, I should be able to balance current reads with backlog reads.
Anyway, today’s review is again another May book release, and it’s one that I actually finished reading at the end of last month. I was excited when my pre-order arrived so I could add this one to my shelves. Let’s dive on in.
My ThoughtsThe Honey Witch of Innisfree can never find true love. That is her curse to bear. But when a young woman who doesn’t believe in magic arrives on her island, sparks fly in this deliciously sweet debut novel of magic, hope, and love overcoming all.
Twenty-one-year-old Marigold Claude has always preferred the company of the spirits of the meadow to any of the suitors who’ve tried to woo her. So when her grandmother whisks her away to the family cottage on the tiny Isle of Innisfree with an offer to train her as the next Honey Witch, she accepts immediately. But her newfound magic and independence come with a No one can fall in love with the Honey Witch.
When Lottie Burke, a notoriously grumpy skeptic who doesn’t believe in magic, shows up on her doorstep, Marigold can’t resist the challenge to prove to her that magic is real. But soon, Marigold begins to care for Lottie in ways she never expected. And when darker magic awakens and threatens to destroy her home, she must fight for much more than her new home—at the risk of losing her magic and her heart.
Rating: 5 stars
Okay, I’m going to say it…was this 5 stars because it was a good story that I had a rather fun time reading? Yes. Were there still plot points and twists that I saw come about 100 pages before they were revealed? Also, yes. But it still didn’t make the reading experience less enjoyable.
I think The Honey Witch is the perfect late spring/early summer read. Much like spring showers giving way to summer storms, this book has its light and cute moments balanced with those looming dark clouds that then just rush in and unleash their chaos over everything.
The characters were interesting, and I enjoyed getting to know them. I feel like we could have gotten a little more about the magic system. Now, this could be because I read a whole lot of fantasy and I’m used to rich, deep, intricate magic systems, but this one was only given a basic structure and the rest was more vague, so it’s definitely more of a soft magic system than a hard one. Which is fine, but I’m a greedy fantasy fan and I want to fully immerse myself in the magical world and learn how it all works. I’m not going to punish a book for not giving me all that information though, because I still really enjoyed it.
Also, honestly, I would have liked to get more with Marigold’s family (maybe a companion novel in the future?). I especially enjoyed her brother and wanted more about that. And, I would enjoy a prequel type story that goes more into her parents’ story, and even her grandmother’s tale.
I read this book very quickly, and though I could predict quite a few of the twists long before their reveal, I still was enveloped by the story and disappeared into it easily, flipping the digital pages rapidly, because I wanted to know what was going to happen next, and to see if my predictions would be correct. It was a fun reading time, and finishing it was a sad time, because it meant the story was over and I had to leave the world of honey witches and ash witches behind.
All right, that is all from me for today. Thank you so much for stopping by and I’ll be back soon with more geeky content.
