Spoiler-free!
Title: The Bone Witch
Author: Rin Chupeco
My Rating: 3.5 stars! ⭐️
Description:
When Tea accidentally resurrects her brother from the dead, she learns she is different from the other witches in her family. Her gift for necromancy means that she’s a bone witch, a title that makes her feared and ostracized by her community. But Tea finds solace and guidance with an older, wiser bone witch, who takes Tea and her brother to another land for training.
In her new home, Tea puts all her energy into becoming an asha-one who can wield elemental magic. But dark forces are approaching quickly, and in the face of danger, Tea will have to overcome her obstacles…and make a powerful choice.
My Review:
I’m quite surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I’ve seen a fair share of negative reviews about this one, but I think my low expectations made me more surprised than disappointed.
Also, just to add the cherry on top for my reading experience in general…IT GOT ME OUT OF MY 2 MONTH LONG READING SLUMP!
This book has a pretty unique concept. Our main character Tea is a Dark asha, someone who is able to raise the dead. Since it seen as such a morbid thing, they are usually cast off from society and are also known as Bone Witches.
We follow this book from Tea in the future (when she is 17) as well as Tea during her preparation of becoming an asha (being around the ages of 13-16). It was quite compelling to read from this style and it made everything that much more interesting since you wanted to figure out what had happened to Tea.
I really enjoyed the first 100 pages of this novel. Right off the bat I was captivated by the story and the writing style, but it was mostly during the middle of the book where I started to lose focus.
The problems I had with this book were the info-dumps. It got to a point where I couldn’t fully comprehend certain aspects of the asha or all the places they are individually from (and there’s a lot). To me it seemed a little messy, and when the author related back to something, I had to keep flipping back to the beginning to understand the context of it.
Plus there were a lot of descriptions…pages and pages.
I also wasn’t fully attached to the characters. Unlike the plot, which had me flying through this book, I felt the characters (specifically our main character) lacked a connection with me as the reader. Tea felt a little generic to me, and she closely reminded me of how I felt with Jules in the book Everless, which isn’t exactly positive.
In the case with this first book, I definitely feel like the plot and the storyline are a lot more effective than the characters. But it’s also really nice to know that a lot of people enjoy the second book even more, which gives me hope for some amazing development with the characters.
I have high hopes for the sequel, especially with how this book ended off, and I really think the story will start moving a lot more faster!
Overall, I’d say go read this book! It’s different from all the other YA books I’ve been reading recently, and it definitely has a darker feel to it! It’s also an easy book to fly through!
Thanks for reading!
-Ashley
July 6, 2018 at 4:55 pm
I’ve heard very mixed things about this one as well, but anything that gets someone out of a reading slump is a winner!! 💖💖
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July 6, 2018 at 11:44 pm
Yes I’ve seen the mixed things as well, but I think since I had low expectations, it ended up not being as bad as I thought? But yay for it getting me out of my reading slump!! 👏
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July 6, 2018 at 8:20 pm
I really tried reading this one, but I couldn’t finish it, mostly because I had trouble relating to the characters, but your review makes me want to give it another shot.
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July 7, 2018 at 11:10 pm
Yeah the characters were an issue for me, for the whole duration of the book. I’m hoping that the problem will be solved in the sequel, but the plot of the story was the thing that kept me going!
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July 7, 2018 at 2:44 am
Great review!
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July 7, 2018 at 11:09 pm
Thank you!
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July 7, 2018 at 4:16 am
I’ve heard mixed things about the bone witch, but I think I will eventually give it a go! Info dump is an issue, but if the plot and characters are intriguing then I’m in for it!
Lovely review 💕
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July 7, 2018 at 11:09 pm
Thank you! Yeah I’d definitely say give it a shot! The story is interesting enough that you’ll want to keep reading!
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July 7, 2018 at 12:41 pm
I feel the exact same way about this book! I love the concept but the lengthy descriptions and info dumping got in the way at times. Great review! 😊
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July 7, 2018 at 11:08 pm
Thanks Kelly! I’m hoping the sequel won’t be like that!
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July 7, 2018 at 2:23 pm
Haha okay, I just came from your TBR post and didn’t know you’d already finished this one. 😂 Terrific review! Unfortunately, this is precisely what I’d been hearing about this book; that it’s confusing, the characters are a bit bland, and has many info-dumps. Up side is, I also heard the second book is great, so I think I’ll give this book a go for sure. I’m glad you ended up enjoying it! 😀
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July 7, 2018 at 11:08 pm
Yeah the whole premise and plot of the story is amazing, but the info-dumps and all the confusion really start to take away from the full effect 😦 But yes, hopefully the sequel will be better! ❤️
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July 8, 2018 at 3:43 pm
Great review, Ashley! I haven’t read this book yet but I’ve heard a lot of mixed reviews about it. I really want to read this book but I’m not fan of info dumps either. I hope you enjoy the next book! 🙂
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July 8, 2018 at 6:43 pm
Yeah, I had to reread those parts SO many times, and I still had no idea what was going on 🙄
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July 10, 2018 at 1:43 am
Glad you enjoyed this! I really agree with your points and I’m pretty sure my rating was pretty much the same. Hope you enjoy the sequel. It was so good and the romance in book 2 agh!
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July 10, 2018 at 2:33 pm
I’m really excited for the romance…especially because of that last page in the first book! 😱
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July 11, 2018 at 9:59 pm
Hooray for getting out of your reading slump!!! ♥ I felt mostly the same way about this book. I loved Rin’s The Girl From the Well, though, so I’ll probably still give the sequel for this another shot!
New blog follower. 🙂
– Aimee @ Aimee, Always
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July 12, 2018 at 11:02 am
Yes!! I hear the sequel is really good! Thanks for stopping by! ☺️❤️
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