Book Review: "The Root Witch" by Debra Castaneda

 

A beautiful forest. A terrifying legend.

It’s 1986. Two strangers, hundreds of miles apart, grapple with disturbing incidents in a one-of-a-kind quaking aspen forest.

Knox is a new Forest Service ranger assigned to a vast, remote territory in Utah.

Sandy is a producer fighting for her place in a tough TV newsroom.

Both have heard about the shadowy figure believed to menace visitors to the forest. When a man disappears and reports of the Root Witch begin coming in, Knox and Sandy are plunged into a living nightmare.

Their lives converge on Halloween. Sandy sends a news crew to investigate the sightings. But when the team goes missing, and a shocking video surfaces revealing the ghastly truth, Knox and Sandy face the biggest decision of their lives.

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This novel is based on a short story, "The Root Witch: An Urban Legend Caught on Tape." - from Booksirens.com

I received this ARC from Booksirens.com at no cost and am providing an unbiased review.

This is a well thought out story, based off  of a short story , about an urban legend. Castaneda had written another book I had read, also based on the similar idea (which I also enjoyed very much). I am not sure if the actual urban legend is set in the area of the US that the author put it, but it sounded/read like it was feasible there. The characters were interesting and fairly well developed. Much of the story I felt you could mach pretty good guesses as to what was going to happen, but the story still moved along at a good pace, and did not just "dump it into your lap" then run off.

Overall, I really enojyed the book, and look for future ones from this author, possibly relating to other urban legends...? After all, it does say 'A Dark Earth Rising novel'.