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Aug. 23rd, 2018 06:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI love stories about horrifying-but-supportive ghosts, which is one of several reasons Witch is going in the upper category of Barbara Michaels books for me.
Our Heroine, Ellen, is a respectable 38-year-old single mom and has spent the past 15 years keeping house for her daughter and three nephews while hopelessly pining for her tragically widowed brother-in-law. But now the kids are all going off to college, the brother-in-law is going abroad in the diplomatic service, and Ellen is going to BUY HERSELF A HOUSE and LEARN SOME FOREIGN LANGUAGES and DO FANCY COOKING and BE AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN with NO STUPID CRUSHES ON ANYONE.
ELLEN: I am looking for a very picturesque country house where I can, like, knit! Do fancy cooking! Pursue hobbies! Learn how to can things!
AN ECCENTRIC LOCAL HOMEOWNER: I do own a picturesque house, which is for sale, but unfortunately it is very isolated and needs a lot of repair work -
ELLEN: Gorgeous!
AN ECCENTRIC LOCAL HOMEOWNER: - and the townsfolk are all very weird and judgmental and belong to some kind of strange Puritan cult -
ELLEN: Eh, I don't want to hang out much with people anyway.
AN ECCENTRIC LOCAL HOMEOWNER: - and also people say the house is haunted by the ghost of a sixteenth-century witch -
ELLEN: Yes but it's SO PRETTY.
AN ECCENTRIC LOCAL HOMEOWNER: - and honestly I don't think you should buy it? It's not worth it. You seem like a nice lady. Go somewhere better and buy a different, less haunted house.
ELLEN: Please just let me give you money.
So Ellen moves into her house, and quickly makes friends with the cute bachelor next door.
THE BACHELOR NEXT DOOR: Alas! My troubled nephew is the town delinquent! He bullies people and murders animals for fun!
ELLEN: ...has....he seen a child psychologist?
THE BACHELOR NEXT DOOR: .... definitely. Lots. Child psychology coming out his ears.
ELLEN: Because, you know, I've done a lot of work with troubled teens, and I can give you some helpful tips -
THE BACHELOR NEXT DOOR: That's very sweet of you but I'm afraid he's just TOO FAR GONE TO REACH!
Then Ellen actually meets Troubled Tim the Town Delinquent.
ELLEN: oh no, he's hot! .... thank God my teen daughter isn't here or we would have some real Romeo and Juliet nonsense on our hands.
Ellen spends the next hundred pages or so accidentally pissing off all the townsfolk, accidentally predicting the weather, accidentally telling the fortunes of all the town teens, and generally making herself beloved by all. Meanwhile, the ghost of the witch who lived in her house and was killed by an angry mob sometimes hangs creepily from her ceiling at night, and a ghost cat shows up on her doorstep, and every so often when Ellen gets real mad at the townsfolk she starts speaking in tongues. But mostly she's too busy a.) trying to convince the bachelor next door that Troubled Tim really should see another child psychologist and b.) really enjoying doing the kind of fancy cooking she never got a chance to do in a household full of kids to pay attention to all of this!
Occasionally she is interrupted in all these interesting pursuits by nice letters from her brother-in-law Jack.
JACK: Hey Ellen, I love you and miss you and really just wish we could have lived together forever -
ELLEN: It's so sweet that Jack is trying to make me feel better, I must never let him know about my inappropriate feelings!
Anyway, everything comes to a head when Ellen's daughter Penny DOES turn up unexpectedly. Just as predicted, sparks fly between Penny and Troubled Tim, but the biggest significance about Penny's return is that she is 100% genre-savvy and pings the Bachelor Next Door as obviously evil from pretty much the first moment she meets him, and then has to patiently sit down and explain it all to her mother, who's been too busy enjoying her nice new haunted house to beware the approaching plot.
It turns out that the Bachelor Next Door has:
- faked Troubled Tim's animal torturing and delinquency to the entire town since Tim was but a young lad, in order to steal Tim's inheritance
- LIED about the fact that Troubled Tim had already seen child psychology professionals and gotten good counseling! (this is what really convinces Ellen that this dude is a monster)
- faked Ellen's successful fortune-telling by manipulating things in town to come out the way Ellen predicted
- including faking one local teen's college acceptance letter (this is what really convinces ME that this dude is a monster)
- and incited an angry mob of weird cultist townfolk to come and attack the entire household in an effort to murder Tim once and for all!
FORTUNATELY, Ellen's friendly household witch ghost goes and gets Jack (who is conveniently visiting Washington DC at the time), and he drives gallantly up! to the rescue!
...and then gets himself stuck inside the house with everyone else with the angry mob still raving outside instead of successfully rescuing anyone, oops. Fortunately, they all escape through a basement secret passage, which gives the eccentric local homeowner from the very beginning who tried to talk Ellen out of buying the extremely haunted house time to irritably call the cops, and the evil bachelor is conquered with the help of the witch ghost and his convenient ailurophobia -
- did I mention the evil bachelor next door's all-encompassing ailurophobia? His only weakness: HE CAN'T BE IN THE SAME ROOM AS A CAT -
- and finally Jack and Ellen successfully hook up (after deciding to adopt Troubled Tim) and settle down in the very haunted house, because hey, the creepy hanging witch ghost who occasionally possesses Ellen generally seems to mean them nothing but good! And the neighboring cultists aren't all that bad, the ringleaders were arrested and most of them are very embarrassed about what all went down!
....honestly this isn't a decision I would make, but I am impressed with their commitment and I hope the two of them and the friendly hanging witch ghost are very happy together.
