Bingo Update: This is for my I Love This square, not because I love the book, but rather because I love wine. The only reason I picked this up as one of my free books from Amazon last month was because it was about a witch whose entire magical purpose was based around the cultivation and production of brilliant wine. I was dying to see how they applied magic to vinification. The result may have left me about as satisfied as a box wine, but I read it because I loved the subject matter.
The Vine Witch is the story of Elena Boureanu (whose last name I am pretty sure I read wrong throughout), a young vine witch who has just returned from seven years cursed to be a toad. The vineyard she is connected to has been among the best in the region, but after her disappearance the wine started to suffer, leading to Grandmere, the witch to whom she was apprenticed, selling the place to a scientific lawyer from the city. Jean-Paul, aforementioned lawyer, is dubious of magic in general, and refuses to believe it should apply to the creation of wine. Elena must battle Jean-Paul’s preconceptions while trying to discover who was responsible for the curse that was placed upon her to enact her vengeance.
I love the use of magic to make wine. The idea of certain plagues that hit vineyards – frosts, pests, blight – being related to magic, and that better grapes are harvested under certain moons and the like makes a lot of sense to me. I think the way the magic is applied to the profession is effective and interesting.
Then there’s the other 85% of the book. Elena is not a character that I care overmuch about, although I didn’t dislike her. That kind of ambivalence permeates my experience of this book. I was never particularly nervous for our main characters, and I think part of that stems from not caring enough about them, and part stems from lack of narrative tension. The bad guy in this story is telegraphed from the first moment you are introduced to them, and even the twists aren’t terribly twisty. There’s nothing aggressively *bad* about the book, it’s just sort of there. I’ve spent worse hours than I did traversing the pages of this, but I can’t heartily recommend it either.
A forgettable vintage that I won’t be returning to; apparently, it’s part of a series and I don’t feel compelled in the least to taste the rest of what’s on offer.