There are a number of things that lead me to downloading this book on my Kindle. 

One, it was a supernatural book, based in England, based on witches and based on young people. As someone writing a book of a similar genre, I was intrigued to see how it had been done and wanted to make sure my somewhat similar themed novel was completely and utterly different (it is, woo). 

Two, it had some good reviews on both Goodreads and Amazon, so I figured it was a safe bet. 

Three... well I can't remember a third reason. I'm sure there was one, but it's slipped my mind.

If I'm being honest, I just did not get on with this book. And I'm a little baffled by all the raving reviews. It started off okay. I found the description too heavy. It seemed like it was trying to hard, with the author throwing so many adjectives into a single sentence. My head felt like it was going to explode from all the visuals being forced into my imagination.

"...and then followed us into the green shadows of the wood, swooping in our wake along the leafy, curving tunnel, until we burst out in the stark sunlight of the cliff road."

It's a nice sentence and that and maybe I'm being overly picky. Maybe I simply don't appreciate the poetic nature of this description, but to me, it was a little over the top. Especially when she was simply describing her drive to school. I don't know. I didn't like it. When I'm reading a book, I like the description to flow with such fluidity, I am picturing it without barely even remembering I'm reading. It plays like a movie in my head. But the whole time I was reading this book, I was so very aware that I was reading, if that makes any sense.

Then we have the characters. Okay, I didn't have that many issues with the lead, Anna. She was perfectly fine. I didn't really care for her though. Which I don't think is a good thing. There were times when she annoyed me, which again isn't a good thing when she's the narrator. Mostly, she was okay. But that's as far as it went. She wasn't particularly unlikeable. But she wasn't someone I could relate to. I wasn't particularly bothered about what happened to her.

Then we have Seth, who falls madly in love with our leading lady within the first thirty pages or something equally as absurd. I know that was part of the plot. I know it was a spell, yada, yada, yada, but it was irritating. His speech was unbelievable, as I may have ranted about in another post recently. I'm sorry, but seventeen year old guys don't talk like that. Trust me, they don't. I liked his character, but every time he came out with a ridiculous, sappy sentence, I face palmed. 

Talking of speech, Warburton has this habit of making her characters say words twice. It happened a lot. I know that people sometimes do that when speaking, but in written form, it was kind of annoying. If it was once or twice, that's fine. But these characters were constantly repeating words and it killed the flow. Again.

The story was adequate. I didn't love it. I didn't hate it. It was interesting enough to make me finish the book, but not interesting enough to make me buy the second book in the series. Although that is also because I read the synopsis and thought, yeah, I can't be bothered with that. One thing that really aggravates me is when a character switches back and forth over whether they can trust 'the love of their life'. Especially when they are adamant that they can and just like that (because the plot apparently needs it), they can't trust them and call it off and are absolutely heartbroken and... no. I can't be dealing with that. At least, not when I barely have any interest in the characters, I can't bear the speech patterns and the book was hardly holding my attention in the first place.

If you are willing to overlook the bad speech and gazillion adjectives, you might enjoy this book. Like I said, the plot isn't bad. For me, there was too many issues to contend with to make it an enjoyable read. When an author describes blood as being 'sticky' and 'crusted', at the same time, it bugs me. It's like they just didn't think. If blood is sticky, it's still wet. If it's crusted, it's dried. So which is it?! I'm confused. 

And I don't like to be confused.