A Curse of Ash and Embers by Jo Spurrier

Title: A Curse of Ash and Ember
Author: Jo Spurrier
Series Name: Tales of the Blackbone Witches
Genre: YA Fantasy
Publication Date: September 24th, 2018
Pages: 368 (Paperback)
Publishers: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
Rating:

A dead witch. A bitter curse. A battle of magic.

Some people knit socks by the fire at night. Gyssha Blackbone made monsters.

But the old witch is dead now, and somehow it’s Elodie’s job to clean up the mess.

When she was hired at Black Oak Cottage, Elodie had no idea she’d find herself working for a witch; and her acid-tongued new mistress, Aleida, was not expecting a housemaid to turn up on her doorstep.

Gyssha’s final curse left Aleida practically dead on her feet, and now, with huge monsters roaming the woods, a demonic tree lurking in the orchard and an angry warlock demanding repayment of a debt, Aleida needs Elodie’s help, whether she likes it or not.

And no matter what the old witch throws at her, to Elodie it’s still better than going back home.

So to be completely honest I didn’t love the writing. It was kinda bland but the plot made up for it. The book didn’t have a huge amount of world building as there seemed to be more of a focus on plot. So we didn’t get a tonne of background except in regard to the Aleida.
While the plot was interesting there were also a fair few places where the book felt a bit slow.
I also didn’t like the action scenes. They were kinda hard to understand which took away from the whole engaging aspect of an action scene.

The plot was my favourite aspect of the book. It was engaging and interesting. There was a lot of building up to the next plot point which kept me interested even when the book was a bit slow.

The two major characters of the book were basically opposite. One was a bit 1 dimensional and the other was interesting and thought out.
Dee who is our main character was the one that felt very 1 dimensional. Besides the arsehole of a step father and a little bit about her mother & fathers story we didn’t really get that much about Dee herself. She felt quite flat and that made it difficult to connect with her and a main character.
Aleida had a lot more background which gave her a lot more substance than Dee had in the story. I also found Aleida really interesting which helped keep me interested when reading.

So overall the book was a bit all over the place. While I enjoyed some aspects there were a fair few things that I didn’t enjoy. I enjoyed the plot and Aleida but didn’t particularly care for the main character and the writing was a bit bland. I may still continue on with the series as I am interested to see where the story goes & also to learn more about Aleida.