A Lullaby for Witches by Hester Fox

Title: A Lullaby for Witches

Author: Hester Fox

Series: n/a

Unfocused story, bad “historical fiction,” meh characters

I would like to thank Hester Fox, Harlequin, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a free ARC in exchange for an honest review. Also thank you to Justine Sha for inviting me to participate in the blog tour.

This is a long one, so grab a snack and settle in.

I tried to convince myself I liked this book, because in theory it had everything I typically like, but truth is reading it was a chore. It wasn’t so bad that I had to resort to a DNF, but I don’t know if I’d have finished it if I wasn’t obligated to review it for the tour.

Foremost, this story wanted to be and do too much at once. It’s classified by the publisher as historical fiction—more on that in a moment—but it was far more focused on present day. There were also elements of women’s fiction, romance, fantasy, mystery, and sometimes there was a gothic flavor, but ultimately it failed to settle into any of those. Not that a story has to tunnel vision on one genre, but it can be tricky to balance tone and elements of different genres and form a cohesive narrative. When there are too many genres, there’s too much story, and that means not all story threads will receive the attention they deserve, and the story will end up feeling unfocused, unsatisfying, and perhaps even unresolved, as this one did.

The historical fiction plot was lame. Forget delving into the time period or exploring known notable figures, forget casting spells or brandishing power or anything magicky and fantastical and interesting, no, it consisted of a vain and selfish witch-girl whining about the fact that she got involved with the village player and, oh damn, he done played her. The shock. The horror. You have a witch near Salem, Massachusetts, and you give her the pitiful plot you could give any teenage girl in any century? Didn’t even set it in the right century to best utilize the witch aspect. Lamented a woman’s limited power over her own life, which is hardly news or unique of that time, and that was about it.

I despised both Margaret and Jack (the witch-girl and her player) and had no sympathy for either of them. Additionally, Margaret’s thoughts didn’t make much sense to me: She was a cat in heat for Jack and wanted a baby; marriage didn’t seem to enter her mind in the beginning, so I assumed that wasn’t part of her goals. Then suddenly she’s pregnant and like, um, where’s my ring, Jack? Maybe I’m supposed to assume she simply expected him to marry her, but she definitely came off as the type to not care about formalities. It didn’t quite add up. And sure Jack claimed in the end that he truly loved Margaret but boo-hoo his hands were tied—don’t even. All his problems were caused by his inability to keep it in his pants. He was as selfish, arrogant, and entitled as Margaret.

But you want to know what really didn’t make sense about Margaret? She knew all the dirt on everyone. She literally had a ledger in which she wrote down the gossip and secrets she received as barter for her witchery. Yet she didn’t know Jack was betrothed? Had been for YEARS? Am I supposed to believe she never asked anyone what they knew about him? Margaret just thought that because he was forking her that she knew all she needed to know? What a stupid dillweed. Never considered anything but what she wanted in any given moment. If that was Fox’s way of making the villain sympathetic—yikes.

The fates of Margaret and Jack weren’t satisfactorily concluded. We didn’t find out what happened to their spirits. They were just conveniently POOF gone. Poorly written all the way around. And don’t get me started on how unnecessary Henry was.

As for present day, Augusta wasn’t nearly as grating a character as Margaret, but I can’t say I liked her much. She was at the center of the genre mess; Fox wanted her to have a huge personal empowerment journey, a conflict with her parents, a romance, solve a few mysteries, be haunted, and discover latent witch powers, and none of those arcs or threads were well developed. Because it was TOO MUCH. Her witch powers were only vaguely present at a couple ex-machina moments, she didn’t really seem to grow much as a person—except precisely when she needed a boost of inner strength *eye roll*. She and Leo had chemistry but were lazily ascribed insta-love, especially on his part, and her research into the mysteries just wasn’t thorough or intriguing enough to be satisfying. Actually she cheated; instead of discovering new information for herself, she learned almost everything from visions Margaret’s spirit induced. Margaret literally put all the clues in front of Augusta. Lame, lame, lame.

