Review: The Witch of Willow Sound – Vanessa F. Penney

Genre: (cozy) horror

Published: ECW Press, September 2025

My rating: 3.5/5 stars

I was originally drawn to this novel based on both its stunning woodland-gothic cover, and it’s comp-title comparing it to Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea. Although it took me a little time to recover from the whiplash of the wrong expectations that set me up with, I still ended up enjoying this for what it was.

The Story:

Madeline Luck is a witch: everyone in the isolated village of Great Tea knows this. They invent bizarre lore around here, blame her for all their misfortunes and stay away from her remote cabin in the forest on the outskirts of town. When Madeline goes missing, her estranged niece Fade travels out to this close-knit community in order to investigate the disappearance. What she finds is a legacy of witchcraft, hardship and family lost and found.

What I liked:

The Witch of Willow Sound opens with one of the strongest prologues I’ve read in a long time; a tense and truly dark scene of a witch-burning in a Nova-Scotian small town, witnessed by our narrator from the shadows. I was on the edge of my seat and immediately hooked. Was I finally in for the truly dark witchcraft story I’ve been looking for?

Then, in chapter 1, we switch narrator, timeline and tone drastically. Everything after the prologue feels much younger and more whimsical, almost bordering on “cozy horror”. It took a bit of readjusting, but I ended up loving this vibe, and the atmosphere and setting became some of my favourite elements of the story. The town of Great Tea feels overwhelmingly whimsical and magical, and yet below this cottage-core beauty lies a foundation of generational trauma and darkness. The author never allows us to forget about that dissonance and does an amazing job with sustaining the sense of unease that comes from that.

The same cozy-with-a-dark-aftertaste-vibe comes through in the magic-system. Without going into spoilers, the book covers tea-magic and memory-spells; both of which with a strong bittersweet aftertaste.

The author mentions in her afterword that she took inspiration from real life Nova Scotian towns and their folklore/history, and it shows: Great Tea felt like a world that’s alive and breathing beyond the pages of the story.

What I didn’t like:

As hinted at before, expectation-management is important, especially for a debut author, and I don’t think The Witch of Willow Sound does itself any favours here. The prologue being so different from the rest of the story in tone, might set some readers up with the wrong expectations, or come off as the novel being “confused about its tone”. The same can be said for the comparison to Our Wives Under the Sea in the tagline, which I genuinely don’t understand. I often disagree with certain comps, but in this case I genuinely cannot think of a single similarity between the two books. I almost question whether the person that came up with that line has even read either book, or if Witch of Willow Sound may have been going for a completely different tone originally.

The feeling that the book isn’t quite sure what it wants to be cropped up a few other times too, specifically in regard to the writing. At times it leans into the Shirley-Jackson-gothic, only to flip to a piece of dialogue that reminds me of T-Kingfisher’s comedy-horror. I love both these authors and styles, but I don’t love the flipflopping between them.

On a more subjective level, it was the dialogue and the way our protagonists voice was written that hindered my enjoyment the most. Fade is supposed to be a 30-something-year old, but her hotheadedness, quasi-witty banter and edgy snark in the most inopportune situations made her read far younger (more like YA). Then there was the cringe of how she swears every couple of pages, but self-censors by using the world “frig”. Awkward the first time, and got only worse from there.

A final writing-quirk that irked me was the overabundant use of onomatopoeia. Once you notice it, you cannot unsee the fact that they are EVERYWHERE. Your milage may vary with these, but when every page contains at least one or two instances click click, creeeeaaaak or shhh,shhh, I feel like I’m reading a toddlers read-aloud book…

Overall a mixed bag that I enjoyed overall, but had some room for improvement. I will definitely follow what this author does in the future.

Many thanks to ECW Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

You can find this book here on Goodreads.