The Vine Witch by Luanne G Smith

3.5 Stars

This was a very odd book that seemed to have no particular setting - the clothing and lifestyles seemed to hint at medieval but then you would get a motor vehicle thrown in to the mix.  Although we are told that the book is set in France there is no French flavour to it at all, it genuinely could have been set anywhere.  In truth it was the actual timeline of the story that threw me off, it is pootling along quite nicely with almost a bucolic feel and then something glaringly "modern" raises its head and feels completely anachronistic.

I liked the idea of witches specialising in one flavour of magic - so you have vine witches that help with wine making, beer witches that help with brewing of ales, even baking witches that seem to exclusively work love spells.  Of course you then have the dark side of all this and this means you need a magical police force - sound familiar?  Although, the magical police force in this book are singularly inept and owe more to the Inquisitorial Squad than the Ministry Of Magic; you see where I'm going with the comparison.  Of course this was always going to happen, any novel that has magic rooted in the real world is going to be compared to the tour de force that is the Potterverse.

There is a lot of telling in this book rather than showing.  Now, a certain amount of this I don't mind as it can help move the plot along much more rapidly.  Unfortunately, I still felt that the plot lacked tautness and time was spent dwelling on minutiae rather than getting to the point.  This wasn't helped by the vast majority of characters, Elena excluded, were really only ciphers and were there because Elena needed someone to bounce off.

I did like the concept of the novel - cursed witch manages to break the curse after 7 long, lonely years and makes her way back home only to find the vine yard has been sold to someone who has no idea how to make wine let alone believe in witches.  Fortunately her mentor and adoptive grandmother is still at the vineyard as a housekeeper and so starts Elena's journey to restore the vineyard and find the evil being who cursed her.  There is a nice twist to the ending which I appreciated and the showdown in the cellars does have a genuine feeling of peril.

Overall this is a fun update on fairytales but it just needed a good sharp tug on the plot to tidy things up.