The Bane Witch by Ava Morgyn
Fantasy
March 18, 2025 by St. Martin’s Griffin

Review by Angela

Before I get to the review, I want to list the content warnings up front because there are so many.

Content Warnings- domestic violence, rape, physical assault, attempted sexual assault, murder, blood, gore, kidnapping, and suicide.

I first discovered this author in 2023 when her debut, The Witches of Bone Hill, released. I enjoyed it quite a bit, so when her sophomore novel came available for review, I snatched it up right away. I’m helpless against anything described as a cross between Practical Magic and Gone Girl.

The opening chapter grabbed my attention almost immediately. I had intended to read only a chapter or so and then head to bed. Instead, I found myself flipping pages as quickly as possible until I was about 20% in and realized it was way past my bedtime. This book starts out with the main protagonist, Piers Corbin, carrying through with a plan to fake her own death in order to escape her abusive, monstrous husband. The first seven or so chapters are her making her desperate escape, travelling across the country with little money and no resources, toward the home of her estranged aunt. She changes her appearance, and avoids cameras, but keeps finding herself in dangerous and impossible situations. There are flashback scenes of her violent life with her husband and several incidents as a girl that foreshadow her real identity. It was so compelling that I could not stop reading.

Then she finally arrives in Crow Lake, to the home of her aunt Myrtle, and can finally stop running. But this is when she discovers why she has such a pull toward poisonous plants. She’s a bane witch, and her birthright is consuming these plants and then using her magic to purge the world of wicked, evildoing men. She’s introduced to likeminded women who are part of her extended “family” and is given an ultimatum to which she has no choice but abide.

From there the chapters start to move between the police investigating her disappearance, and her in Crow Lake. I can see why it was compared to Gone Girl. Piers, now going by a different name and a fictional identity, has to learn everything she can about her magic, while planning her next mark, and keeping the local sheriff at bay. The entire book is a fast-paced adventure, with brutal scenes of poisonous murders, Piers basically fighting for her life to learn all she can about her craft and tracking the local serial killer and tiptoeing around a forming attachment to the sheriff. I was invested and even though what the ending would inevitably be became clear to me by around the 70% mark, I couldn’t wait to see how Piers would achieve her goals.

This is two books I’ve read by this author and enjoyed, I look forward to reading more.

Grae- B