Our Heroine, Ellen, is a respectable 38-year-old single mom and has spent the past 15 years keeping house for her daughter and three nephews while hopelessly pining for her tragically widowed brother-in-law. But now the kids are all going off to college, the brother-in-law is going abroad in the diplomatic service, and Ellen is going to BUY HERSELF A HOUSE and LEARN SOME FOREIGN LANGUAGES and DO FANCY COOKING and BE AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN with NO STUPID CRUSHES ON ANYONE.
ELLEN: I am looking for a very picturesque country house where I can, like, knit! Do fancy cooking! Pursue hobbies! Learn how to can things!
AN ECCENTRIC LOCAL HOMEOWNER: I do own a picturesque house, which is for sale, but unfortunately it is very isolated and needs a lot of repair work -
ELLEN: Gorgeous!
AN ECCENTRIC LOCAL HOMEOWNER: - and the townsfolk are all very weird and judgmental and belong to some kind of strange Puritan cult -
ELLEN: Eh, I don't want to hang out much with people anyway.
AN ECCENTRIC LOCAL HOMEOWNER: - and also people say the house is haunted by the ghost of a sixteenth-century witch -
ELLEN: Yes but it's SO PRETTY.
AN ECCENTRIC LOCAL HOMEOWNER: - and honestly I don't think you should buy it? It's not worth it. You seem like a nice lady. Go somewhere better and buy a different, less haunted house.
ELLEN: Please just let me give you money.
So Ellen moves into her house, and quickly makes friends with the cute bachelor next door.
THE BACHELOR NEXT DOOR: Alas! My troubled nephew is the town delinquent! He bullies people and murders animals for fun!
ELLEN: ...has....he seen a child psychologist?
THE BACHELOR NEXT DOOR: .... definitely. Lots. Child psychology coming out his ears.
ELLEN: Because, you know, I've done a lot of work with troubled teens, and I can give you some helpful tips -
THE BACHELOR NEXT DOOR: That's very sweet of you but I'm afraid he's just TOO FAR GONE TO REACH!
Then Ellen actually meets Troubled Tim the Town Delinquent.
ELLEN: oh no, he's hot! .... thank God my teen daughter isn't here or we would have some real Romeo and Juliet nonsense on our hands.
Ellen spends the next hundred pages or so accidentally pissing off all the townsfolk, accidentally predicting the weather, accidentally telling the fortunes of all the town teens, and generally making herself beloved by all. Meanwhile, the ghost of the witch who lived in her house and was killed by an angry mob sometimes hangs creepily from her ceiling at night, and a ghost cat shows up on her doorstep, and every so often when Ellen gets real mad at the townsfolk she starts speaking in tongues. But mostly she's too busy a.) trying to convince the bachelor next door that Troubled Tim really should see another child psychologist and b.) really enjoying doing the kind of fancy cooking she never got a chance to do in a household full of kids to pay attention to all of this!
Occasionally she is interrupted in all these interesting pursuits by nice letters from her brother-in-law Jack.
JACK: Hey Ellen, I love you and miss you and really just wish we could have lived together forever -
ELLEN: It's so sweet that Jack is trying to make me feel better, I must never let him know about my inappropriate feelings!
Anyway, everything comes to a head when Ellen's daughter Penny DOES turn up unexpectedly. Just as predicted, sparks fly between Penny and Troubled Tim, but the biggest significance about Penny's return is that she is 100% genre-savvy and pings the Bachelor Next Door as obviously evil from pretty much the first moment she meets him, and then has to patiently sit down and explain it all to her mother, who's been too busy enjoying her nice new haunted house to beware the approaching plot.
It turns out that the Bachelor Next Door has:
- faked Troubled Tim's animal torturing and delinquency to the entire town since Tim was but a young lad, in order to steal Tim's inheritance
- LIED about the fact that Troubled Tim had already seen child psychology professionals and gotten good counseling! (this is what really convinces Ellen that this dude is a monster)
- faked Ellen's successful fortune-telling by manipulating things in town to come out the way Ellen predicted
- including faking one local teen's college acceptance letter (this is what really convinces ME that this dude is a monster)
- and incited an angry mob of weird cultist townfolk to come and attack the entire household in an effort to murder Tim once and for all!
FORTUNATELY, Ellen's friendly household witch ghost goes and gets Jack (who is conveniently visiting Washington DC at the time), and he drives gallantly up! to the rescue!
...and then gets himself stuck inside the house with everyone else with the angry mob still raving outside instead of successfully rescuing anyone, oops. Fortunately, they all escape through a basement secret passage, which gives the eccentric local homeowner from the very beginning who tried to talk Ellen out of buying the extremely haunted house time to irritably call the cops, and the evil bachelor is conquered with the help of the witch ghost and his convenient ailurophobia -
- did I mention the evil bachelor next door's all-encompassing ailurophobia? His only weakness: HE CAN'T BE IN THE SAME ROOM AS A CAT -
- and finally Jack and Ellen successfully hook up (after deciding to adopt Troubled Tim) and settle down in the very haunted house, because hey, the creepy hanging witch ghost who occasionally possesses Ellen generally seems to mean them nothing but good! And the neighboring cultists aren't all that bad, the ringleaders were arrested and most of them are very embarrassed about what all went down!
....honestly this isn't a decision I would make, but I am impressed with their commitment and I hope the two of them and the friendly hanging witch ghost are very happy together.
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Date: 2018-08-24 05:00 am (UTC)Okay, so am I correctly hearing that this book contains a heroic ghost cat?
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Date: 2018-08-24 09:29 am (UTC)skdfjlsdf;lksdf Sorry, just had one of those "I feel old" moments. Better now.
This book sounds like a Lot.
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Date: 2018-08-25 03:17 pm (UTC)- including faking one local teen's college acceptance letter (this is what really convinces ME that this dude is a monster)
Same!
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Date: 2018-08-25 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2018-08-26 10:18 pm (UTC)