Title: Winterwood
Author: Shea Ernshaw
Publication Date: November 05, 2019
Genre: Fantasy, Paranormal
Add to: Goodreads / Amazon
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.5 stars)

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Wicked Deep comes a haunting romance set deep in the magical snow-covered forest, where the appearance of a mysterious boy unearths secrets that awakens the enchanted, but angry, woods.

Be careful of the dark, dark wood . . .

Especially the woods surrounding the town of Fir Haven. Some say these woods are magical. Haunted, even.

Rumored to be a witch, only Nora Walker knows the truth. She and the Walker women before her have always shared a special connection with the woods. And it’s this special connection that leads Nora to Oliver Huntsman—the same boy who disappeared from the Camp for Wayward Boys weeks ago—and in the middle of the worst snowstorm in years. He should be dead, but here he is alive, and left in the woods with no memory of the time he’d been missing.

But Nora can feel an uneasy shift in the woods at Oliver’s presence. And it’s not too long after that Nora realizes she has no choice but to unearth the truth behind how the boy she has come to care so deeply about survived his time in the forest, and what led him there in the first place. What Nora doesn’t know, though, is that Oliver has secrets of his own—secrets he’ll do anything to keep buried, because as it turns out, he wasn’t the only one to have gone missing on that fateful night all those weeks ago.

Winterwood was one of the books I was so eager to read this year and it's also largely due to the fact that I really loved Ernshaw's other book, Wicked Deep. I fell in love with the writing and the magic and mystery were woven together. Two of my favorite elements in a story together.

So this book is about this witch (Nora) who found an unconscious boy (Oliver) in the Wicker Woods aka a forest no one dared to enter because it comes alive when disturbed if it's not a full moon. Creepy. She took him in, seeing he was still alive, and brought him back to her place to nurse him back to health until he'a able to go back to the camp he was supposed to be in that was just across the lake. But Oliver's got secrets and Nora was trying to figure out what he could be hiding since he was alive even though anyone who entered the Wicker Woods were never seen again.

The mystery around Oliver was pretty intriguing and I was curious enough to keep me going through the story. However, sometimes it felt dragging. It was kinda repetitive how Oliver would appear and disappear and Nora had to either look for him again or wait for him if ever he decides to come back. I was also expecting this book would be creepy and full — and I mean FULL — of magic but neither really were there. Yes, it has the element of magic in it since Nora's a witch but her power (?) was also kind of a mystery since her mom thought she really didn't inherit the Walker gene of being a witch with all these abilities. Kinda unfortunate how Nora wasn't able to showcase them much. The creepy part wasn't also creepy — which I was expecting a lot (see this is why you don't EXPECT). I was just imagining nature the entire time.

Despite all those, this book was still really fascinating especially when it comes to the history of the Walker women and their backstory in general. THAT I really enjoyed. I love how there's this book of spells and almost every after chapter from Nora's POV (because this is a dual POV book), there's a life story of a Walker and what their life was like from their birth to their death and after that, there's a spell to cure symptoms or whatever that's connected to that Walker's life. You gotta read the book to get what I mean because I feel like I'm not explaining this clearly. But it was really, really interesting!

Overall, this book was filled with secrets (A LOT), mystery, magic (quite) and the precious Fin the Wolf. The story's pace picked up around the end and I admit, I was so into it more than I was when I started it. Things were really heating up and the wow-factor when I found out what Nora was capable of. It would also makes sense why she never used it for the entire duration of the story.