I struggled to stay interested and engaged. Things just moved really slow, there were no surprises, and the whole thing was pretty boring.

Overall this book did an okay job of tying up the series but I didn’t love it. Everything is tied up in a decent way but there were no surprises. It was okay but pretty boring and not nearly as intriguing or exciting as the first two books. Most of this was politics and investigation. There wasn’t much time spent with interesting creatures or in the old woods. Nothing much really happens until the second half of the book when Wyn’s grandmother is abducted. The first half of this book involves Arianwyn getting back to Lull, dealing with her father, and helping the town of Lull with Yule preparations. The story moves really slow and nothing even really happens until the middle of the book. This is the third and final book in The Apprentice Witch series and I thought it was the weakest of the series. What really makes a witch come true? Our lovable heroine is about to find out …”

But when Arianwyn’s grandmother is abducted by the traitor on the Council, our witch faces her greatest challenge yet. Her day-to-day work as Lull’s witch is tricky enough: winter has set in, bringing bad weather, ice imps and befuddling Yule traditions. “The war is over and Arianwyn has discovered the secret of the quiet glyphs, but her troubles are far from over. They remain relevant.Stand Alone or Series: 3rd book in The Apprentice Witch series These are themes I still remember being struck by when I read the Enid Blyton school stories some forty years ago. The code of friendship is always hard to understand but especially so when it is being manipulated by someone you can’t trust. But although Arianwyn is out of the schoolroom some of the classic school book themes are still there and why not? They never really go away – competing friendships and the horrible complications when you know that someone has lied and cheated.

For the most part the adults are either not there (a father fighting battles in Veersland, a grandmother whose love is reliable but whose presence is not and whose strength is beginning to wane) or a bit useless ( Mayor Belcher). These are adult responsibilities, especially in what is, for all the warmth of some of the description, a complicated and threatened world. And being a witch in this story means taking care of oneself and of others – it means having a whole town dependent on you for protection. Arianwyn can’t be allowed to be a little girl anymore, it’s time for her to become a witch. Arianwyn to triumph has to get her insecurities out of the way ‘The darkness was her own doubt, her own fear and her own loneliness’, she has to become confident about her own abilities. But as well as being a delicious witch-in-training story this novel has a strong message, ‘Fear is with us all at some time or other.

The apprentice witch