Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

Ratings Explanation

Language:  There are a few instances of mild swearing and a few references to swearing.  “He cursed, she cursed…”

Violence:  Children go missing during the night with no trace.  A story is told of a witch who was dragged from her home and brutally killed.  Lexi’s father is crushed in a landslide and dies 3 days later.  Someone is shot.  Lexi and Cole dig up bones of the dead witch.  Lexi shoots a bird that disintegrates.  Some children are buried underground.

Sexual Content:  There is some kissing throughout the book.

Adult Themes:  Lexi continually sneaks out of her house and lies to adults.

Synopsis

Lexi has heard the stories of the Near Witch her whole life.  “If the wind calls at night, you must not listen.  The wind is lonely, and always looking for company.”  So on a windy night when Lexi looks to the moor outside her home and sees a boy who fades into the wind, she knows that a stranger has entered her town, but  this cannot be right because she’s always been told “there are no strangers in the town of Near.”

Starting the next night, the children of Near begin to disappear without a trace.  The suspicious stranger is at the heart of accusations and the hunt is on to find him.  Lexi desperately believes the stranger is innocent and determines to find the children and the answers that just might lie in the stories her father always told.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  The writing was just beautiful and I was carried into the world of Near.  I had a clear visual picture in my head of the people and the places even though the book took on a sort of dream like quality to me.  This YA book was part ghost story, part romance and yet sort of felt like a fairy tale too.  Here are a couple of my favorite lines from the book:

“Fear is a strange thing.  It has the power to make people close their eyes, turn away.  Nothing good grows out of fear.”

“Maybe one day the words will pour out like so many others, easy and smooth and on their own.  Right now they take pieces of me with them.”