The Near Witch by V. E. Schwab
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The Near Witch

by

V. E. Schwab

(Author)

4.3

-

2,183 ratings


ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S BEST YA OF THE DECADE NEW YORK TIMES bestseller

Brand new edition of Victoria Schwab's long out-of-print, stunning debut.

All-new deluxe edition of an out-of-print gem, containing in-universe short story "The Ash-Born Boy" and a never-before-seen introduction from V.E. Schwab.

The Near Witch is only an old story told to frighten children.

If the wind calls at night, you must not listen. The wind is lonely, and always looking for company.

There are no strangers in the town of Near.

These are the truths that Lexi has heard all her life.

But when an actual stranger, a boy who seems to fade like smoke, appears outside her home on the moor at night, she knows that at least one of these sayings is no longer true.

The next night, the children of Near start disappearing from their beds, and the mysterious boy falls under suspicion.

As the hunt for the children intensifies, so does Lexi's need to know about the witch that just might be more than a bedtime story, about the wind that seems to speak through the walls at night, and about the history of this nameless boy.

Part fairy tale, part love story, Victoria Schwab's debut novel is entirely original yet achingly familiar: a song you heard long ago, a whisper carried by the wind, and a dream you won't soon forget.

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ISBN-10

1789091144

ISBN-13

978-1789091144

Print length

320 pages

Language

English

Publisher

Titan Books

Publication date

January 27, 2020

Dimensions

5.25 x 1 x 8 inches

Item weight

11.5 ounces


Product details

ASIN :

B07L2GGTWW

File size :

2367 KB

Text-to-speech :

Enabled

Screen reader :

Supported

Enhanced typesetting :

Enabled

X-Ray :

Enabled

Word wise :

Enabled


Editorial Reviews

Best YA of the Decade List - Entertainment Weekly

“gorgeous new release” - Entertainment Weekly

“we’re ready for it to come roaring back” - B&N SFF Blog

“If you missed Schwab's debut novel when it first appeared, now's your chance to get on board.” - Kirkus Reviews

“we’re ready for it to come roaring back” - Barnes & Noble Bookseller Picks for March

“Situated in the sweet spot of the supernatural and the melancholy alongside works like The Ocean at the End of the Lane, [The Near Witch] boasts the dark and inviting sensibilities of fairy tales” - Barnes & Noble SFF Blog

“a delicate, yet powerful novel that succeeds equally as either a journey back to the beginning or as a first tumble down the rabbit hole and into your next author obsession” - Barnes & Noble SFF Blog

“an absolutely beautiful story...you can truly see her future works twinkling in the background” 4.5* - mall3tg1rl

"[has] that timeless allure, like a fairy tale or legend you can pick up five, ten, or twenty years from now and still have its setting and mood resonate with readers" - The Bibliosanctum 

 “an entirely unique and original story with an exquisitely painted world and for a debut novel, it’s so well written and well done” - Travel the Shelves

“The prose is beautifully written, and the characters will take residence in your heart” 5* - Her Campus

“The prose is beautifully written, and the characters will take residence in your heart” 5* - Books in the Skye

“the most gorgeous kind of fairytale, yet it feels like the kind of thing that’s just odd enough to be real, and I mean it when I tell you that this was easily one of the best books I’ve read all year, and will undoubtedly go down as one of my favorite books, period” 5* - Howling Libraries

“a modern classic that will undoubtedly be regarded as a masterpiece within its own genre by future generations” - Risingshadow 

“I loved getting to see themes in The Near Witch that I know become staples of her books...If you’ve read and loved other books by Schwab, I highly recommend sitting down with her debut.” - Bookish Staff Picks

“Schwab is truly a talented storyteller...Her characters are so well written that by the time you finish the story you feel as though you know them.” 4* - Misadventures of a Reader 

"A slow but intense gothic romance set in the atmospheric winds of the moors, where a witch’s whisper can just barely be heard" - Buzzfeed

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Sample

INTRODUCTION

Many people long to tell a story.

