A review by caughtbetweenpages
The Near Witch by V.E. Schwab, V.E. Schwab

medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I was pretty tremendously underwhelmed with this book, which is a shame because my batting average with Schwab is usually great. I'll chalk this up to Victoria being Really Quite Young when she wrote this book, and it being her debut novel, but it really is baffling to me that we go from this to Vicious (which is a masterpiece). My main problem with this story lies in the pacing. The Near Witch felt exhaustingly circular mainly because the same basic thing happened on a loop throughout the entire storyline: our protagonist, Lexi, feels stifled by the sexist traditions of her small village, goes into the woods (they're a metaphor for self determination and freedom, I'll give you that one for free), and then just as she's on the cusp of figuring out something important, she's drawn back to the village. Sometimes, there's a boy that goes with her. Sometimes, she has to sneak past her overbearing uncle. But that loop is literally the entire plot. While some repetition could have been used to great effect given the fairytale-esque vibes of the story (the dark wood, witches on the periphery of town, children going missing from their beds while the town sleeps...), it just happened far too often and in such a way that it seemed like we were just trying to take a story that really only had the meat in it to fill a novella and beef it up into a full length novel. 

I could see bits and pieces in here of who Schwab becomes as an author--their penchant for writing Outsiders getting In, and women who buck up against gender expectations, definitely are planted in this story, and the short story of The Ashborn Boy that's included at the end of this edition of this book is actually really great and demonstrates that she was capable even then of writing compelling character motivations and doing tight plotting--I just don't know that this book is quite there yet.
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