How To Hang A Witch by Adriana Mather | Review

4/5 Ribbons

I read this book as a buddy read with Megan @ Bookslayerreads. You can find her review of the book on her lovely blog.

Have you ever asked yourself how to hang a witch? Well, this book by Adriana Mather gives you a wonderful guide how to go about it.

Throughout the book, we accompany Samantha (Sam) Mather on her journey towards happiness. We meet her at a very hard time in her life: her father is in coma and doesn’t seem to wake up. Because the hospital bills are so high, they have to sell their NYC apartment and trade it for a little town called Salem and a house that belongs to the Mather family for ages.

The Salem people are into witches and everything magical and spooky. Their history goes back to the early Witch trials and descendants for those hanged still live in town. Some of them are in Sam’s school and try to make her life a living hell. But why?

Everybody in this town is so mean to her but one person, Jaxon her neighbor, because her ancestors were somehow involved in the Trials. Nobody will tell her anything about her supposed involvement and soon, people start to die all around her. And who are the angry and suspicious townspeople  blaming? Sam of course. But somehow, she realizes there is a pattern to those deaths and only she can overcome the curse that seems to have befallen the town.

I just loved the characters and how well they worked together ( or not) to prevent more people from dying. Even though it took me quite some time to connect with Sam, I rotted for her in the end. I felt that in the beginning, the characters seemed really flat, and they kind of stayed that way, but I didn’t mind as much as the story progressed.

The writing was a bit jerky at times and the chapters were quite short but I got used to it pretty quickly.

All kind of things turned out to be so unexpected and I really couldn’t connect everything until at last, the secret was revealed and I realized I had been following a totally false lead.  It kind of bugged me that everybody was so horrible to Sam but she was brave and strong and in the end, she got rewarded for her bravery.

At an early point on, I got suspicious of everyone myself and it was really a fun and engaging read. The ending was wonderful and I had the hangover-ish feeling after closing the book. How To Hang A Witch really got me thinking about the characters and the story for some days after I had finished.

I really enjoyed the story and I can really recommend it to everyone. If you like witch stories or not, this one is definitely worth a try!