Maria

You Witch!....What'd you call me?!

At first I wasn't sure what to think about this novel, from the moment I saw the cover. It kind of caught me off guard because I'm thinking about witches, like the old school witches. And what I mean by that is the ugly ones with warts and nasty black cat. Then I see the cover and its like a kids illustration, which isn't wrong; just didn't expect to see that. There is the supernatural world of ghosts and witches. All the characters in this story are very "characterized" to say the least; and what I mean by that is their personalities. What makes them, them. I really think we all know someone like Aunt Maria, she has personality that probably resembles someone we know, out of all the characters in the story.

The story takes place in Megs journal but takes steps out of it every now and then because of the interruptions from the outside world like friends. It seemed as if there was like this build of suspense in the story but then it would go do a different road because you would get some information with the suspense, pretty much like a typical mystery story. Well not exactly like your run of the mill mystery story, I find myself more immersed in anything that has to do with ghost and spirits and pretty much anything of the supernatural. The element of "not-knowing" captures my attention, now we have a mystery novel mixed with the already mysterious subject matter of witches and ghost. 

Then the cat, theres always a cat when we talk about witches. It's like a staple in witch-folk-lor, there needs to be a black cat that helps the witch in some way. The cat serves as a identification marker for a witch, when you see a black cat with the character in the story you know thats the witch, or can assume that. Well same thing happens in this novel with her black cat that helps her find her book, the cat serves as the helper to Meg. I think if the cat wasn't in this novel then I might have not been as connected to the characters persona of being a witch, because black cats and witches go hand in hand. It makes it more believable for me as the reader.