The Mystery of the Marsh Malaise

Wonky Inn, Book 5

By: Jeannie Wycherley

Narrated by: Kim Bretton

Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

Water, water everywhere...but not a drop to drink.

Alfhild Daemonne's beloved Speckled Wood is dying.

Worse, Mr Hoo is sick!

In fact, several Whittlecombe villagers are seriously ill, and the problem appears to be with the water.

Alf must appeal to the magickal Keeper of the Marsh, an ancient tree named Vance for help. But he’s not happy about being poisoned and she’s going to have to mollify him.

Which won’t be easy.

The villagers are blaming her too, but the wonky inn owner knows full well her bitter arch-rivals The Mori are out to do serious harm to her reputation, her business, and the land she cherishes. Alf’s had enough. A showdown with The Mori is on the cards.

It’s time for "nice" Alf, to become "nasty" Alf.

Is she up to it? Can Alf become a lean, mean, witchy-fighting machine?

Only if she stops eating cake.

Find out what Alf does next in this action-packed instalment of the wonky inn series, full to bursting with the ghosts, witches, wizards, warlocks, and weirdness you’ve come to adore.

Clean and cozy witch mystery with subtle hints of darkness.

©2019 Jeannie Wycherley (P)2020 Jeannie Wycherley

A glimpse of the dark side

With Alf’s fiancé missing, she goes all in on finding out what has happened to him. Is he even still alive? The Spotted Wood is dying & people are falling ill all around. Alf knows that something is amiss & soon it’s revealed that the village’s entire water supply has been poisoned. As her search for answers continue to come up empty, Alf resorts to desperate measures by hiring a powerful witch from the dark side for help. It’s soon evident that the Mori are responsible. The story is fast moving with some interesting twists. The usual characters make this such a compelling series & I must admit to becoming addicted.

Was this written by the same author?

I tore through the first 4 books on audible, loving both the stories and the narrator. The narrator is still great on this one... but this story is...ugh... boring. I'm struggling to finish it. It started out pretty good, with the mysterious necromancer, who Alf hires to help her find George. But this water poisoning plot is so boring! All the descriptions of nature- it just slogs on and on.

Disjointed Story and Odd Character Shifts

I actually had to take a break from this and return to finish. This story felt disjointed in a way that none of the others in the series have so far. Alf is desperate to find her boyfriend George who was kidnapped by the Mori and the over arching large scale attempts to destroy Alf and her Wonky Inn are going full throttle in this story. In fact so full throttle I was beginning to get a little tired of the fact that at any moment the local town sounds constantly ready to stone Alf (and I mean literally stone her). The story jumps around as Alf is trying to amass a team to find George and destroy the Mori plot even starting to dabble in darker magic. Throughout this we definitely see a shift in Alf starting to dance far more into morally ambiguous territory than ever before and convincing others of her team to join her. I will also say the ending of this story and some of Alf's choices and her nonchalance about these decisions that were based on assumptions made without any investigation or inquiry felt rushed and off putting to me and very hand waved in a manner that seemed more like the author wanted to shift certain dynamics and characters on the board of this world and didn't want to bother to work it out more organically. This was definitely the first time I have finished a volume of Wonky Inn that I felt glad to be done and thankful there are no more available on Audible at the moment, which is a little sad as until this point I was so smitten with the world and characters in it. I am not against characters evolving and struggling with where their emotions push them but the entirety of this volume felt more slap dash and scattered so this shift in character felt less intentional and more incidental. I don't know if this volume was a one off and things will return to their regular style in the next book (I know there are 14 in the series via Kindle, but there are as of January 2022 only 5 available on Audible currently). Again I am sure some might like this style of writing but I found it a little disappointing.