The Nature of Witches

Rachel Griffins debut "The Nature of Witches" is an extremely gripping and beautifully written novel. While reading it, it felt like Rachel put all my thoughts about the seasons, everything I feel during summer, autumn, winter and spring into words. I connected very strongly with protagonist Clara Densmore. She is an Everwitch and is tied to all four seasons, It is a very rare kind of witch and Clara is the first one in about 200 years. Everyone expects something of her but she struggles to control her magic. It tends to kill the people she loves most, so she isolates herself as best as she can to prevent such things from happening. But the shaders (normal people who are no witches) destroyed the earth so much that an Everwith is needed to maintain the climate as best as possible. So Clara must learn to control her magic. I loved every single chapter in this book so so much. There are a lot of feelings between the words. Clara feels extremely lonely and struggles to love magic or even herself. Her power did nothing good to her, so it is perfectly comprehensible why she hates it so much. After a tragic accident her training schedule is changed and a Sang, a student from another school takes over her trainig. Clara begins to trust him and their relationship is so beautiful. It made me feel all the feels. I loved Sang as a character, because he is kind, he loves botany and he never puts Clara under pressure. Step by step, she learns to accept herself. But of course her feelings for Sang are growing and she knows that her magic always seeks out the ones closest to her. The story is full of emotion. Claras feelings for Sang, her feelings for her ex-girlfriend Paige and all the self-loath. But it is also filled with the beauty of nature. Griffin captures the seasons so precisely. I felt really understood in my love for nature. I also just love the concept of witches who are tied to one of the four seasons and need to help maintain the climate. The book is also very relevant regarding climate change and all the things we do to destroy the earth. I loved everything about this story. It has an amazing main character, who really grows throughout the story, a sweet lovestory, beautiful writing and a gripping plot, that really flows naturally. "the Nature of Witches" definitely became a new favourite for me.

A book about witches and how they and humans have to work together to save their home. Each witch is assigned to one season. And even if you only ever loved only one specific season, in the end you will love them all.

The nature of witches is the debut of Rachel Griffin. I always love stories about witches and therefore I just had to read this one. The book takes place on earth and in our world with the exception that there are witches whose powers are connected to the season. The witches try to work on the state the world is in, but that gets harder and harder each day. Our protagonist Clara is an everwitch who has the power of all seasons and she changes with them. This is very rare and she could be the key to solve all the problems. But she isn’t trained and can’t really control her powers. She adapts to situations very quickly and tries to make the best out of them. And while Clara is a good protagonist a lot of people took advantage of her and manipulated and belittled her. This was really sad and I wish she would have followed her own path more. She should have time to grow and instead she is forced to do things by the people around her. Sang is the other person we learn the most about and he trains Clara. He is also a love interest, however the romance is very brief and I didn’t really feel it. But often the characters stay very flat and they are only reduced to their magic and not their personalities. The story is mainly set in the school where the witches are trained. The training methods are often very forced and sometimes unnecessarily brutal and only aim to awaken Claras power no matter who else could get hurt. Otherwise, there was the mention of a world beyond that, but sadly you don’t get to see that. There was also not really a major plot line and sometimes it slowly moved on with no real aim or destination. Something I did really like were the wisdoms A season for everything at the beginning of each chapter and they were very memorable and inspirational. Overall, The nature of witches is a book with a very modern and environmentally conscious approach to witches and I really liked it. But there were also some aspects I didn’t fully like and therefore this books gets 3 stars.

Sadly, it was one of those stories which felt frustratingely empty in its core and was pretty much repetitive throughout (e.x. all the thoughts of the main character about being "stripped" from her powers because of her guilt complex...). The premise had hooked me, but neither writing nor characters lived up to a minimum standard for me.