Witches’ Night Out A novel for teens by Silver Ravenwolf

Let me start by saying I am nearly 40 years old, and I have never read
one
of Silver RavenWolf’s books before. I know her work is wildly popular
among
witches, especially her writings for teenagers. I am a witch, and I
collect
teenage girls’ series novels, so I had high hopes for this little book,
the first of a series about teen witches. Even though I’m not a
teenager,
I had hoped I would enjoy and resonate with the story. I am as
engrossed in
the Harry Potter series as any 11-year-old out there!

But, alas, I did not enjoy this book. I should have been able to tell from

the cover what was to come. It shows a group of five teenagers through a

window, dressed in midriff-baring street clothes, with the most glamorous

one front and center, her arms stretched out. The four others

are slouching in the background with their hands in their pockets; the young

man even has a hat on, backwards. The illustrator either has no occult

knowledge, or had no interest in portraying a witches’ coven raising energy

in an authentic manner.

And the story is not much better. The story centers around Bethany Salem

(what a nice witch name, don’t you think?), a sixteen-year-old who just lost

her boyfriend in a car accident and is determined to use her coven of five

teenagers to catch the person who killed her boyfriend. Her favorite form of

magick seems to be curses — definitely not ‘harm none, for the good of

all.’ She breaks the nose of one character in a brawl while invoking the

Dark Mother, and cuts the face of her teacher while invoking the Dark

Goddess.

There were also small details that distressed me. A male cat, her familiar,

named Hecate? Why didn’t RavenWolf pick a name befitting a male cat, rather

than name a cat after a formidable goddess? Now if Bethany should ever want

to invoke the goddess Hecate in a circle (which she doesn’t in this book),

she will have an imagery of the cat in her mind, at least at first, because

she uses the cat’s name on a daily basis. Another detail that bothered me

was the appearance of a wart on the cheek of a rather unlikeable character

who may have some occult talent of her own. So witches are warty, cruel

creatures?

I just could not get into this book, nor feel any great warmth or concern

for the characters. The teens did not seem to talk to each other in

teen-talk that felt authentic. The slang seemed dated. They didn’t

seem to interact like friends; when another of them is in a car accident,

they don’t seem to show much immediate concern, and not until six pages

later do they even explore what injuries had occurred. And there were twists

and turns to the story line that had completely unrealistic results. Someone

dies in our heroine’s bedroom while she is in there, and no one explores the

possibility of murder? It becomes known to the parents of these five that

they are practicing witchcraft, and only one of the sets of parents shows

concern? There is no punishment for brawling and breaking someone’s nose?

Unless you are a diehard Silver RavenWolf fan, I’d say skip this book. I

don’t see anything about this book that would be enjoyable for teenage

witches. If you’re looking for magickal suspense novels for teenagers, I

think Lois Duncan’s novels (“Locked in Time,” “Stranger with my Face,” and

A Gift of Magic“, for instance), are much more authentic to a teen’s

experiences. And I adored Caroline Cooney’s time traveling series of three

books, “Out of Time,” “Both Sides of Time,” and “Prisoner of Time.” Any of

these titles will give you much more enjoyment than RavenWolf’s story.

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