Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales

Quick & Dirty: Past lives intertwined in the modern day. Can a witch and a priest find love and fulfill her destiny?

Opening Sentence: “Dammit straight to hell, I was being sacrificed again.”

The Review:

Indy is a lapsed Wiccan who has been having the same nightmare every night, except lately she has been waking up with rope marks on her wrists and the dreams are getting worse. She pays a visit to her former coven leader Rayna. The coven tries to help her figure out what is going on, except things only get weirder after she meets Tomas, aka Father Tomas of Gnostic sect… Everyone is hiding things from her and as she struggles to remember what happened in her past life, will she be able to fulfill the destiny she was born into.

Tomas has been training for years to stop the warrior witches and the demon they have sworn to release, he believes Indy is one of these witches, but doesn’t believe she means to do harm. Will they be able to unravel the truth before it’s too late? Will he be able to stop himself from killing the woman he loves?

I admit that when I see demons I cringe a little on the inside, I have found very few books dealing with angels or demons that I truly enjoy. However, I can’t reveal anything do to spoilers but I liked that twist at the end! This was a good read. I like Indy. She was clearly struggling to figure out what and who she was in the past, and to remember and worried about repeating mistakes. I wasn’t that impressed with the priest being her love interest, but it turned out he didn’t actually finish seminary school and wasn’t officially ordained, so once I read that I was pretty okay with it.

I think Tomas struggled a great deal with his faith, what he had been taught and his feelings for Indy. This book is a slow burn romance, it’s not hot heavy and often plays a backseat to the main story. Which I enjoyed, and the mystery and the little twists were good. It was different and a good read!

Notable Scene:

“Difficult for him to believe she was one of the three witches whose souls were allegedly bound to a demon. And that was only a small part of what was unbelievable about all of this.

Dom had warned him repeatedly these chosen witches were cagey and clever, and might not be aware of their mission, but that he must always presume they were and guard against their tricks.

They were powerful women, all three of them. They would sense a man’s weakness and use it against him.”

FTC Advisory: MIRA/Harlequin provided me with a copy of Mark of the Witch. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review. ( )

Between 3 ½ and 4 Stars... I have to think a bit longer about it. ( )

3.5 stars ( )

More reviews at: http://www.onstarshipsanddragonwings.com/2012/12/06/mark-of-the-witch/

A witch and a priest must team up to defeat a demon, at least that’s what some crazy prophecy claims. But Indy decided she wasn’t into that whole Wicca thing anymore, and Tomas isn’t sure that the priesthood is for him… but other than that the prophecy is totally, 100% accurate… right?? Mark of the Witch brings the urban back to urban fantasy with a world that is nearly our own, but nothing is what it seems, and you won’t believe where they end up.
Thank you to Netgalley and Harlequin MIRA for providing me with a review copy of Mark of the Witch :D. I have to say that the beginning of this book was not what I expected, and I didn’t much like it, but then the end was even more not what I expected and I totally loved it! So my major advice is even if you aren’t thrilled with where things start, keep going because they get freaking awesome!

Title: Mark of the Witch
Author: Maggie Shayne
Pages: 394 paperback
Genre-ish: Urban fantasy, emphasis on the urban
Rating: ★★★★☆ - shaky start, strong finish
A lapsed Wiccan, Indira Simon doesn’t believe in magic anymore. But when strange dreams of being sacrificed to an ancient Babylonian god have her waking up with real rope burns on her wrists, she’s forced to acknowledge that she may have been too hasty in her rejection of the unknown. Then she meets mysterious and handsome Father Tomas. Emerging from the secrecy of an obscure Gnostic sect, he arrives with stories of a demon, a trio of warrior witches-and Indira’s sacred calling. Yet there’s something even Tomas doesn’t know, an inescapable truth that will force him to choose between saving the life of the woman he’s come to love-and saving the world. – Goodreads

Strengths:
I totally did not see those twists coming! Urban fantasy stories often have the problem of being fairly predictable. Mark of the Witch did not have this problem :D.
The main relationship and the characters grew and developed a lot during Mark of the Witch and got so much better, which was a relief ;-).
Trust me on this: the plot makes much more sense as it goes and all will become (mostly) clear.
I enjoy examples of Wiccans in stories and Mark of the Witch pulls it off pretty darn well, especially the real magic part :D.
Weaknesses:
The plot started off pretty darn confusing! It was kind of supposed to be that way, but it’s freaking annoying not to know what the goal of the book is….
At least in the version I had, there were shifts from first person to third person narration with absolutely no warning. Most of the time I could figure it out, but what the heck??
I was not a fan of Indy’s early characterization, she just rubbed me the wrong way which made the first part of Mark of the Witch pretty rough.
I’m still not completely convinced all of the past life events line up logically in Mark of the Witch with the way things were supposed to work, which bothers me a lot. Once I’m done with the big reveal, I should probably understand how the major events worked all pretty like right??
Summary:
While there were parts of the magic and plot events that confused me a lot, I enjoyed Mark of the Witch for what it was: a fun and refreshing urban fantasy. Once the plot got going, I grew to like the characters and their budding relationship a lot more, and started understanding what was going on with the plot and the “big bad” better. What it comes down to is that you might have trouble starting Mark of the Witch, but if you can get through the first third, I think you’ll enjoy where it goes from there. ( )

Slow moving weird ending. The plot seemed very contrived. Full of streotypes I can't believe she has so many published works. Bad ( )