A Witch in Winter by Ruth Warburton

Title: A Witch in Winter (Winter Trilogy #1)
Author: Ruth Warburton
Genre: Paranormal Romance, Young Adult
Publisher:  Hodder Children’s Books (5th January 2012)
Blurb:

When love is tangled up in magic, how do you know what’s real?

When Anna meets Seth, it’s magic. But her hidden powers unleash a spell that sparks a war among witches and enslaves Seth’s heart.

Rating: *** (3 stars)

Review:

A Witch in Winter is Ruth Warburton’s debut novel and the first book in her Winter Trilogy. In it we meet Anna Winterson, a teenager who has recently moved from London to the town of Winter into Wicker House.

The book is narrated in the first person from Anna’s point of view. When we first meet her, Anna is resigned to the move from the bright lights of London and everything she’s ever known to the town of Winter. What she sees doesn’t impress her too much, but she is desperate to fit in and not stick out. Things don’t quite go to plan. In Winter, Warburton captures the feeling of an English town – it could be anywhere along the English coast, as there is a timeless and placelessness about it. She also brilliantly captures the feeling of displacement Anna feels from the move from London to Winter.

Anna is an interesting main character. She is close to her father – which I love, there really should be more father/daughter love in YA books – and very level-headed and incredibly stubborn. I loved the relationship between Anna and her dad. Having Anna as the narrator of the book was a good choice on Warburton’s part as it makes Anna instantly relatable, but it does mean that as a reader we only know what Anna does which at times I found frustrating – I’m hoping that as this is the first book in a trilogy some of my questions will be answered in later books.

Until the move to Winter Anna’s life has been pretty normal, apart from the disappearance of her mother. Upon her arrival in Winter things change as Anna doesn’t know she’s anything but normal. The spell Anna casts is the fulcrum of all the events of A Witch in Winter, and it is a neat exploration of the idea of how can you know if someone truly, genuinely, loves you if you’ve put a love spell on them? I kind of feel for Seth in this, because whether or not it is from the spell Anna casts he does love her. I can totally understand Anna’s point of view, but there were points when I just wanted to hug Seth because he tries so damn hard.

A Witch in Winter is a great start to the Winter Trilogy and I’m looking forward to reading the second book, A Witch in Love which came out in July. If you are a fan of witches then this is definitely a book to check out, as how Warburton handles her witches is quite interesting. This is also a book to check out if you’re a fan of paranormal romance and want something a little different.