Reviewed by girlinthepages on
The world of These Witches Don't Burn divides witches into three categories: Caster Witches, Elemental Witches, and Blood Witches. Hannah, the protagonist, comes from a family of Elementals who are part of a fairly good sized coven in town. I think the author did a great job with the world building, and I enjoyed learning not only about the type of magic witches could do, but the rules around witches who are still coming of age and when they could learn certain types of magic (it reminded me a bit of the original Sabrina the Teenage Witch).
The story starts off normal enough for a YA paranormal teen novel: some of the teens are witches and must hide their powers from their "Reg" friends, while balancing relationship drama, part time jobs, and navigating the high school social hierarchy. However, things start getting spiced up when dark magic and rituals start appearing around town and of course our protagonist and co. start investigating, as fictional teens do. I was surprised by how high the stakes and tension felt- there'd be one "incident" that I'd barely recover from and then another one would happen right away- it was almost action scene after action scene that made it hard to put the book down and definitely kept me engaged enough to want to read the sequel. Despite the "culprit" not being that hard to spot, the journey to Hannah and her friends discovering who was behind everything was still entertaining and took some twists that I did not expect.
There's also a lot of diversity in this story, which is great. There's a lot of different types of relationships highlighted, as well as diversity in religion (Wicca is mentioned quite a bit, both through characters who are casual practitioners and those who are seriously involved with it) and even diversity in the types of witches and an examination of the prejudices and stereotypes that were held in this fictional magic system. I also really liked how the author explored and explained a bit about Wicca through Hannah's boss who is an avid practitioner, and how Hannah doesn't discount Wiccan magic just because it's practiced by Regs- rather it's just a different kind of magic.
Overall: These Witches Don't Burn is a refreshing, modern take on a witch story with a lot of diversity that feels very natural and many twists and cliffhangers. However, I do feel like more could have been done with the Salem setting to feel more atmospheric and I didn't feel overly invested in the characters (especially Hannah, she felt like a rather typical YA protagonist to me who happened to have powers). Overall though I did enjoy my reading experience and look forward to the sequel!This review was originally posted on Girl in the Pages
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- 21 December, 2018: Reviewed