Witch 13 by Patrick Delaney

I’ve been on a NetGalley binge again!

By that I mean I’m trying to improve my percentage just so that I can be approved for the new Ottessa Moshfegh book. That’s the only reason.

But this sounded pretty good

And I was excited enough to request it from not my netgalley accounts. I was also approved from both netgalley accounts, so that publisher should hate me now!

Details

This is, I think, Patrick R. Delaneys 5th book! While I think I was also NetGalley approved for Silvers Hollow, this is the first book of his I’ve read!

Witch 13 will come out on the 3rd of May, 2022 and is published by Oblivion Publishing! I’m including the Amazon links to all of Patrick Delaney‘s books and Witch 13 down below! Witch 13 and the rest of Patrick Delaney’s books are also available on Kindle Unlimited.

Review

I really wanted to like this! And it started off oh so good! It was haunting and magical, and then turned into a thing with a woman with a pointy hat in a police station.

I mean no matter how you describe it, some part of you can imagine how ridiculous that would look!

I’m not normally someone who needs to give a trigger warning, but there is a violent, suicidal scene I will allude to and I will mention some of the ways people die in. It’s a three star book for me if this is where you’d like to stop reading! There is also general violence and sexual assault in the book.

Anyway, the main, Sterling had an awful relationship with her mother because what cop has a good relationships with their family. She’s slept with her partner once, whose wife slaps her in the face early on in the book! That’s where it started going down!

As soon as the accident happens and they rescue a catatonic man they find out the government really wants that guy. Now, ordinarily, I would imagine, because who really knows anything about the justice system in the US, they would need to take that guy to a hospital because a completely silent man after an accident could also man trauma or injury right?

No, they lock him up in a cell.

Then, Sterling is told to go answer a distress call from her partners wife. She doesn’t tell him. The witch, it is implied, makes the woman jump off and hang herself. Sterling doesn’t tell him this when she comes back with the witch. Sterling needs him to be at his best game because they’re cut off from the rest of the world at that point.

I really hope I never get a boss or team member like Sterling. Do you see why I thought this book was weird?

Now Chase, the partner is in the police station with his son, Max, who is a cute kid. Chase, of course, doesn’t believe that this is a real witch until stuff really starts happening, and they all start to die off in messed up ways.

In all of this we also see the witch kill another child and we think she wants Max. The silent man also slowly starts to come out of his shell and we see that he knows what she’s about. He tries to e warn them. No one listens.

Now I’m going to stop the recap before I spoil everything and get to the point

The book was disappointing. It starts out perfectly and then you don’t really care if any of the characters live or die. I’m glad Delaney didn’t end it at the most typical spot, but I don’t know if I like the ending at all. We got into fairytales and magic wands at some point! I just feel like this could have been done better!

I also feel like some of the tense change was a bit off at times! But I think that if you’re reading it super quickly you won’t care. It’s not a deep read book at all. If I had paid money for this, it would be one star less I feel!

Love the cover though! And it was a light read, and very easy to get through!

Did you read the book? Let me know what you thought about it in the comments below!

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On the eve of her resignation, Sheriff Sterling Marsh prepares for a bleak winter in Drybell, Connecticut, after a string of bad decisions leaves her life in shambles. Two weeks before Christmas and expecting a long night of paperwork and quiet celebration with the friends she’s grown to know and love, she’s surprised when an unnerving stranger appears in the form of a witch.

A silent, menacing figure, the witch appears to be ripped straight out of a fairy tale, complete with a tall, pointed hat, and black clothing. But when strange things begin happening all over town, Sterling begins to suspect that there may be more to the witch than meets the eye.

As she works to maintain order as the world crumbles around her, the witch’s mysterious presence throws her world into a frenzy, threatening to send the sleepy town spiraling face-first into the darkest night it’s ever seen.