A woman on the hunt for her missing sister and the magic, mystery, and friends found along the way.
I am so grateful to have won an Amazon Kindle version of this book through Goodreads Giveaways! These are my own completely honest thoughts and opinions.
Vaguely similar to the tale of Persephone. A young woman (who is typically portrayed in some relation to Spring) is kidnapped by a generally nefarious character (usually the ruler of somewhere dark and mysterious) and the desperate search to find her before ‘insert potential doom here.’
Warning: Possible Spoiler alert!
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Winter Harvester by Nik DeKasha
Publication date: April 2020
Pages: 162
Genre: Contemporary fantasy, Paranormal, Mystery, Urban Fantasy
Series: Book 1 of 2: Other Magic Series
First line: In a stone-walled cell that sweated in the dank heat of deep earth, a woman lay curled up in a loose ball.
Winter is determined to find her sister. She’s sure that something has happened and that Verna never would have left this way but.. she can’t seem to get her family to take it seriously. After a kind neighbor befriends her, and Winnie spills their family’s supernatural origins, she begins to feel like she might actually have a shot at finding her lost sister.
You see, these four siblings each represent a season in the year.
Winnie: Winter. Verna: Spring. Meri: as Summer. And Autumn: for Fall.
With Verna’s disappearance, Spring has been cancelled, throwing the world’s balance into disarray. But this unusual family aren’t the only ones suffering.. Unpredictable weather and failed crops have humanity struggling from the chaos.
Their mother, Brooke, the embodiment of water, is temperamental and larger than life. She’s decided Verna has just run off, and no one is interested in arguing with her, making Winnie’s job harder.. since Brooke may be the only one who can find Verna.
Against all odds, her new friend, Nina, brings out a more tolerant and friendly side of Winnie’s mother. A side she’s never seen. And, after appealing to her maternal instincts, knowing what may be happening to her child, Brooke agrees to use her incredible power over water to search her out.
What she finds changes everything.
Three Stars
Nina chuckled. “Unreal. I mean, you couldn’t write this stuff.”
About the book:
Winter knows her sister is missing.. but trying to explain that to her family is another matter.
No one seems to believe Verna has been taken. They assume she must have wandered off, after all, it’s just like her to do so. But Verna’s absence is effecting more than just her family. The natural balance of the seasons has been thrown into chaos and the villagers also suffer from her absence.
Overall:
There’s nothing inherently wrong with the book.. it just feels like very little happens (enough so that it kept me from really getting absorbed in the story.) There’s not a lot of forward motion in the storyline at all.
I did find the relationship between Winnie and her mother to be highly amusing, mostly because I understand how contentious the dynamics in a relationship with such a headstrong parent can be, especially between women.
And, Nina? She was the most interesting thing in the book. I spent more time formulating scenarios about her intentions, questioning her her every action, and assuming she was the real evil to watch.. All because she was too nice. She seemed to appear at a convenient time, accept the circumstances rather easily, and was far too helpful to be for real.
Besides that.. it wasn’t bad but it also wasn’t all that exciting
Liked: The magic was interesting, the writing good, and the potential for a fantastic story was there. I liked what the author was going for but.. I wanted more. The afterlife created here was also pretty intriguing but, again, I wanted more of it. And a pattern emerges.
I enjoyed how family oriented Winnie was, she was driven to find her sister and, even though they weren’t very supportive of her determination in finding Verna, family remained an important theme throughout.
Nina was either the most adaptable and accepting person alive, and Winnie hit the jackpot with her new friend, or she was the most terrifyingly skilled actress ever. I spent the book teetering between ‘Go, Nina!’ and ‘There’s no way anyone is that nice.’
I found the interactions between the missing ‘Verna’ and her kidnapper entertaining, as well. (The weirdest captor ever, and the weirdest arguments ever, had me laughing out loud.)
Disliked: There was an almost complete lack of forward momentum. I found myself waiting for something to happen.. and I kept waiting.. and waiting. So much could have been done to give this story more substance and, it’s slightly frustrating, I’ll have to really consider whether I read the next books in the series.
