Witches of Ash and Ruin

Modern witchcraft blends with ancient Celtic mythology in an epic clash of witches and gods, perfect for fans of V.E. Schwab's Shades of Magic trilogy and A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES.
Seventeen-year-old Dayna Walsh is struggling to cope with her somatic OCD; the aftermath of being outed as bisexual in her conservative Irish town; and the return of her long-absent mother, who barely seems like a parent. But all that really matters to her is ascending and finally, finally becoming a full witch-plans that are complicated when another coven, rumored to have a sordid history with black magic, arrives in town with premonitions of death. Dayna immediately finds herself at odds with the bewitchingly frustrating Meiner King, the granddaughter of their coven leader.
And then a witch turns up murdered at a local sacred site, along with the blood symbol of the Butcher of Manchester-an infamous serial killer whose trail has long gone cold. The killer's motives are enmeshed in a complex web of witches and gods, and Dayna and Meiner soon find themselves at the center of it all. If they don't stop the Butcher, one of them will be next.
With razor-sharp prose and achingly real characters, E. Latimer crafts a sweeping, mesmerizing story of dark magic and brutal mythology set against a backdrop of contemporary Ireland that's impossible to put down.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown Books for an eARC in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. Quotes are taken from an unfinished version and may differ from the final product.

Based on all the good, witchy books that are coming out this year, 2020 seems to be year of the witches.

And you know what? I’m digging it. I’m 100% in favor of this. More witchy things! More magic! More blood! More sacrifice! Obviously, that’s what immediately attracted me to this book, because who can resist witches + Celtic mythology + a protagonist with OCD? It’s just such a winning combination.

Witches of Ash and Ruin is full of dark, witchy goodness, with roots in Celtic mythology, lots of spells being cast, and a serial killer running rampant. I came for the mythology, stayed for the mystery.

I had such a hard time rating this one, because the book felt vastly different between the first 35% or so and then the rest of the book. The beginning dragged for me. There were some dark elements that definitely grabbed my attention, but I struggled to connect and get into the story and it took me, like, a week to hit the 35% mark. Around there, though, it grabbed me so hard that I couldn’t put it down and read the rest in one day. How do you rate that?! I dunno. Three bananas, a horseshoe, and half a lollipop. There you go. That’s my rating. *throws hands up and walks away*

What my rating really boils down to is this has been published and marketed seemingly as a standalone, and it really … isn’t. Or needs to not be.

As part of a series? I’d raise my rating to four stars. If, at some point, it’s announced that more books are coming out, I’ll amend my rating. But as a standalone? I’m gonna call it at three stars.

❧ Here, there are witches, my lovelies!

Let’s be honest, that’s really what I showed up for, in large part, because … witches. But honestly, it’s so much more than witches, and there’s this weird/interesting interplay between witches and Celtic gods and goddesses, which I just loved and thought was interesting. And these witches are unapologetically witchy. Glorgiously witchy. There’s also all the warm, bubbly feels that come with a coven of strong women who have each other’s back, and I enjoyed that dynamic very much.

What I thought was really interesting was the intersection between witches and Catholicism, since a lot of the goddesses the witches worship have become saints in the Catholic church. Also, Catholicism and witches kind of … don’t mix. Historically. But also in this book. The book is set in a very Catholic town, with Dayna having ties to the church, even, through her father and friends, which, ha, complicates things, as you might imagine.

If you’re familiar with Celtic mythology, you might recognize some of these names. If not, you won’t learn a whole lot about the mythology, but you’ll get a place to start researching.

The Celtic mythology was a big selling point for me, and I was a little disappointed with the fact that it wasn’t really explored all that much. Yes, there were Celtic goddesses mentioned and worshiped and prayed to (and spell chants are in what I assume was Gaelic), but they were basically just name-dropped, and they could’ve been called anything else and it wouldn’t have really changed anything.

❧ Latimer does a great job of creating a dark, sinister atmosphere that fits the serial killer vibe perfectly.

I will always show up for serial killer books, because I like dark, gritty works, and this is no exception. The foreshadowing, while a bit on the nose at times, did a great job of creating a tense, charged feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop. And boy did it ever.

It took a little while for the mystery to really get under way, but by the time the first kill was made, I was hooked.

This book isn’t a murder mystery, per se, but there are quite a few mysteries in it. Who the murderer is, is not a mystery, as he has a point of view. However, his motive and how it connects to witches and, in particular, this coven unfolds little by little, and I was eager to find out more with every new development.

❧ There is all sorts of representation in this book for mental health problems, and I appreciated that.

Both the protagonist and the love interest have OCD, and we often get to see both panic attacks and coping mechanisms. One is also on medication and the other not, so that brings up some discussion about treatment choices (hint: both are perfectly acceptable, as long as the person is comfortable with their decision).

More than that, though, there’s also some psychosis (not in a positive light, and not handled well by the characters, but there’s a reason for this that’s critical to the plot), and dementia. The dementia is the one that got me, as a caregiver for someone with dementia. Especially seeing how different Grandma King was becoming and how much it affected her personality. I could definitely relate to Meiner’s struggle as she watched her fierce, strong grandmother deteriorate, and the occasional frustration that comes along with it.

❧ The magic in this was exciting and unique, and I loved seeing the rituals and how spells were performed.

There’s altars and ascensions and scrying! You know, among the regular witchy stuff like reading tea leaves and tarot, which don’t require any “real” power. This book delivers on the witchiness, is what I’m trying to say. There’s covens and power struggles and pledging gods and dark magic.

