The Witches of BlackBrook

By: Tish Thawer

Narrated by: Michelle Marie

Through space and time, sisters entwined. Lost then found, souls remain bound.

Three sisters escape the Salem witch trials when the eldest casts a spell that hurtles their souls forward through time. After centuries separated, fate has finally reunited them in the present day.

One the healer, one the teacher, and one the deceiver.

Will their reunion return their full powers, or end their soul's journey forever?

A Witches of BlackBrook novel.

©2015 Tish Thawer (P)2016 Tish Thawer

Poorly Written, Poorly Read!

While the premise of the book has great potential, it seems to be written by someone with limited writing skill that occasionally throws in a large word to prove she knows a few. The audio reader is horrible and even uses the wrong word, or mispronounces even some of the simpler words. At one point the story and reader were so bad I literally had to stop the audio book because I was laughing so hard I didn't get what they were saying.

The story is that of three sister witches who are cast into multiple reincarnated lives and must find each other through time while battling unseen forces. It switches between the witch trials and current time, only to throw in a few random years. More than once the story literally repeats itself verbatim for a few paragraphs. The "romance" that is thrown in, is often little more than a chance to be explicit enough about sex to interest middle school girls. It would have made for a stronger feminist story to have left that out. At times it seems as if the author knows much about Wicca, but then she occasionally makes mistakes, leaving the reader to wonder. One of the dates she gives, that of the small pox vaccine, is off by many years. One can only assume that she is writing for children who would either not know such things, or not care to look it up.

This is the first in a two series book, with the second book leaving things hanging for a third. Overall, if you can get past the cheesy writing and bad reading, it is an acceptable storyline. Sad, because this book produces on of the best feminist lines ever, “We are the granddaughters of the witches you weren’t able to burn.”

Story was good

The narrator wasn’t my favorite but I found myself thinking of the story until I finished it.

Wow. A Fantastic start to the Series.

What did you love best about The Witches of BlackBrook?

What I loved best about The Witches of BlackBrook is the way the author, Tish Thawer, wove together the past and the present to create a thrilling story. The story flowed seamlessly through the twists and turns.

Any additional comments?

The narrator, Michelle Marie, did a wonderful job bringing to life these characters and connecting me to them. I look forward to checking out other works by her.

Short and sweet

This audiobook was okay. I didn’t really felt engaged or connected to the characters as much. For some reason they felt like helpless characters. I wasn’t a fan of the narrator but to each is own. Could have been more detailed in the story all throughout. More detailed interactions with the characters. It was a lot of typical dialogue. No one really had a sense of personality though. Typical. Great story. I really was interested in the flashbacks. Loved the way they would do the spells, open their third eyes and what not. Nothing seemed like it was fabricated or anything as far as them doing spells.

Narrated with southern accent, mispronunciations

The first thing I noticed was that the narration was super distracting due to the reader's (southern?) accent. Several common words were also mispronounced, adding to the distraction. One example: pestle as in "pestle and mortar," which is mentioned multiple times as it's a story about witchcraft and grinding herbs for spells. But there were several others.
Perhaps more importantly, though. was the bad grammar! It's fine when it's not perfect in dialogue, because characters say things all sorts of ways; but in the omniscient view, grammar needs to be perfect or close to it. Bad writing, or bad editing?! I guess both.
Both issues above brought my attention to a screeching halt multiple times during what was an otherwise seemingly decent storyline. I like a mystery, so trying to figure out who the truly good/bad characters were was what kept me listening to the end - despite the distractions.
The characters remained static and two-dimensional, however, and that was disappointing. I'd hoped for some growth.
Probably wouldn't recommend, and won't waste credits on the next titles in the series, especially if I see they're read by the same narrator. Just not my cup of tea!