30% in: still discussing how to even begin their search.
Bored
65% in: they found her! Sort of. But how to get to her? With no planning or preparation, that’s how!
Still Bored.
I feel like everything interesting that happened did so in the last few chapters and, urgh! That really bothers me. And it was interesting.. just ask ‘Tod,’ the opposition. Tod? Really? That’s one of the least intimidating names for a ‘bad guy’ ever.
Would I recommend this book? Yes. As a first book in a series I think it has the potential to develop into something great. Was I blown away? No. Do I plan to read the other books in the series? Eh.. maybe.
Which do you prefer:
A slow story that has killer characters or a brilliant story with unlikeable characters?
Lovely review Sheri! Oh and congrats on the win too!🙂
Thank you! I still get so excited when I win a book, it’s like Christmas. 😋
I won a lot of them for a while there but I’ve cut myself off of other sources other than Netgalley at the moment with being behind.
I’m pretty much just going through Goodreads right now.. I’ll have to check out Netgalley, though, it seems quite popular.
I would say ‘Don’t worry, Carrie, you’ll catch up!” but.. 😅
Yes, Netgalley is where all of us addicts get the books before they are actually released. It’s quite addictive though so be careful! LOL
That is simultaneously the most exciting and dangerous information ever.
Look, books! Now.. use restraint. 😆😂
🤣 Sorry Sheri! I said myself in the beginning I will not click that many, I’ll just give this site a test…. a couple thousand books later…..
Oh, snap, girl! How do you keep up with reviews? Do you review them all?
I’ll have to save that rabbit-hole for later.. I would go way overboard and I’m behind as it is! 😳
Um, well, I am buried in books I’ve read and still need to review so I’m not exactly keeping up well…🤣 Seriously though I did good for my first few years on there then real life hit, covid hit, etc etc so my backlog grew and I’m working on it while I read even more to add to it.🤣
Ohmygoodness, girl, it’s the book version of the snowball effect! You can’t tell you’re behind on anything, your reviews are always so great.. that’s pretty impressive!
I hope some of that craziness has calmed down for you, as much as it can, at least..
Have a wonderful weekend! ❤
Yes, and I’m making a good dent on my catch up. Of course I still have older books to read too so it’s going to take a while to get them all completely done but I’m determined to get there. I once laughed when people said they kept lists to keep organized and now I have a nice spreadsheet keeping track of what’s read, what needs to be read, publication dates, notes for reviews etc etc😄
First: Oh snap.. that’s a really good idea. And holy crap.. that’s going to be a lot of work. I’ll definitely have start something like that, it would be so helpful, thank you for the idea! 😳🤯😅
Second: I have complete faith that you’ll be able to do it! It sounds like you’ve been doing this long enough that you know what you’re doing!
For me being a Netgalley addict it wasn’t too hard to put together because I just sorted my shelf by dates and then went through listing the books where they needed to be. I suppose you could also do a Goodreads shelf and order it however you need then use that to begin a list too. It really helped me organize and begin my journey to finally being back on track.😀
Hey, at least you have a system that works for you, that really is all that’s important.
I think I need to be able to write mine all down physically.. notebooks, charts, calendars.. hell, let’s just buy out Office Depot and call it good. 😅
Yes, it’s definitely whatever works best for you. I like keeping mine on the computer because quite honestly I would probably lose a notebook and never have it when I needed to check for what’s next.🤣
groan That’s so true! I didn’t think about misplacing things and I have a legitimately serious problem with using post its for everything.. Somehow I don’t think that will work here. 😂
Well. Back to the drawing board for me!
Haha sorry to ruin your plan! I’m sure you can find something that will be comfortable and work well for you though.🙂
Thanks for the vote of confidence! I will eventually.. Growth takes time!
Well it took me a several years before I made a list… 🤣
Lol, there’s that!
New goal, Sheri: Don’t wait years. 🤭😋
I have noticed that time goes pretty quickly with blogging, though, it’s here and gone again.