Winterwood by Shea Ernshaw is a mixed bag. There’s a lot of different things happening-our protagonist Nora is a witch with no powers, there’s a forest that is alive and scary but also has some cool trinkets hidden about, a camp across the lake for wayward boys, a massive snowstorm, a missing person, a wolf pet….it goes on.
Nora doesn’t have any friends, so she is suspicious when a popular girl from school, Suzy, shows up at her house begging her to stay with her until the storm passes. She’d been up canoodling with one of the wayward boys when the storm hit and now she’s trapped. Nora reluctantly agrees, even though she already has a house guest: a boy from the camp she found half-dead in the woods.
It felt a bit slow at the start, but it picks up the pace about half way through and that’s when all hell breaks loose. Ernshaw did a great job with this book, at first so many random things felt confusing but by the end it’s all tied together nicely and in a way that I did not find predictable. She got me with this one! It’s difficult to write about this book and avoid spoilers, so I’ll make it short and simple. A lot happens, sometimes it’s a little boring, but it’s all worth it in the end. Read it.
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