Say to any group, “I write books,” and at least half will respond that, one day, they plan to write one, too. One day, when they have the time. One day, when they have the focus. Some have even started, though few have gotten past the first chapter, or the third, or the fifth.

This isn’t meant as a judgment (the world needs far more readers than writers). I only mean to say that it is no small feat, to write a book. And if you want anyone to read said book, The End is only the beginning. Next, if one has opted to participate in traditional publishing, one must find an agent, a publisher. Then comes revision, sometimes one round, sometimes half a dozen, all to ready the text for an audience, to earn that place on the shelves of a bookstore, and then, a reader’s home.

With so many obstacles between the first flutter of an aspiring author’s imagination and the final product, few stories get to live even a single life on shelves.

Almost none get to live two.

But The Near Witch has been afforded that luxury.

This is the book that, for me, began everything. It wasn’t the first one I wrote—that dubious honor belongs to the plot-less, acid trip of a story I created when I was nineteen and simply longed to discover if I was capable of holding a story in my head for more than a dozen pages, capable of finding The End.

But The Near Witch is the first book that found its way to shelves, to readers.

This, for those who don’t know, is a book about magic.

It is also a book about fear.

Specifically, about the fear of the inside toward the outside, the antagonism between those who belong, and those who don’t. Little did I know then that it would become a theme so central to my work. That all my stories, from A Darker Shade of Magic to Vicious, The Archived to This Savage Song, would center on those who felt lost inside their own worlds, or found inside someone else’s. But at twenty-one, as a second-semester senior at university, stealing hours in a coffee shop each night to write, and as a young adult on the cusp of graduation, and the unknown of life beyond school, I felt pressed between two chapters of my own life, and as if I belonged to neither.

That is the world in which this book was written.

It began with a crack, and a sputter, and a spark.

Those are the opening words of the book, but they could just as easily apply to my career as an author. The Near Witch was a small book, quiet and strange at a time when everything that sold well was loud and vaguely familiar, and though I tried to shield the fragile candle of its life, it was only a matter of time before the wind of publishing blew through, and snuffed it out.

Fortunately, my own flame was more resilient. I kept writing, kept publishing, kept bolstering the fire until it burned hot enough that the seasonal gusts of this wonderful, but fickle industry served to stoke the fire instead of quash it.

Over the next seven years, I wrote fourteen novels. With each one, the readership grew, the books found their audience, a little more with every release, and as the years passed, people began to ask about that first story.

The spark that started the fire.

It is bittersweet, to see a story wanted so long after it was gone, but I harbored a stubborn hope that one day, it would find its way back. Some part of me has been sheltering that matchstick ever since the flame went out.

And here we are.

Back at the beginning.

1

It starts with a crack, a sputter, and a spark. The match hisses to life.

“Please,” comes the small voice behind me.

“It’s late, Wren,” I say. The fire chews on the wooden stem in my hand. I touch the match to each of the three candles gathered on the low chest by the window. “It’s time for bed.”

With the candles all lit, I shake the match and the flame dies, leaving a trail of smoke that curls up against the darkened glass.

Everything seems different at night. Defined. Beyond the window, the world is full of shadows, all pressed together in harsh relief, somehow sharper than they ever were in daylight.

Sounds seem sharper, too, at night. A whistle. A crack. A child’s whisper.

“Just one more,” she pleads, hugging the covers close. I sigh, my back to my little sister, and run my fingers over the tops of the books stacked beside the candles. I feel myself bending.

“It can be a very short one,” she says.

My hand rests against an old green book as the wind hums against the house.

“All right.” I cannot deny my sister anything, it seems. “Just one,” I add, turning back to the bed.

Wren sighs happily against her pillow, and I slip down beside her.

The candles paint pictures of light on the walls of our room. I take a deep breath.

“The wind on the moors is a tricky thing,” I begin, and Wren’s small body sinks deeper into the bed. I imagine she is listening more to the highs and lows of my voice than the words themselves. We both know the words by heart anyway—I from my father, and Wren from me.

