The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab

Title: The Near Witch


Author: Victoria Schwab


Published: Hyperion Books, 2011


Pages: 282


Purchase Links:
Book Depository


Summary: The Near Witch is only an old story told to frighten children. 
If the wind calls at night, you must not listen. The wind is lonely, and always looking for company. 

And there are no strangers in the town of Near.

These are the truths that Lexi has heard all her life.

But when an actual stranger—a boy who seems to fade like smoke—appears outside her home on the moor at night, she knows that at least one of these sayings is no longer true.

The next night, the children of Near start disappearing from their beds, and the mysterious boy falls under suspicion. Still, he insists on helping Lexi search for them. Something tells her she can trust him.

As the hunt for the children intensifies, so does Lexi’s need to know—about the witch that just might be more than a bedtime story, about the wind that seems to speak through the walls at night, and about the history of this nameless boy.  (Taken from Goodreads)

Thoughts: After hearing the first few paragraphs of The Near Witch being read I fell in love and became obsessed with it.  Now that I have finally gotten my hands on it and read it I can happily say that I loved it just as much as I knew I would.

Victoria Schwab has this absolutely amazing and poetic writing style and I absolutely loved it.  The writing style weaves into the story this sense of an old fairy tale and it just adds this whole extra layer to the story.

I also really enjoyed the pacing of the novel.  It starts off at a steady pace that kept me interested but then things started getting really intense and suspenseful and I was completely sucked into the story until the very last page.

I found the idea of The Near Witch to be quite creepy.  There was just this sense of foreboding and I felt like if I was reading this book at night time by myself I would be checking over my shoulder every two seconds.  It definitely had a creepy factor.

Then there were the characters.  I absolutely adored Cole, he was mysterious and just really likable.  I liked Lexi too, she was the kind of person who always tried to do what was right and I admired that in her.  The antagonists were really well written too.  They weren’t really bad but they just didn’t understand what they were doing.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed The Near Witch.  The story was captivating, the writing is absolutely beautiful and the cover is gorgeous.  I know that I will definitely be on the lookout for more books by Victoria in the future.

Source: Own copy