And all that business with Chris felt shoe-horned in—did the narrative really need the conflict of an abusive boyfriend? He really didn’t seem all that bad. I mean, obviously his showing up half drunk at her work was inappropriate, even after hours, and shoving her was definitely assault, but before that he was just kinda sulky and moody and self-involved; not a great person, and one I wouldn’t tolerate as a boyfriend, but he was hardly manipulative and abusive and horrible. I didn’t buy what Fox was trying to sell regarding him. To me it felt like he knew he wasn’t a great boyfriend and was trying to do better but not really succeeding.

Some random things that either didn’t make sense to me or irritated me:

The narrative hinted at Augusta having an eating disorder but I don’t think it was ever actually acknowledged, much less battled and conquered, which I found strange. Speaking of, what sealed my disinterest, if not dislike, for Augusta was the fact that she not only refused to eat chocolate cake but planned to throw it away. That is not a character I could root for or care about. Not joking. If you can’t get over yourself long enough to enjoy the occasional piece of chocolate cake, bought for you by your concerned crush to lift your spirits no less, then I don’t like you. Also you need help. If not for the blog tour, that would have been the moment at which I stopped reading.

The title was very forcibly made relevant. I hate when books do that. I’d rather have a silly or cheesy title that knows exactly what it is than a seemingly tasteful, intriguing one that’s misleading. The only thing worse is when the title literally has no meaning, nothing to do with the story whatsoever, purely for marketability.

The use of “CV” instead of “resume.” It’s possible a job in a museum, even a little historical house museum, is one of the few jobs in America that requires a comprehensive account of all your education, achievements, certificates, and publications—god, it sounds horribly pretentious—but you can’t just throw an uncommon term out there without explanation or acknowledgment and expect it to not distract readers. It confused the hell out of me, for one—I was just reading along, then see “CV” and immediately wondered what the hell I missed—is the character from the UK? Did the setting switch to the UK and I wasn’t paying attention? Why the hell is a term pretty much exclusive to the UK in use? Oh, the copyeditor just failed to do their job. Gotcha. I suppose I can hope it was edited for the final.

So Augusta doesn’t have a car to begin with, doesn’t need one, then she gets a job that’s farther away and Chris gifts her a used one to save her time (the narrative tried to twist his intention as manipulating her into having more time to spend with him *eye roll*. Giving her a car to make her life easier really didn’t seem all that evil to me). And she just starts driving. But hold on a second—does she even know how to drive? Does she have a driver’s education, license? I don’t remember the story saying (apologies if it did); she just POOF starts driving one day, and I was like, Um . . . There’s a little more to it than that.

One thing that really drove me nuts—why in the world would Ida have her own letters? That’s not how letters work. Perhaps she asked for them back from George to keep as keepsakes, provided he saved her letters, but then where are the ones he wrote to her in response? Wouldn’t she have kept those, too? It made absolutely zero sense.

So at one point Leo suggests Augusta check out the Boston site to see if she could find any information there in the archives. Good idea, except he offers to drive her. His office is at the Boston site, he only travels to Harlowe House in Tynemouth a couple days a week. So . . . he drove the hour—maybe it was only a half hour each way, wasn’t clear—to Tynemouth on a day he didn’t have to, picked her up, drove back to Boston, then drove her back to Tynemouth and drove himself back home to Boston? Holy Jesus, WHY? This was after she had a car, so she could have just met him in Boston. What a horrible waste of time and gas on his part. Maybe it was a day he needed to do some work in Tynemouth anyway, the story didn’t say, but that would have been no less impractical.

Lastly, there was a point where Augusta “hallucinated” a scene with George as if she were Margaret. I have no idea why it was included. It accomplished nothing new and confused the timeline, because it occurred after Margaret had gone to Boston and supposedly seen George for the last time. If the scene took place before that, like if it was just one of Margaret’s memories, it didn’t say.

All right, I’m done tearing this book a new one. Overall, it was a hot mess of genres and un- or poorly developed characters and plots. What’s extra frustrating is that Fox could probably write a damn good book if her story wasn’t a mess. As I said, in theory I should like what she tried to do here; I’m curious enough that I plan to check out some of her other work and see if this was just anomalously horrible execution.

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