#ava morgyn

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Witchy things.

@ avamorgyn

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The Bane Witch by Ava Morgyn

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Bane Witch by Ava Morgyn was a 5/5 star read for me!

I thought the writing was incredibly well done and did a great job of adding atmosphere to a book about a woman named Piers Corbin who has always been drawn to poison—both in plants and dangerous relationships.

After faking her death to escape a violent marriage, Piers moves to the mountains to live with her estranged great-aunt. There, Piers discovers her legacy as a Bane Witch: a woman who can consume deadly plants and eliminate evil men. As she embraces her dark inheritance, working at her aunt’s café and toying with a local sheriff’s interest, she catches the attention of a nearby serial killer. With her past and present closing in, Piers must confront her own nature and the killer before it’s too late.

​This book was a great moody rumination with feminist overtones that didn't feel heavy-handed. Instead, this added to the empowerment of what being a witch is about, which we have learned about from other tales and folklore. The author left me at the edge of my seat enough to keep me turning the pages while still maintaining an atmospheric tale that centered on a unique form of magic.

​I would recommend this to any reader in my life who loves thrillers, mystery, and fantasy.

Pub Date Mar 18 2025

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Resurrection Girls by Ava Morgyn

"'My heart has never been so full and so empty at the same time. I didn't know the human heart could do that, but it can. It can hold two things at once, like two hands.'"

Year Read: 2019

Rating: 3/5

Context: I received a free e-copy through NetGalley from the publishers at Albert Whitman & Company. Trigger warnings: death/child death, suicide attempt, drowning, addiction, overdose, (underage) drug/alcohol abuse, grief, threats, hospitals.

About: When Olivia's little brother drowned in their backyard pool three years ago, her world stopped. Her father stays late every night at work, and her mother has descended into a haze of prescription drugs. It isn't until the Hallas women move in across the street that things change. Kara is the first person to attempt to draw Olivia back into the world of the living. She has a strange hobby of writing letters to men on death row, and Olivia joins her. They call themselves the Resurrection Girls. But the Hallas women are not as they appear, and a shadow looms over Kara, her mother, and her grandmother--a shadow that Olivia knows all too well.

Thoughts: This is a strange and enjoyable novel, and while I didn't love it, I've never read anything else quite like it either, and I'm prone to recommending books on that alone. Its strongest aspect is the unflinching way that it looks at grief after the death of a child and how each of Olivia's family members deals (or fails to deal) with that loss. It's difficult to read about characters who are in so much pain, so if you know that isn't for you, it's better to pass on this book. Their grief is the theme at the heart of the novel, the rest of the plot merely orbiting around it.

And that may be the main issue with Resurrection Girls: the rest of the plot feels like an afterthought. The Hallas women remind me a little of the Hempstocks in a Neil Gaiman book; they're probably witches, but you can only tell if you're looking at them sideways. The magical aspect of the novel is interesting--maybe more interesting than anything else that's happening--but it's under-developed. By the time it comes into play near the end of the book, there's too much weirdness in too short a time without enough explanation. But then, some readers like questions unanswered. I'm even one of them at times, but I wanted I little more to go on earlier in the novel and a little more development of the supernatural aspects at the end. The two sides never quite come together as well as they could.

The characters are fine. Olivia is largely characterized by grief, both hers and her parents’. Lacking other coping mechanisms, she often turns to drugs or sneaking her mom's pills. Her character development overall is good, though, in facing her role in her brother’s death and getting her family members to do the same. I enjoy stories about toxic girl friendships, but Kara is a shadow compared to others of her kind, the Alaska Youngs and Astrid Thorntons of YA fiction. It's never really clear what sets her apart from other rebellious teenagers, and the magical charisma she has works better on the characters than the reader. (There's also a fairly pointless love triangle, if that's a red flag for anyone.) All things considered, it's a fine debut novel. I wouldn’t have reservations about picking up another of Morgyn's books to see how her talent develops.

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Yep.

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