Review: Abby the Witch

Title: Abby the Witch
Author: Odette C. Bell
Publisher: Smashwords
ISBN: N/A     BN ID: 2940033047406

Abigail Gail, Abby for short, fresh out of training is the newly appointed witch to a city/kingdom that has banned witches on pain of death. Years pass and slowly Abby is starving to death as she tries to do her duty in the background, until a storm of epic proportions comes blowing in. Abby goes out in the storm to save a drowning man, and they both get blown back in time. Once there they face the problem of getting back to their time and the moral conundrum of whether or not they should fix the problems that ruined the kingdom and brought the ban on witches.

The copy I read was beset by that which seems to plague all free or inexpensive ebooks: typos. That said, let's move on.

The story was well told and intended for a younger audience, perhaps early teens. It is a bit of a romance novel. This however does not hamper the tale, but does give it a bit of a foreseen ending. At points it is a bit shallow in that the characters seem to only have a few emotions and swing between them. And the thirty year old sea commander, almost captain, acts like a teenager, as does the witch. This is what leads me to think the target audience is teenagers. Further the characters don't really have to think much to resolve the situation, they are pointed in the right direction and everything conspires to help them on the way, all they have to do is make the right choice. There was one blatant lose thread left blowing at the end, in the beginning the sea commander was told "not to break my window this time", but at no point in the story was he ever faced with a situation where he might have had to. Also the author felt the need to use a faux cussword constantly, even by a character who is stated to never swear. And finally, at one point the main characters introduce themselves with assumed names, but later encounter those who only know them by the fake names and are addressed directly by their correct names with no explanation needed as to the change.

Overall, it is a youth friendly read and rather quick.  However it could do with some editing and possibly shortening. While I would tenderly suggest it as a read, I would not fervently urge anyone to read it.