Author: E. Latimer
Publication Date: 3 March, 2020
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Page Count: 384
Reading Method: Digital ARC
Synopsis:
Seventeen-year-old Dayna Walsh is struggling to cope with her somatic OCD; the aftermath of being outed as bisexual in her conservative Irish town; and the return of her long-absent mother, who barely seems like a parent. But all that really matters to her is ascending and finally, finally becoming a full witch-plans that are complicated when another coven, rumored to have a sordid history with black magic, arrives in town with premonitions of death. Dayna immediately finds herself at odds with the bewitchingly frustrating Meiner King, the granddaughter of their coven leader.
And then a witch turns up murdered at a local sacred site, along with the blood symbol of the Butcher of Manchester-an infamous serial killer whose trail has long gone cold. The killer’s motives are enmeshed in a complex web of witches and gods, and Dayna and Meiner soon find themselves at the center of it all. If they don’t stop the Butcher, one of them will be next.
Review:
I don’t know why but this book took me forever to get through. Not one to DNF, I casually put this one on pause for a few months. Every time I tried to get back into it, I would get distracted by something else.
I think one of the things that made it difficult for me to get into this one is just the sheer number of characters and names that are thrown at us very early on. The story follows two covens coming together to find and defeat a notorious serial killer. The premise is incredibly intriguing, but with two covens come a lot of witches who all have names that are hard to keep sorted in my pea sized brain. Add in the names of the gods and murders and all the side characters… I was lost for a majority of the story.
I will say I really enjoyed the idea of the story and I think it did all come together in the end. It was just a struggle for me to get there.
You can purchase a copy of Witches of Ash and Ruin here (amazon) or here (book depository)
Learn more about E. Latimer here
