Witch for Hire by N.E. Conneely
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

What I enjoyed about Witch for Hire was the storytelling. It’s an imaginative piece of speculative fiction with a decent plot at its backbone. The author has a nice touch with world-building, letting us get to know the realm of the tale, bit by bit, without any info dumping. The book begins well, right in the middle of the action, and gives the reader clues as they go along to help them understand both the world of the story and the thoughts and feelings of the main character.

What didn’t work for me was the writing itself. The author is a good story teller, but many times I felt that I was fighting writing style to get to the story. Commas are often used in place of conjunctions, which makes it a choppy read. Redundancies are frequent. For example, the following sentence: “Without a doubt I wasn’t suited to scary, life and death situations, where my life is in peril.” Redundancies occur in other ways. The MC often repeats the same reflections, or explains the same event in detail to multiple characters. Pace sometimes gets boggy when the main characters inner reflections and opinions on life steal too much focus from the tale. The MC sometimes seems preachy because of this. Dialogue tags become important, as most characters seem to have the same voice.

I enjoyed reading the book. While it’s a trope I have read before, the writer’s ideas and imagination bring it life. That said, I do not plan to read more in the series. I would like to give the author a few more books under their belt before reading more of their work.

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