Hello everyone!
I am back with another book review, The Price Guide to the Occult by Leslye Walton. Thanks so much to Penguin Random House for sending me an ARC of this book for an honest review, as always, all opinions are my own.
**This book contains a trigger warning for cutting/self-harm. I won't really touch on it in this review but please proceed with caution.**
The story follows Nor Blackburn, the ninth generation witch in her family who lives in the Pacific Northwest with her grandmother. Generations ago, the originating matriarch of the family, Rona Blackburn cast a spell that cursed all those in her family who followed her, doomed to a love-less tryst with each of the Original Eight settler family lines. Nor, however, wants nothing more than to avoid the family curse that drove her mother to delve into the depths of black magic.
I don't really want to say too much more about this book, largely because I don't think I could do it justice but also because it really is worth reading to get the full story.
Firstly, and most prominently, I want to talk about the writing style of this book. I'd heard good things about the writing of Ava Lavender but I haven't read it, so I was excited to experience Walton's style for the first time. And I have to say, from very early on, I was really drawn into not just the story but the way it was told. Walton has this amazing ability to make a fairly basic scene extremely readable but also almost lush and enticing. I don't know if that makes any sense but if you read the book, maybe you'll understand what I mean.
I was initially a little confused on Nor as a character, I felt like she was a lot older than she actually was. She dropped out of high school and got her GED, so she's still only 17 years old. I definitely envisioned her as a twenty-something. Not that that really matters in the grand scheme of things, but it was just something that tripped me up when I first started reading. I will say, however, that I still really liked Nor's character. I really felt like I could connect with her on a deeper level.
I will say that the ending of this book was a bit weird to me. There were some heavily magic based elements which seemed a bit bizarre, even given the amount of magic in the book up to that point. I felt like the conflict was resolved a little too fast for my tastes and they just felt like a little speed-bump in the life of Nor. I think things could have been fleshed out a bit more there.
Overall, while there were some parts I wasn't a huge fan of, in general, I really enjoyed the story and the writing style.