In the Thick of the Night

J.A. White is the author of my favorite spooky series, The Thickety.  The series is over and so I was really excited to see Nightbooks!  This did not disappoint!  What a great, great book!  A great idea and White kept the whole thing rolling and exciting and scary and surprising! 

For no really good reason

Witchtown, which I thought was Witch Town made this song stick in my head.  Okay, I mean, This Town and Witch Town do rhyme, so maybe that is a good reason.  But not a really good reason.
I did like Witchtown a lot!  Fans of witches and magic and mean moms will like it, too!  Good cover!

Good News and Bad News, but what can you do?

The Thickety is an outstanding series!
That is good news!
The Last Spell is the last book, I am assuming.
That is bad news!
Because this series didn't go on too long.
But now it is over!
So that is good news and then bad news!
But had it gone on too long, I mean, it would have ended with bad news! So I guess it had to end.
Read from the beginning!

Could Have Been More Excited

How to Hang a Witch was good.  I just thought it wasn't AS good as a lot of the reviewers did.  I mean, this book got really, really good reviews.  I liked the author's note and what she did to show how what happened in Salem during the witch trials and what happens in this book, set today are similar to bullying, but I just didn't LOVE this book.
I also wondered about Danvers and how that all fits into this book.  Oh wait, wait, wait!  I see that Danvers was where the hunt began, but the actual trials and hangings took place in Salem.  Okay!
Adriana Mather reads the book and she did a really great job.  She is actually a Mather-Mather.  And also, there is a W. Cotton Mather here in the North Hills of Pittsburgh who is related to the Cotton Mather who figures prominently in this book.  My friend used to babysit for his kids!  Maybe I was just a little burnt out on Salem or maybe I just thought the love story between Samantha and the ghost guy was a little too much, but I did like the book, and I can recommend it for sure, I just didn't love it!  A lot of people did, though. There is another one coming next year.

THAT was SCARY!

Mary Downing Hahn is someone I would love to meet.  I JUST missed her at the Gaithersburg Book Festival.  I am so mad.  I totally would have gone.  Not that I could have "met" her but just to hear her speak.  Oh man!  Why didn't I look this time LAST week!  I TOTALLY could have gone down there.  The cover of Took is so creepy!  And then when I saw it was MDH, I couldn't believe it!
This has to be one of her best books.  But then I think about all of the others and think, "is there a best MDH book?!"  They are all fantastic!  From the scary like Deep, Dark and Dangerous to the mysterious like Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls to the made-me-think-so-much Stepping on the Cracks, she has to be one of the best authors ever.
Took takes place in West Virginia where Daniel and his family:  mom, dad and little sister, have just moved.  They think they have moved into their house because they chose it, but a witchy woman has chosen it for them.  This book is just....oh...so SCARY!  Just so good.  Just so so so so so so good!

Anticipation

for the Well of Witches, the third book in the Thickety series was well worth it.  I read the first two, A Path Begins and The Whispering Trees when I wasn't writing on here as much.  All I can say is, this is an excellent series.  It really stands up through all three and doesn't feel like "Oh man...another book I have to read."  Great fantasy, even if you aren't a "fantasy person" which I am not.  Scary and creepy good.

Wanda Coven...is that her real name?

Heidi Heckelbeck is a nice kid.  She is.  She isn't a future PTS or someone who would do well with Ivy and Bean.  She just isn't too exciting!  I mean, yes she is a witch- the magical spell kind, like Miri and Rachel.  Heidi is going to school for the first time, she has been homeschooled for K and first grade.  So there is a big adjustment for her.  She faces a bully and in the second book she retaliates by casting a spell upon her bully.  I thought that it was done decently well.  I can see kids really liking this series, so I will recommend it.  I've only read Hedi Heckelbeck has a Secret and Heidi Heckelbeck Casts a Spell, but I wasn't drawn to continuing on like with Keena or Dyamonde.  Still, these were decent!

A Much Needed Pick Me Up

I read Crazy Dangerous and was so down and miserable that I had to pick something that I knew would be funny for my next listen.  The final book in the Magic in Manhattan series by Sarah Mlynowski, Parties and Potions came to mind right away.  I am so glad that I still had this one to read.  I knew it would pick me up and it really did.  I enjoyed this series so much.  Rachel is a huge weenie, but a lovable one!  And honestly, I didn't know what she would decide to do about Raf and Adam.  I could see it going either way.  So this was a wonderful story, although I am sad to see it end, it did end really well.  What a great, great series!  Thank you for the laughter!

You Have to Pick Up Every Stitch

Every. Single. One.  What a strange, strange song.
And Season of the Witch is a very strange book, in a good way.  I really enjoyed this and I have no idea how I ended up finding out about it, but when I saw that Mariah Fredricks, the author of The Girl in the Park, which I loved, had written a new book, I bought it right away on iBooks.  It was even more cool that it was then October and well, that is kind of a witchy time of year.  I also love books about NYC and private schools and all of everything that this book has to offer.  The only thing is...the witchcraft?  Was it real?  Spooky.  Excellent.  In all kinds of ways.

Carnival of Souls! Read the Book! Watch the Movie!

They are totally unrelated, but both Carnival of Souls, the book and Carnival of Souls, the movie are really good!  Both are little hard to figure out at first, for me, anyway, but the pay off is worth it.
The book is set in a totally weird world with witches and daimons and fights and magic and all that jazz.  And I really can't explain it well, so it is good to just click on the link up there and read what others have said.  If you are into dark fantasy for teens, then you will like it, for sure.  It is the first book in a series and the main characters are daimon and witch teenagers.  And there is a little bit of love.  There is a lot of fighting and some dying.  Magic and stuff I usually don't get into, but the book moves quickly and I listened to it and the narrator did a really great job.

Recorded Books Reader

that's me.  I think Recorded Books does a great job with audiobooks.  No one does it better.  I just finished listening to Falling In by one of my favorite authors, Frances O'Roark Dowell.  It was read by Jessica Almasy, one of my favorite narrators.  This was probably one of the reasons why I enjoyed this book so much.  I see it isn't get great reviews, but I loved it.  At first I thought I wouldn't like it because I am so used to Dowell doing these amazing realistic fiction books like Ten Miles Past Normal and Shooting the Moon and here, Falling In is fantasy.  But FI was very realistic fantasy.  I mean, the main character, Isabelle, is a very real kid, who just doesn't seem to fit in with this world.  She accidentally falls into another world, one in which children must hide in the woods from an evil child-eating witch and she finds that she fits in pretty well there.  Great story and well told and well read, too!

Ruth and the Witches

As I mentioned before, What the Witch Left was one of my favorite books when I was growing up.  Today I picked up Witch's Broom to see if it was as awesome, and it was!  As I noted here, Chew passed away in 2010.
Amy's mom finds a broom in the backyard and while it isn't good for sweeping up anything, it is awesome at giving Amy and her friend Jean rides from Brooklyn to Staten Island and elsewhere!  But there's that truly bizarre bluejay that keeps hanging around in the backyard...what's HER deal?
It makes you want to find a magic broom!
The pencil drawings of the witches are creepy, enough to send little shivers up my spine.  Great fun!