Book Review: The Witch's Daughter by Paula Brackston

Book Synopsis from Good Reads

My name is Elizabeth Anne Hawksmith, and my age is three hundred and eighty-four years. If you will listen, I will tell you a tale of witches. A tale of magic and love and loss. A story of how simple ignorance breeds fear, and how deadly that fear can be. Let me tell you what it means to be a witch.

In the spring of 1628, the Witchfinder of Wessex finds himself a true Witch. As Bess Hawksmith watches her mother swing from the Hanging Tree she knows that only one man can save her from the same fate: the Warlock Gideon Masters. Secluded at his cottage, Gideon instructs Bess, awakening formidable powers she didn’t know she had. She couldn’t have foreseen that even now, centuries later, he would be hunting her across time, determined to claim payment for saving her life.

In present-day England, Elizabeth has built a quiet life. She has spent the centuries in solitude, moving from place to place, surviving plagues, wars, and the heartbreak that comes with immortality. Her loneliness comes to an abrupt end when she is befriended by a teenage girl called Tegan. Against her better judgment, Elizabeth opens her heart to Tegan and begins teaching her the ways of the Hedge Witch. But will she be able to stand against Gideon—who will stop at nothing to reclaim her soul—in order to protect the girl who has become the daughter she never had?


My review at Good Reads

3 out of 5 stars

It wasn’t a bad book, but a long book. There were many shorter stories within the longer story and at places the book plodded along with detail that wasn’t really necessary. It took me a week and a half to read the 400+ page book, which is longer than usual for me. That means it was a book I could put down for a while and even skip a day of reading. Not my usual reading style, especially if it’s a book I like.

I really did enjoy that for the most part the book wasn’t predictable; however some points in the foundation stories were almost Forrest Gump incredible. There are only so many great or notorious world events you can take part in before it loses credibility and destroys the story. The Witch’s Daughter did not go as over the top as Gump, but it flirted with that fiasco. I really did enjoy that by less than half way through the book I didn’t trust any of the supporting characters and that mistrust lasted until the end of the book.

The book is written as a series of stories and journal entries written by the main character and I still wasn’t sure as the last journal entry started if it was being written by a “good guy” until the very last page. I liked the fact that of the several possible endings I predicted while reading, none of them were the case and still, the ending was exciting and credible within the story.