I received a copy of K.S. Shay‘s Portrait of a Witch Undone from Between the Chapters book club.
Once, Maeve Ryan was the strongest witch of her generation. But Maeve messed up a spell to contact the Lady of the Fens, an eerie Revenant who lures the unwary to their deaths in the brackish marshlands of the North Shore. Maeve destroyed her reputation, hurt her best friend Ash, and tainted herself with unbound, wild magic that transforms witches into insane Revenants.
With unbound power eating away at Maeve’s mind, all she wants is to get rid of her magic. Forever. But Ash’s research into how the spell went awry leads in an unexpected direction: the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and a link between the Lady and a decades-old art theft worth $500 million. When Ash disappears through a stolen painting’s empty frame, Maeve has to follow.
Inside is the Other Marsh, a haunting, deadly realm where only the Lady’s rules apply. Within this half-world lie secrets about North Shore’s history, Maeve’s failure, and the fate of the masterpieces that disappeared over three decades ago. But as Maeve fights toward the truth, she risks her friendship, her coven, and her life against enemies hiding in plain sight.
I’m always a little wary of jumping into a New Adult book. Sometimes they swerve a little too far into the ‘new’ adult and end up feeling YA. I didn’t get that too badly with Portrait of a Witch Undone, though I did a bit. I generally enjoyed it. I really like the main character, Maeve. She had a great ‘never say die’ attitude, even against towering odds. Pretty much everyone else felt a little underdeveloped, though. This isn’t to suggest I didn’t like them, but I never felt I knew them well. This is especially true of the love interest. I saw the romance subplot coming, but I don’t feel it’s particularly well developed. The coven leadership (and their obfuscations) felt similarly anchorless. But the writing itself is lyrical, grounded in place and time to a degree that the atmosphere really comes through, the cast is diverse, and the whole thing wraps up nicely.
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