The Witch by Freida McFadden Review: A Little Less Spellbinding Than I Hoped
Between the pages & the shadows
The Witch
Some secrets don’t die—they wait.
An eerie setup, a cute romance, and a mystery that left me wishing for a little more magic.
The official book blurb
Step inside Pemberton…
A brand-new, haunting thriller from Freida McFadden, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Housemaid!
Some secrets don't die―they wait.
When Julia Barlow loses her job and her apartment, she has nowhere left to go but Pemberton, her family's sprawling seventeenth-century estate in rural Massachusetts. Officially, she's there to check in on her aging grandmother. Unofficially, she's hoping the old house will give her a place to disappear.
Instead, Pemberton begins to unravel her.
Every night, the grandfather clock stops at exactly 3:41 a.m. The lights flicker without warning. And a disembodied voice cries for help outside Julia's bedroom door.
As Julia digs into the house's dark history, she uncovers the story of a woman executed for witchcraft in 1692―and realizes the past may not be finished with Pemberton yet. When decades of family lies begin to surface, Julia must confront a terrifying truth: Pemberton may be haunted by women whose voices refuse to stay silent.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden comes The Witch, a chilling, twist-filled thriller about secrets―those we inherit, those we bury, and those people will burn to keep silent.
My thoughts · No spoilers
A little less spellbinding than I hoped
I went into The Witch hoping for something a little spooky. Between the title and the unsettling house setting, I was ready for a thriller with a witchy atmosphere. While the story does have an eerie mystery, it didn’t quite deliver the feeling I was looking for.
Without giving anything away, the direction the story took left me a little underwhelmed. The atmosphere raised expectations that the payoff didn’t fully meet for me, and I wanted that sense of unease to linger a little longer.
I wanted to feel a little more haunted when I turned the last page.
Julia and Henry’s romance was cute, though I had mixed feelings about how it developed. It’s a lighter romantic thread than my usual dark romance reads, but that alone wasn’t the issue—I enjoy thrillers too. I just wanted a little more from both the romance and the mystery.
I really like Freida McFadden’s work, which makes this one a bit of a disappointment. There were elements I enjoyed, but overall, The Witch fell a little flat for me.
3.5 out of 5 stars. A mixed read from an author I’ll happily keep reading—just one that didn’t quite cast the spell I was hoping for.