Deep in Devil’s Ditch lies a woman in chains. Her name is Rose. And something’s very wrong with her…
Ashley and Jude are used to being hunted.
As teenage outcasts, they know what it means to run. But when a gang of bullies drives them into the woods, they discover something far worse than anything chasing them—an abandoned farmhouse, hidden deep among the trees, that shouldn’t exist.
Inside, chained to the floor of a rotting cellar, is a naked woman without a voice.
Her name is Rose.
And she’s been waiting.
What begins as a desperate rescue spirals into a nightmare of occult violence, ancient evil, and unstoppable horror. Because Rose is not a victim.
She’s the curse.
And now she’s free.
Dark bleatings, my lovely tribe. It’s spooky season (to me, anyway) and what’s better reading for spooky season than witches? I found this book a couple of years back when I went on an obsessive and somewhat frantic book search for witches, and I have finally got around to reading it!
I have to say, this was a mixed bag for me but I mostly enjoyed it, not least because of the inciting incident and how mysterious and horribly terrifying it was. Ashley and Jude, platonic teenage besties, have it a bit rough. A group of bullies is permanently on the look out to do mean things to them, and so they are always together. One day, following a particularly scary incident with the bullies, they end up coming across a rundown abandoned house in the woods, which there are creepy rumours about, and venture inside to take a peek. What they find in there is a naked woman chained to the floor, inside some sort of drawn symbol. Rather than begging for help, this woman is hostile to an almost feral degree, but they decide that of course they must help her and so they endeavour to do so. This turns out to be quite a big mistake and the start of their real problems.
So, let me just get my criticism out of the way first because I hate this part, but I have to be honest. I thought I had several gripes but realised upon reading my notes that really they just boil down to the same issue for me, and that was some of the character work. While I really liked the relationship between our two protagonists, I did find how they were originally introduced very offputting (streams of insults and crude remarks which I know most would put down to banter, but I had a hard time believing it because I grew up as a teenage girl and typically speaking, this isn’t how teenage girls tend to feel comfortable with friends). They were a bit over the top for my tastes but thankfully, this element of their dialogue did disappear quite quickly. This is just personal preference and me basing believability on my own experience, however. The one thing that did baffle me, which was a shame, is that I just didn’t understand the antagonists motivations. I can’t go into details because they’re spoilers, but her life and actions didn’t match what were cited for her reasons for what she went on to do, so I struggled with this a bit.
However, I absolutely loved things about this novel too. The inciting incident and the way the author painted the scene was fantastic and quite unique. The actions of Ashley and Jude gave me hope in the youth, and people in general, and I found them believable and also admirable, despite their fear. The element that I was punching the air over is something that I unfortunately can’t tell you because it’s a major spoiler and I just can’t do that to you guys, but let’s just say that an early assumption was made on my part about everyone’s roles in this story, and I turned out to be wrong because the author made an excellent decision about not conforming to a certain expected stereotype.
All in all, despite my couple of complaints, if you’re looking for a scary witch book for spooky season, I’d say you might enjoy this one. It has more savagery than I’m used to seeing in a book of this subgenre, and some fun surprises along the way. If you’d like to check out the book or the author, I’ve popped some links below for you:
Bleeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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