Portrait of a Witch Undone By K.S. Shay

K.S. Shay’s debut is creepy, beautiful and tragic. What more could you want?

Favourite Quote:

Out on the marsh, the lantern light taunts. I swear I hear a whisper on the freshly magic-saturated wind: Come find me. I’ll grant your wish this time, I promise. 

Book Synopsis:

Once, Maeve Ryan was the strongest witch of her generation. But Maeve messed up a spell to contact the Lady of the Fens, an eerie Revenant who lures the unwary to their deaths in the brackish marshlands of the North Shore. Maeve destroyed her reputation, hurt her best friend Ash, and tainted herself with unbound, wild magic that transforms witches into insane Revenants.

With unbound power eating away at Maeve’s mind, all she wants is to get rid of her magic. Forever. But Ash’s research into how the spell went awry leads in an unexpected direction: the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and a link between the Lady and a decades-old art theft worth $500 million. When Ash disappears through a stolen painting’s empty frame, Maeve has to follow.

Inside is the Other Marsh, a haunting, deadly realm where only the Lady’s rules apply. Within this half-world lie secrets about North Shore’s history, Maeve’s failure, and the fate of the masterpieces that disappeared over three decades ago. But as Maeve fights toward the truth, she risks her friendship, her coven, and her life against enemies hiding in plain sight.

Review:

The Portrait of a Witch Undone pulls you into the story on the first page and requires you to keep up. I love being thrown into a world and have to learn the magic system on the fly. I know this won’t work for everyone so I’m flagging it here in the review, but I floundered around for the first chapter or so while I tried to get my feet on solid ground and understand what was happening. This is an excellent job by the author, however, as our main character Maeve is also floundering in a very big quarter life crisis. You are thrown into her confusion, her stress and her muddling about while she deals with having the life she expected to have pulled out from under her. It happened the year before when a spell she was doing with her best friend Ash pollutes her magic and could cause her to be unbound and wild, devoured by her magic if she isn’t careful. She’s grown up with the warning of the unbound burned into her memory. And now she can’t use magic and has been hiding it from her grandmother, the matriarch of her coven, who is expecting, no, who has always demanded that she take over the coven. All Maeve is good for in her family’s eyes is her magic. What she wants, needs and desires doesn’t matter. 

But now, with no useful magic, what does that leave her with? She’s not sure. But as she drowns in her own pity party, Ash is up to something secretive which, after a disastrous fight, leads her to disappearing. Maeve is pretty sure that she’s in The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum where, many years ago, one of the world’s largest unsolved art heists occurred (this is real, and is still an unsolved mystery). Maeve, while researching, discovers two things: one, proof that her friend is trapped in a painting, and two, that another coven is on their turf and willing to do shady things to get access to the magic. 

The book spans between the incredible, creepy and unnerving other marsh that’s actually IN a painting in the museum, where Maeve struggles to find Ash, survive this otherworldly marsh that is actively trying to kill her, and figure out the truth behind the mystery of the Lady who’s marsh Maeve’s coven is on. The Lady’s death and haunting of the marsh is a mystery and one the coven is actively trying to hide. It’s clear to Maeve that she needs to get to the root of the mystery to understand who created this other marsh, and why have they trapped the Lady in it? 

Part art heist mystery, part body horror magic system and part soft meditation on friendships, letting people be their own true selves and love (both romantic and platonic), Portrait of a Witch Undone is a gorgeous, lyrical and swooping novel that took my breath away at times. 

Thank you to Erewhon Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.