Shea Ernshaw’s Winterwood is a lush and haunting winter tale

Shea Ernshaw’s Winterwood is a dark, haunting romance with everything from a family of witches and a mystical forest to a mystery surrounding a missing boy.

Shea Ernshaw’s Winterwood may be only the author’s second novel, but the story has a richness, depth and maturity that will likely surprise many readers.

The haunting tale of a long line of witches and the mysterious woods they inhabit is dark and compelling, laced through with some genuine scares, an intriguing family history and a love story that somehow feels both magical and grounded.

In the town of Fir Haven, the Walker women have always had something of a notorious history. Their longstanding connection with the dark, mysterious woods that surround the town have caused the locals to give the family a wide berth for generations. Those woods are haunted, people say. But Nora and her family know better – the woods are merely alive. And she, like her ancestors before her, can find things that go missing in them.

It’s Nora’s mysterious connection with the Wicker Woods leads her to discover a boy named Oliver Huntsman at their center, the same local teen who went missing from the Jackjaw Camp for Wayward Boys two weeks prior. He disappeared during one of the worst storms in years, and by all rights, should probably be dead. But he isn’t, and instead, he turns up in the Walker family’s woods, another found object. Albeit one with no memory.

What happened to Oliver? Why can’t he remember the past two weeks? And who else went missing on that fateful night?

If you’ve read Ernshaw’s earlier novel The Wicked Deep, some of the atmosphere of this novel will probably seem familiar to you. Winterwood has a similarly lush feel, with descriptions that can feel almost dreamlike at times. The writing is rich and detailed, bringing the town of Fir Haven to realistic life – you can almost feel the snow on your fingertips! – while simultaneously introducing readers to the history of the Walker women and the strange woods that appear to give them their power.

(The “Forest Magic” interludes, which provide both herbal recipes to cure various problems and brief histories of the Walker women who came before Nora, are particularly brilliant.)

As heroines go, Nora Walker is extremely easy to like. Smart, thoughtful and eminently capable, she’s nevertheless isolated due to her family legacy and the cruel way the resident of Fir Haven react to the very name “Walker”. Nora isn’t particularly powerful, magically speaking – her “nightshade” has yet to manifest itself, so she doesn’t know what particular ability she possesses. (Her grandmother, for instance, could dream walk; her mother can calm honey bees.) But Nora is tremendously brave, willing to risk herself to protect others and dedicated to discovering the truth about Oliver’s missing past. She’s kind and determined, and though she wrestles with plenty of self-doubt – both about her family’s legacy as well as her place within it its history – she doesn’t let her anxiety define her.

Oliver, for his part, spends a big chunk of the novel as an ethereal idea of a boy – someone with no past, and no easily identifiable future. He finds himself drawn to Nora for reasons neither of them entirely understands, but their tentative friendship-turned-something more progresses in a way that feels both genuine and sweet. Things grow more complicated between them as bits and pieces of Oliver’s memory return, including the question of what happened to a boy named Max, who also disappeared during the snowstorm. As Nora learns more about Max – and the things that are going on across the lake at the Jackjaw Camp for Wayward Boys – the story takes a much darker turn.

Are there some lost things that should perhaps stay that way?

Over the course of Winterwood, Nora Walker discovers not only who she is and what she’s capable of, but she also learns just how many of those family stories about the woods are true. The story is mysterious and twisty, with at least one gasp out loud moment toward the end, and you’ll find the novel hard to put down. Because the things we love never really leave us. They just might come back to us in a way we never expected.

Winterwood is available now.