Getting Lost in Winterwood: A Book Review
Covers
Winterwood by Shea Ernshaw is one of the few Owlcrate books I've received, so the cover is white and not black like the regular edition (and has blue sprayed edges). I find both versions are equally beautiful; perhaps the black one lends a more forbidding and mysterious sense since it's like being out in the dead of night under the moon amid eerie bare trees. The white edition is more neutral and focuses on the beauty of the cover art. It's like the Owlcrate version of The Bone Houses where they changed it from black to white, removing some of the scariness from the cover.
Show your support for books and reading.
Summary
Nora Walker is part of a line of witches who each have a unique power. Her mother could communicate with bees, for example. Nora looks up to her grandmother whom she saw as being brave and powerful. Despite her mother's rule that they should not practice any magic, Nora sneakily reads her grandmother's book when her mother's away for her job.
One winter, Nora finds a boy in the merciless Wicker Woods who ran away from the camp across the lake from her cabin. She can't understand why the Woods didn't kill him? As Nora helps Oliver, a bone moth appears around her periodically, making her fear for her impending death.
Trigger Warnings: Alcoholism, Bullying, Drowning, Hazing, Kidnapping, Murder, Death.
-- Spoilers --
 |
| Photo by brandon siu on Unsplash |
What I Liked
Prologue
In a succinct manner, the author hooks readers with a one-page prologue. The delivery is as sharp and blunt as the scene it depicts since winter arrives forcefully in one night: "The electricity flickered like Morse code. The temperature dropped so fast that trees cracked down their centers..." Readers can easily hear the trees groaning, felt the bitter cold and have that intriguing and foreboding sense when the author writes, "A boy went missing the night of the storm [...] Stuck in the rugged heart of the wilderness. We just didn't know for how long. Or that we wouldn't all make it out alive."
Setting
The settings are limited to Nora's house, the lake, the forest the graveyard and towards the end, the Jackjaw Camp for Wayward Boys on the other side of the lake. With few locations and it being winter, readers get a cozy feeling whenever the characters are inside. We get a contrast between Nora's warm home and the ice-cold scenes in the graveyard, forest, and lake. Additionally, with the roads blocked to the outside world, there's also a sense of isolation where anarchy and desperation can take over.
Nora's Relationship with Her Mother
Their relationship is relatable as so many children grow up to be disappointments in their parents' eyes merely because their children don't measure up to the parents' standards. Nora wants to know the family history and her rightful heritage, but her mother has always wanted to be normal, so she never talks about it and hides away the family grimoire, but Nora knows where it is and will use it when her mother is away. Ironically, her mother uses her power for her job since she's a single parent living in a remote place. Both of them feel betrayed by the other. Nora got along so much more with her grandmother and she is her role model throughout the book while the mother is absent due to the storm and blocked roads.
This book is similar to Circe by Madeline Miller where the protagonist witch comes into her power despite the efforts of their parent, but in this case, it's contemporary YA romance without graphic violence.
 |
| Photo by Henrik L. on Unsplash |
And Then There Were None Vibes
Because of the storm, the lake area is physically closed off from the rest of the world, giving it the atmosphere of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None where her characters were stuck on an island with an unknown serial killer. Nora and her pet, Finn, are in one cabin, her grandmother's friend and neighbor is in another cabin, and on the other side of the lake is the camp for boys. There is no electricity or internet.
Along with the isolation, Nora doesn't know if she can trust Oliver, a strange boy that the woods didn't kill, Suzy Torrez, a girl she knows from school who spreads rumors about her and is Rhett's girlfriend and lastly, the few troublemakers from the camp who are Rhett, Jasper, and Lin.
Between the rumors of a dead boy and the appearance of the bone moth that signifies death, which Nora takes to be her own, the tension in this book is high, but is tempered with a coziness, as I mentioned above.
Villain Origin Story
On social media in recent years, people have started using the phrase, "my villain original story" and many retellings have come to light for villains in fairy tales (Disney especially), old movies (like Wicked), etc., as a way to give them a voice and back story. As someone who enjoys breaking down stories and analyzing them, I enjoyed when Oliver brought this up:
And without a place to call home—to call my own—I don't have anything to lose. No one to disappoint. No reason to fear what might come next. I'm on my own. And in books, those with nothing to lose often become the villain. This is how their story begins—with loss and sadness that quickly turns into anger and spite and no turning back (90).
With his parents dead and his uncle dumping him at the camp, Oliver is dealing with grief and isolation. He is also bullied by the boys at the camp and, with his scrambled and Swiss-cheesed memories, he feels guilty for causing someone's death. Despite thinking he's a villain, Oliver's heart isn't in it. In his search for identity and where his place is, Oliver brands himself this based on his actions, but his memories aren't reliable until the very end.
Time Travel
Many stories can't pull off an ending that resets everything, whether it's through dreaming or time-travelling. For me, I think of X-men: Days of Future Past and I'm a bit peeved because it renders the first trilogy as pointless and a waste of time. Winterwood has an ending similar to this, but it's a satisfactory one where I felt a sense of relief and where justice was done.
 |
| Photo by Timo Vijn on Unsplash |
What I Didn't Like
Title
I'm still stumped about the title. I understand that the book takes place during the winter and we're in the woods in various scenes, but aside from that, the title doesn't make sense. It's not the name of the woods; they're the "Wicker Woods" and the location is "Fir Haven." And none of the characters have the last name of "Winterwood," so why not call the book "Winter Woods" or "The Wicker Woods"?
Ghosts
People have different ideas about ghosts since some people don't believe in them while others do and globally, we're still not sure how ghosts or supernatural energy manifests and exists. With this in mind, some readers like myself will find it odd that Oliver is able to feel solid to Nora, so much so that he's able to save her life when she falls through the lake's ice surface. Most books and movies I read and saw growing up always say or show that ghosts are energy and cannot become solid. However, moving or picking up solid objects are possible, like in Book 5 of the Ghost Twins series, the twins had to focus all their energy on holding or moving objects; it would drain them very quickly. In other stories, ghosts aren't aware that they're dead, but they are still energy, such as Reese Witherspoon's character in Just Like Heaven when she suddenly appears in the apartment, thinking the current occupant is an intruder and she can't pick up the phone because she's in limbo.
All of this is to say that I felt the author was stretching the possibility that a ghost can have no memory of being dead, and so with this belief, remain in a solid state. It was because Oliver was acting completely normal throughout the book that I didn't even think that he was a ghost until we're brought to the conclusion near the end.
 |
| Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash |
Conclusion
The atmosphere and settings throughout the book were excellent. The inclusion of Nora's family members provided good backstory. The characters felt fleshed out. I enjoyed the novel while I was reading it and the book itself is gorgeous, but it's not a read I need to return to. I will consider reading other work by Shea Ernshaw.
Show your support for books and reading.
Check out more reviews in my library.
I have a freelance business where I offer editing, beta reading and ARC reading for mysteries, historical fiction and fantasy stories. Email me about your project at smurphy.writer1@gmail.com.
Happy reading and writing!
Comments