Nora is rumoured to be a witch. As one of the Walker women, she shares their special connection to the woods. It is there that she finds a boy who went missing during the most recent snowstorm, the harshest one there was in years. Oliver Huntsman has disappeared from the nearby camp for Wayward Boys. Oliver should have died but there he is, alive, and without memory of what has happened. Nora tends to him but what she doesn’t know is the secret Oliver is hiding from her.
Her fears seem to be confirmed when she learns Oliver wasn’t the only person who went missing on that night. Nora takes it upon herself to find out the truth and so she embarks on an adventure in this dark fairy-tale.
Winterwood is a novel that mixes the folklore with some romance. The story of Walker family has been fascinating and intriguing, it is imaginative. Unfortunately, the plot itself did not receive as much attention.
The book is prolonged to a ridiculous extent. Generally, it would be regarded as a rather short/average length book, counting 323 pages, but there was so much repetition. The dialogue, especially the internal one, continued to appear repeatedly. On top of that, the author’s tendency to use the same word in triplicate was frustrating, frustrating, frustrating. There was no need to have this book longer than 150 pages. The story could be told in that amount and it would have worked much more efficiently.
Nora was a well created character, a teenager one could relate to, but there wasn’t a differentiation between herself and Oliver. They read the same, if not for the name change on the chapter page, I would not be able to differentiate who is meant to be talking, that was a disappointment. It felt like writing mistake, and a big one at that.
I think it is clear to say that I did not particularly enjoy this read. It felt like just that, a read. I could not get immersed in the story and was looking forward to finishing it just to get it over the line with.
Have you read Winterwood? What did you think? Let me know down in the comment section!
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