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A review by jenbsbooks
Once Upon a Witch by Valia Lind
2.5
This was a short read that I had grabbed as a freebie for my Kindle. I needed another "dark" mood for my Storygraph pie chart ... not really sure why this is labeled dark, as it's really just a cozy mystery. As I've been purposely choosing dark/mysterious/tense for the month of October, I guess it's not surprising that this is the third book this month with a MC woman trying to solve a murder with help from the ghost of the victim. The mood does match the cartoon cover ... this felt cartoonish. I really wasn't a fan, and it was a push even at just over 100 pages. 2.5 stars.
Present tense can be written well, but when it isn't, it feels so awkward to me. Here, it was awfully awkward. So much so that my brain would "convert" the sentence to past tense and think "yup, it would have sounded so much more natural that way". There is a place for present tense, and there are times I don't mind it ... maybe don't even notice it! Here, I noticed it in every line.
There were errors ... typos perhaps? "This cat is character" ... I thinking it should have been "This cat is A character"? Is "steer up trouble" a phrase I'm just not familiar with (stir up trouble, yes ...) One of the characters referring to the the dead in the present "Mabel has been a bit under the weather ..." I realize perhaps that mistake could be attributed to the character, except on the next page she uses "had" past tense, so the continuity, or lack thereof, annoyed me. "She even hid Finn and I from trouble ..." my grammatical understanding is to take away the other person, then check to see which works, I or me ... "She even hit I from trouble ..." the sentence "I let my mind wonder" COULD be correct, she is wondering, but I still had to wonder if she meant to let her mind wander? The character's grammar was lacking in places ... which could be part of their character, but with all the other errors, I wonder; for example "... that just finally makes me a real witch, don't it?"
The whole story just seemed elementary and awkward to me, it didn't flow. Starting off in a chaotic situation where magic (it's not known that the MC is a witch) has "melted" a room and the boss says "I understand that you had good intentions, but I do not see how any of this is good." If I walked into a room where paint was melting off the walls and onto everything and saw my employee pushing paint back into a painting ... I think I'd run screaming from the paranormal activity, not calmly say "this isn't good" ... or did she honestly think this was just a strange interior design choice?
Every meeting ... connecting with "Mean Dean" again - Auntie, always calling the MC "sweetie" and "honeypie" and "sugarbun". The woman who has just been killed saying "Someone killed me. You have to find them!" It all just felt, cartoonish, over the top, Hallmark Halloween.
It wasn't much of a mystery, and there wasn't much building of relationships (mostly between the MC and best friend Pennie). Not much romance in this one if one was looking for that. This was just the start of a series, but I won't be continuing on.
I enjoyed [book:Ghost Mortem|51941234] quite a bit more (similar basic premise, cartoon cover, start of a series ... although I probably won't be continuing on with that one either).
Present tense can be written well, but when it isn't, it feels so awkward to me. Here, it was awfully awkward. So much so that my brain would "convert" the sentence to past tense and think "yup, it would have sounded so much more natural that way". There is a place for present tense, and there are times I don't mind it ... maybe don't even notice it! Here, I noticed it in every line.
There were errors ... typos perhaps? "This cat is character" ... I thinking it should have been "This cat is A character"? Is "steer up trouble" a phrase I'm just not familiar with (stir up trouble, yes ...) One of the characters referring to the the dead in the present "Mabel has been a bit under the weather ..." I realize perhaps that mistake could be attributed to the character, except on the next page she uses "had" past tense, so the continuity, or lack thereof, annoyed me. "She even hid Finn and I from trouble ..." my grammatical understanding is to take away the other person, then check to see which works, I or me ... "She even hit I from trouble ..." the sentence "I let my mind wonder" COULD be correct, she is wondering, but I still had to wonder if she meant to let her mind wander? The character's grammar was lacking in places ... which could be part of their character, but with all the other errors, I wonder; for example "... that just finally makes me a real witch, don't it?"
The whole story just seemed elementary and awkward to me, it didn't flow. Starting off in a chaotic situation where magic (it's not known that the MC is a witch) has "melted" a room and the boss says "I understand that you had good intentions, but I do not see how any of this is good." If I walked into a room where paint was melting off the walls and onto everything and saw my employee pushing paint back into a painting ... I think I'd run screaming from the paranormal activity, not calmly say "this isn't good" ... or did she honestly think this was just a strange interior design choice?
Every meeting ... connecting with "Mean Dean" again - Auntie, always calling the MC "sweetie" and "honeypie" and "sugarbun". The woman who has just been killed saying "Someone killed me. You have to find them!" It all just felt, cartoonish, over the top, Hallmark Halloween.
It wasn't much of a mystery, and there wasn't much building of relationships (mostly between the MC and best friend Pennie). Not much romance in this one if one was looking for that. This was just the start of a series, but I won't be continuing on.
I enjoyed [book:Ghost Mortem|51941234] quite a bit more (similar basic premise, cartoon cover, start of a series ... although I probably won't be continuing on with that one either).