Cover2CoverBlog: Blog Tour: Review -- The Witching Elm by C. N. Crawford

Feb 6, 2015

Blog Tour: Review -- The Witching Elm by C. N. Crawford

Welcome to my tour stop for The Witching Elm by C.N. Crawford. This is a YA dark fantasy and the review tour runs February 2nd-13th. Check out the tour page for more information.

About the Book:

Seventeen-year-old sorcerer Toby Corvin has one desire: to get back to Maremount, a world of talking ravens, ancient spells, and sinister bone wardens. Not only to fight a tyrannical monster, but to reunite with his girlfriend.

There’s only one problem—he’s stuck in downtown Boston.

After a brutal civil war forced Toby into our world, he took refuge in Mather Academy, blending in with the students in the prestigious boarding school. Sheltering in its creaky old walls, he secretly plots to save his home.

But if anything can distract him from his mission, it’s his wild-haired and intriguing classmate Fiona. Of course, she has her own distractions with Jack: rich, mysterious, and annoyingly attractive.

When a ghostly army from Maremount descends upon Boston, Toby and Fiona must work together, racing desperately to stop the slaughter. In the process, they face unspeakable danger while unearthing dark secrets of New England's past—a past that holds the key to saving both worlds from destruction.

Goodreads | Amazon

On sale Feb. 5-11th for only .99 cents!

Rating:

I love books about witchcraft, sorcerers, witches, Salem all of it... I love it. I have even since I could remember and this book surely delivers on all of that in a wonderful dark way. I received this book for the blog tour and waited until the last minute to read it, but that was fine because I blew through it. The plot was strong, quick, and interesting. It kept me engaged at every turn and the characters were just as fun.

In this story we meet Toby, who is a teen sorcerer from a world that exists on another plane near Boston, and he has been sent to Boston for protection from an evil sorcerer who is killing just about everyone. This dark magic, demons, and evil sorcerers permeate the book from the first page, making the story almost fly by as you read to keep up with Toby. While in Boston, Toby attends a boarding school and meets a bunch of other teens who learn about who he is and decide to help him on his mission to get home and save the others. This leads to everything you would expect, more danger, more crazy things happening, and more excitement and point of views to read from.

The only thing that I can say in a critical manner is that, Toby is odd. Obviously he is from another world but I think that his point of view is written a little younger than the others in the book - it may be that since he is from elsewhere there is a culture/time barrier or something, but I always felt while reading his sections (although some of the best and most interesting) that the story was about a much younger teen, and he is supposed to be 17.

Despite this, the story is pretty epic, there are secret societies, secret passages in the school, old legends, and the whole this is interspersed with history from the Boston area - it made for a wonderful book. I am a sucker for a dark fantasy I guess, but I really enjoyed this book.

About the Authors:

C.N. Crawford is not one person but two. Christine (C) grew up in the historic town of Lexington, and has a lifelong interest in New England folklore - with a particular fondness for creepy old cemeteries. Nick (N) spent his childhood reading fantasy and science fiction further north during Vermont’s long winters.

Together they work to incorporate real historical events and figures into contemporary urban fantasy novels.