Overraskende bra mot slutten! Gleder meg til neste boka.. Tror det er en trilogi.

Excellent book! The writing style was potent and engrossing, and the character development was exceptional.

Read this in junior high and I loved it so much. I love anything to do with the Salem witch trials and this was a nice twist to the usual.

It took WAY too long to get to the main conflict and to the ending. It was trying to symbolize how innocents felt in Salem, but it instead provided unnecessary journeys and the only fear that was felt was not about the accusations, but how hard the journey was. It tried to symbolize the fear of the unknown but I have a feeling it did not accomplish that. I did like some parts, but I just feel like the book may not have been long enough to discuss what it wanted to discuss.

1. One of the blurbs on the back cover says it's left up to the reader whether or not Mary is really a witch. Um, no, it's made pretty clear. She has visions. She's not the kind of witch her neighbors think she is, but she definitely has "powers."

2. I was fascinated by the girl on the cover, so I was pretty entertained that in the sequel excerpt, the character who had just "read" the book was pondering who she was also.

3. There is no mystery at all as to where this is going, at least not if you are familiar with any of these: a) American history, b) The Crucible, c) Witch of Blackbird Pond. Which is okay--it certainly heightens the forboding. The story is well told. But since I've both read Miller's masterful play and frequently read WOBP (despite the embarrassingly romance novel-esque cover my Scholastic book edition had) as a kid, it didn't really bring anything new to my world. I can see that for modern tweens, it might be what WOBP was for me, and I have no real quibble with those who rate it higher.

It’s strange to read a book about witches, where the main character is a witch, and to only ever see magic twice (one of those times being 90% through the book).

Witch Child is solidly in the historical genre, and only mildly in paranormal, so if you’re looking for a story about witches, this ain’t it.

The only reason someone would ever want to read the journal of a witch is if there was mention of witchcraft or some cool sorceries. Mary’s journal though, is mostly about her migration to America and settling in a Puritan settlement. I might’ve actually liked the book more if it was classified as historical fiction instead of historical paranormal.

I was kind of angry about this book though. You don’t get to use the format of a journal, but then include conversations and dialogue as if it were in the present. Were she writing a diary, she’d write them in past tense, at the very least. I found the structure of the novel confusing and unrealistic.

At least the writing itself wasn’t terrible... I did enjoy the tone of Witch Child and felt the speech patterns were authentic to the time. It’s probably the only thing that saved this book from a two star rating.