Mini-Reviews: How to Hang a Witch

I love the month of October. I love when the colors of the leaves change and the promise of cooler weather (the promise of, where I live it doesn’t start to cool down until November), but above all I enjoy October because of Halloween. I usually like to include two mini reviews in the same post but after I started writing one of my mini reviews it turned into a full one, so I’ve only got one for you this time around. If you’re still looking for a Halloween read, this might be the one for you. Cover below is linked to Goodreads.

Title: How to Hang a Witch
Author: Adriana Mather
Series: How to Hang a Witch, #1
Pages: 368
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Release Date: July 26th 2016

      “Salem, Massachusetts is the site of the infamous Witch Trials and the new home of Samantha Mather. Recently transplanted from New York City, Sam is not exactly welcomed with open arms. She is a descendant of Cotton Mather, one of the men responsible for those Trials—and almost immediately, she becomes the enemy of a group of girls who call themselves The Descendants. And guess who their ancestors were?
      If dealing with that wasn’t enough, Sam finds herself face to face with a real, live (well, technically dead) ghost. A handsome, angry ghost who wants Sam to stop touching his stuff.
      Soon Sam discovers she is at the center of a centuries-old curse affecting everyone with ties to the Trials. Sam must come to terms with the ghost and work with The Descendants to stop a deadly cycle that has been going on since the first alleged witch was hanged. If any town should have learned its lesson, it’s Salem. But history may be about to repeat itself.“

“There’s a light creaking of old wood as I approach the burgundy bedroom. I peek inside and flip on the light. The rocking chair moves back and forth. I grab the arm and it stops. I scan the room, but everything’s still.“

Adrian Mather’s debut novel How to Hang a Witch has a rich setting that works really well at bringing the story to life, but at times the novel felt like it dragged. After an accident that leaves her father in a coma, Sam and her stepmother move back to his childhood home of Salem, Massachusetts. It’s hard enough to adjust to this new life without her father, but Sam soon discovers that her family’s history makes her an outcast in this town. Then she discovers that her family may be caught up in a deadly curse and she must find a way to break it before it takes the life of her father. How to Hang a Witch draws a lot of parallels between Sam’s situation and the Salem Witch Trials in the 17th century, sometimes this works to enhance the novel and sometimes the comparison falls flat. Sam herself was a character that I sometimes found frustrating, her bad attitude grated on my nervous. I really liked some of the minor characters, but we only get tiny glimpses of who they are. There is a love triangle of sorts in this novel and one side really didn’t resonate with me, but hopefully this is cleaned up in the next novel.

Rating: 3/5

★★★

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