I loved all the different forms the magic took, from lower witches, to pledging to gods, to some pretty freaking potent spells.

This was really the highlight of the book for me, because I loved seeing the rituals and the spells. How accurate were they compared to modern witchcraft? I have no idea. I have a few friends who are witches, and none of them have read this book, so … ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I’m the wrong person for this question. I enjoyed the peek into a practice that I’m not a part of, though, and the fantasy elements it takes on.

❧ There’s an F/F romance, and while it didn’t fully work for me the way it played out, I can see it being a draw for some people.

This was really a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, it felt like the romance was being primed for an enemies-to-lovers trope, but it felt … off. The enemies part was well founded, and then all of a sudden … they weren’t anymore. It was like flipping a switch, for no discernible reason. The little things that came up as conflicts to their relationship were swept under the rug and just brushed aside as not that big of a deal, and maybe they weren’t. I just wasn’t feeling the connection, though.

That being said … I think it was just a case of not having proper time for the romance to develop for me. Because goodness knows I love my slow burns, especially with hate-to-love.

I can see how this would be an awesome pairing, and I’m certain some people will like it. Heck, I would be all for it if the circumstances were slightly different. I just didn’t feel like there was enough time for it to actually develop.

❧ I don’t know if this book is supposed to be a series, but nowhere is it marketed as or claimed to be a series. But really, this is book one of a series.

Any reservations I had about a four-star rating immediately dropped by the time I hit the ending and realized nothing was resolved, and I was leaving the book with more questions than I entered it with.

In every way, this reads as a first book in a series, including not actually wrapping anything up AND with a cliffhanger ending.

I’ve tried to Google things, and I’m not seeing anything saying this is definitely going to be a series. It’s not listed as a series, as far as I can tell, anywhere. But this book? Screams of first book in a trilogy. It does not work as a standalone, in my opinion. In fact, the ending very intentionally opens up a whole new arc and potential plot for a second book, so … color me confused?

❧ I just … didn’t connect to any of these characters. I think it was because there were so many of them, and I spent most of the time trying to remember who was who.

There are FIVE point-of-view characters, one of whom completely disappears at the end (but that’s a completely different complaint). Each point-of-view character obviously comes with their own case of side characters. For Dayna and Meiner, in particular, it’s their covens. Plus then all the little side characters that inhabit this world. It was … a lot. Even by the end, I had no idea who was who within the coven, other than Reagan and Yemi.

I’m not against large ensemble casts, but each of them needs to be unique and memorable for me to be able to tell them apart, and that just didn’t happen here.

All the witches of the coven felt a little like they blended together, and the same with the side characters. They just didn’t stand out in my mind. Case in point: it took me 30% into the book to even realize Yemi was Nigerian. Since the book was set in Ireland, I just assumed her and her daughter, Reagan, were black Irish. They kept using the term “abi,” though, and I was like … that’s Yoruban, right? But okay, maybe it means something in Gaelic, too. But then, 30% in, Yemi uses “wahala,” and I’m like, I know that’s Yoruban, and that caught me out of nowhere, and I had to go back and try to see if I’d missed something. Turns out, it was the page after that which she mentions being from Nigeria. I felt like I knew the character so little, though, that I was blindsided by this fact a third of the way into the book. On the other hand … kudos to the author on making the character recognizably Nigerian!

❧ This book suffered from trying to do too many things all at once, in my opinion.

This book was ambitious, and I have to say that I don’t think it fully pulled it off. It tried to do a lot, and I enjoyed most of it, but I kept getting lost in places, and I think it was because it just wasn’t as cohesive as it could have been. Remember, there are five points of view, and since these are rounded characters, they’re each facing more than just the immediate Butcher problems. Which means each of the five characters have other subplots going on.

Just a sample of all the myriad of things the book tries to tackle (the ones I can say without actually giving any spoilers away):

✿ School drama and Dayna’s bisexuality.
✿ Power struggle and politics within Meiner’s coven.
✿ Secrets within the covens.
✿ Not a love triangle, but a love rectangle.
✿ A serial killer with a purpose.
✿ Multiple murders.
✿ Celtic mythology.
✿ Learning witchcraft and spells.
✿ Blood family vs. found family.
✿ A large, convoluted plot involving goddesses.
✿ Witchcraft vs. the church vs. homosexuality.
✿ Dayna’s family life struggles.
✿ OCD struggles.
✿ Sam’s research into serial killers.

This is one of those cases of Jack of all trades, master of none. Some of these are powerful, important topics, but adding all of them diluted the ability to really delve into any one of them.

❧ I have soooo many freaking questions still. I don’t even know where to start.

This goes back to the fact that this doesn’t work as a standalone. But more than that, the plot was so convoluted and ambitious that I’m not sure it fully made the connections it intended to. I had to run to a friend when I finished it to make sure I understood and hadn’t missed something. On some things, she helped. On others, I think we confused each other more than anything? And we ended with a resounding … well, who knows?

There’s a lot of foreshadowing in this book, which I loved, but it left a lot of things hanging, at the same time, that were just hinted at and not explained.

This may not bother some people, but I really wanted an explanation, darn it. I want the vindication that my assumptions are correct. I don’t need things spelled out, but I don’t want this many loose threads blowing in the wind still. If this is a series? Fine. Because I assume these threads will get woven in eventually. But again, it seems like it’s being pushed as a standalone right now?

Assuming you can pledge to any god anywhere (which … isn’t how this works, but go with me here), if you were an ascending witch, which god would you pledge to?!