Review: Island Witch

Island Witch by Amanda Jayatissa
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley and Berkley for the pre-release copy of this novel. Below you'll find my honest review.

I really liked the story in this one. It was an interesting setting, an interesting cast, and a really cool way to learn about another culture through a tale involving their beliefs, mythologies, and religious practices.

But it did have some downfalls. Namely, all of the twists are predictable. I knew every reveal before it happened, and it was obvious leading up to it. In addition, the use of words specific to their language is really neat, but the constant "here's a word, here's the definition" got a little distracting. And the main character's non-stop "my dad is treating me differently, what happened to make this change, etc" got very repetitive when it was in almost every chapter for over half of the book.

It did have a strong protagonist, which I liked, and while the definitions did become tedious, I did like that the author put in actual words and historical references that were really part of history. I also loved that the story was about a part of the world and a history that we don't have a lot of published novels about. I'm really happy to see more diverse stories being published to share those things with the world of readers.

All in all, I really enjoyed it, but felt like it needed some tweaking.

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