The real Whitby with the Abbey perched on the hill (a major featuring location!)Ī minor point that bugged me was a consistent flipping between characters names. The novel starts with such promise, but by the end I was speed reading towards the conclusion. The direction of the plot and the surprise reveals of ‘who’ characters really were also obvious from the very first few chapters. Characters occasionally make uncharacteristic choices – self-proclaimed gossipy old ladies choosing to confront danger alone and directly, rather than gathering together their gaggle of friends to declare what they’ve discovered and revel in the attention.
There are quite a few scenes that feel forced and really short, quite obvious that they are there to serve the plot, and I feel Jarvis could have weaved in the detail you squeeze from them more intelligently (something he is capable of doing, as he shows in other parts of the book). The book gets weaker as you get further in, as Jarvis tries to shoehorn in more and more plot points. And there are little gems of micro-detail throughout the book which really stood out against some of the larger sweeping plot points. Speaking of dunking, the very first page contains one of my very favorite introductory descriptions of a character: “A delicious shudder ran down her spine as she sank her small, irregular teeth into a chocolate digestive.” Who likes extraneous detail like this to set a scene? This gal.
The Whitby Witches with an actual Whitby Abbey backdrop – oh yeah.
You do truly (especially in the first few pages of this book) feel like you’ve been dunked right into it, as Jarvis is very skilled with his descriptive language. It even has a map of Whitby on the inside, and speaking as someone who road-tripped with friends to the town myself very recently, the description of Whitby seems to be accurate to the very last cobblestone. Giving a nod to Whitby’s head monster-in-resident as far as mythology goes, Count Dracula, it is red, black and white and features some gorgeous illustrations of the waves. She needs this sharpness in spades as her friends start to die mysteriously, and the town that she knows and loves starts to crumble under a dark force.įirstly, I have to give props to Rohan Eason, the designer of this particular edition of the book. Two orphans are suddenly re-routed to Whitby to stay with Miss Boston – a spritely 90-something year old who walks up the famous 199 steps every day to keep her mind and body active. The Whitby Witches is a book about courage, history and magic.
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