The Honey Witch

I picked up Sydney J. Shields' The Honey Witch earlier this summer. It sounded like an interesting, more cozy fantasy, which was appealing: I haven't been interested in grand quests and fate of the world scenarios lately. 

The Honey Witch follows Marigold, in a Regency-era/style story. Marigold is different from everyone else and doesn't feel like she fits in. Rather than dress up and attend balls, she wants to be running around in the woods and visiting spirits that no one else can see. But when her grandmother unexpectedly visits and tells her that Marigold, like all the first-born daughters of their family, is a honey witch, Marigold accompanies her grandmother back to the isle of Innisfree. She takes to her new life immediately, having no interest in a husband at all (Marigold even disdains other women who choose such a life for themselves, though her grandmother immediately disproves of her thoughts when she shares them out loud). But after her grandmother's passing, Marigold slowly grows lonelier and lonelier until an old friend of hers comes for a visit with his friend, Lottie Burke. Marigold finds Lottie impossible yet incredibly attractive. But her family was cursed by an ash witch to not know any love. Yet she finds herself thinking of and longing for Lottie all the more. 

While I thought the premise of The Honey Witch was intriguing enough, I found the book to be rather predicable and often boring. I predicted most of what happened (from fairly early on), including Lottie's heritage and who August's soulmate would be. About the only thing I think I got wrong was that the weird fortune teller at one point in the book wasn't actually the main antagonist of the book, but was in fact a random weird fortune teller who had no further bearing on the book (and honestly, in hindsight the fortune teller's inclusion seems rather weird since Marigold was constantly seeing omens in the world around her - why would she need her fortune read?) Marigold and Lottie's relationship was slow and boring in very stereotypical ways ("she can't possibly love me because of the curse!" and "I must keep her away because this is harming her!" kind of ways). The world building was confusing at times (I'm not 100% sure what a honey witch can do vs what an ash witch can do because honey witches could heal but ash witches can raise the dead somehow? Also ash is apparently the opposite of honey? That never really made sense to me). Oh and the curse itself seemed weird - Lottie seemed quite capable of loving Marigold, she just got hurt in doing so, but I thought the curse was that the honey witches couldn't be loved? In the end it seemed like they weren't capable of having a soul mate, but that's not really what the curse was supposed to be at the beginning of the book.

I'm sad that The Honey Witch didn't live up to my expectations. :(