Charity's Reviews > The Honey Witch

DNF at 30%

I really did try.
I had such high hopes for this book, preordered it and started it as soon as the mail came in.
It is not as cozy as marketed and it’s entire theme is “becoming a wife and mother is the worst outcome for any woman.” There’s no wiggle room for choice, preference, or anything. It reeks of bitterness from one bad experience with a man (not even a r@pe just a bad breakup) and so thus, any woman ever marrying any man is just downright pitiful 🙄
I kept thinking, maybe the FMC is going to grow and change but at 130 pages in, there was no sign of this. If anything, she was worse. At one point she laughs so hard so can’t breathe because a girl is wanting lipstick to attract her crush. Like, chill?
I am more than happy to overlook bad writing or a flat character or a weird plot if at least one of those three is present but this sadly lacked all three for me.

I struggled to remember that marigold is 21/22 and not 17. She’s self righteous, judgmental, over dramatic, and rude.

SPOILERS BELOW:

The story was unnecessarily rushed, giving us a few pages where we needed a few chapters. There wasn’t time to really develop the characters or their relationships. I know, I stopped at 30% but the whole relationship with the grandmother lasted about 50 pages before she dies, at which point the FMC is screaming crying falling down after having been part of this 100+ year old woman’s life for 6ish months. I didn’t feel sad at her death, having had a very short time to enjoy her and then I was almost laughing at Marigold’s reaction it seemed so unnatural.

Which leads me to the other points I had about the characters all interacting very unnaturally. None of them spoke like real people. They all talked either over dramatically and unrealistically or like they’d been in therapy and were trying their hardest to follow a script.

Motherhood and marriage are repeatedly attacked despite her parents being super in love and having a great marriage and her father being the sweetest best dad.

The magic system is very cool and I love the idea of a honey based magic. The apiary and flowers were the best part yet we got a few short descriptions of it.

The part that I finally gave up was when Marigold her love interest Lottie are talking and for some unknown reason Marigold is so wildly determined to get this random girl to like her and to believe in magic (despite Lottie having been the biggest bitch for no reason the whole three interactions they’ve had in which 4 words were said) that she literally flies at her with her finger pointed and screams “how dare you” like a melodramatic soap opera. I have never seen real people act this way and if they did I would probably laugh.

The curse also makes no sense? Not being able to be with your true love doesn’t mean you can’t have children? So like, weird way to try to “end the line”. I mean she could have just given the ash witch a different reason, like wanting to cause suffering or something.

And ash and honey are not opposites?

Last thing I’ll say is this writer would have two women talking and would says “she” and “her” like 6 times before saying a name and that’s just confusing.