It’s not easy being a teenage witch. Seventh grader Abby Shepherd is just getting the hang of it when weird stuff starts happening all around her hometown of Willow Cove. Green slime bubbling to life in science class. Giant snakes slithering around the middle school gym. Her best friend suddenly keeping secrets and telling lies.
Things only begin to make sense when a stranger named Miss Winters reveals that Abby isn’t the only young witch in town—and that Willow Cove is home to a secret past that connects them all. Miss Winters, herself a witch, even offers to teach Abby and the others everything she knows about witchcraft.
But as Abby learns more about Miss Winters’ past, she begins to suspect her new mentor is keeping secrets of her own. Can Abby trust her, or does Miss Winters have something wicked planned for the young witches of Willow Cove?
It’s never too early to start planning a Halloween TBR, and THE WITCHES OF WILLOW COVE is the perfect addition! This is the first book in Josh Roberts’s upper-middle grade horror series (also called THE WITCHES OF WILLOW COVE), and I had such a good time with this one! The book actually begins on Halloween night! I feel like I’m always trying (and failing) to match my current reads to the season, so again, if that’s something you like to do, slot this one in for a great October read!
We meet our protagonist, Abby Shepherd, on her fourteenth birthday. It’s Halloween night, and her and her best friend, Robby O’Reilly, are getting dressed for a night of spooky fun in their small Massachusetts hometown, Willow Cove.
And by “spooky fun,” I mean lying to their parents that they’re going trick or treating, and then sneaking around by an abandoned mental hospital…as one does.
It’s on this fateful night that Abby makes an extremely startling discovery: she’s a witch!
And she’s not the only teenage witch in Willow Cove. A small group of girls, all recently fourteen, have discovered their own powers. And a mysterious new substitute teacher, Miss Winters, is determined to bring all these girls together to form a coven.
Whether or not Miss Winters can be trusted is sort of the central mystery of the story, and it’s up to Abby, Robby, and their friends to launch a deep dive investigation into all the strange occurrences in Willow Cove.
There are so many great different relationships in THE WITCHES OF WILLOW COVE, but it’s the friendship between Abby & Robby that’s kind of the beating heart of the novel. As I mentioned, this one falls into the upper middle grade category, so there’s an extremely small focus on things like crushes, first kisses, etc. And so while Abby & Robby’s friendship is unequivocally platonic, there’s some difficult growing pains that they go through as they each develop romantic feelings for other characters in the book. It’s a really neat angle to explore, because it’s never about “will they or won’t they” with Abby & Robby, but they still have to wade through some murky waters to take care of their friendship.
There’s so much lore and history packed into this book, and Roberts connects the history of Willow Cove to the history of Salem, MA in a way that makes Willow Cove seem so real! Abby and her friends basically become The Scoobies, so if you loved those moments on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” when the gang went into full research mode, you’ll love this book!
There’s some real growth these characters go through here over the course of this story, Abby & Robby in particular. There’s some complex family dynamics happening, some traumatic things these kids have gone through.
This is a terrific start to a series! THE WITCHES OF WILLOW COVE does everything you’d want a book one to do: it establishes a really memorable, richly detailed & atmospheric location, it introduces a diverse & distinctive cast of lovable characters, and it functions well as a standalone while laying the groundwork for future stories.
I’m so excited to check out the sequel, THE CURSE OF WILLOW COVE soon!
Grimdark Dad 