“Of every aspect of the moor, the earth and stone and rain and fire, the wind is the strongest one in Near. Here on the outskirts of the village, the wind is always pressing close, making windows groan. It whispers and it howls and it sings. It can bend its voice and cast it into any shape, long and thin enough to slide beneath the door, stout enough to seem a thing of weight and breath and bone.

“The wind was here when you were born, when I was born, when our house was built, when the Council was formed, and even when the Near Witch lived,” I say with a quiet smile, the way my father always did, because this is where the story starts.

“Long, long ago, the Near Witch lived in a small house on the farthest edge of the village, and she used to sing the hills to sleep.”

Wren pulls the covers up.

“She was very old and very young, depending on which way she turned her head, for no one knows the age of witches. The moor streams were her blood and the moor grass was her skin, and her smile was kind and sharp at once, like the moon in the black, black night…”

I hardly ever get to the end of the story. Soon enough Wren is a pile of blankets and quiet breath, shifting in her heavy dreams beside me. The three candles are still burning on the chest, leaning into one another, dripping and pooling on the wood.

Wren is afraid of the dark. I used to leave the candles lit all night, but she falls asleep so fast, and if she does wake, she often finds her way, eyes closed, into our mother’s room. Now I tend to stay up until she’s drifted off, and then blow the candles out. No need to waste them, or set the house on fire. I slide from the bed, my bare feet settling on the old wood floor.

When I reach the candles, my eyes wander down to the puddles of wax, dotted with tiny fingerprints where Wren likes to stand on her tiptoes and draw patterns in the pools while the wax is warm. I brush my own fingers over them absently, when something, a sliver of movement, draws my eyes up to the window. There’s nothing there. Outside, the night is still and streaked with silver threads of light, and the wind is breathing against the glass, a wobbling hum that causes the old wooden frame to groan.

My fingertips drift up from the wax to the windowsill, feeling the wind through the walls of our house. It’s getting stronger.

When I was small, the wind sang me lullabies. Lilting, humming, high-pitched things, filling the space around me so that even when all seemed quiet, it wasn’t. This is a wind I have lived with.

But tonight it’s different. As if there’s a new thread of music woven in, lower and sadder than the rest. Our house sits at the northern edge of the village of Near, and beyond the weathered glass the moor rolls away like a spool of fabric: hill after hill of wild grass, dotted by rocks, and a rare river or two. There is no end in sight, and the world seems painted in black and white, crisp and still. A few trees jut out of the earth amid the rocks and weeds, but even in this wind it is all strangely static. But I’d swear I saw—

Again something moves.

This time my eyes are keen enough to catch it. At the edge of our yard, the invisible line where the village ends and the moor picks up, a shape moves against the painted night. A shadow twitches and steps forward, catching a slice of moonlight.

I squint, pressing my hands against the cool glass. The shape is a body, but drawn too thin, like the wind is pulling at it, tugging slivers away. The moonlight cuts across the front of the form, over fabric and skin, a throat, a jaw, a cheekbone.

There are no strangers in the town of Near. I have seen every face a thousand times. But not this one.

The figure just stands there, looking out to the side. And yet, he is not all there. There is something in the way the cool blue-white moon lights his face that makes me think I could brush my fingers right through it. His form is smudged at the edges, blurring into the night on either side, as if he’s moving very fast, but it must be the weathered glass, because he’s not moving at all. He is just standing there, looking at nothing.

The candles flicker beside me, and on the moor, the wind picks up and the stranger’s body seems to ripple, fade. Before I know it, I am pressing myself against the window, reaching for the latch to throw it open, to speak, to call the form back, when he moves. He turns his face toward the house and the window, and toward me.

I catch my breath as the stranger’s eyes find mine. Eyes as dark as river stones and yet somehow shining, soaking up moonlight. Eyes that widen a fraction as they meet my own. A single, long, unblinking look. And then in an instant the stranger seems to break apart, a sharp gust of wind tears through, and the shutters slam closed against the glass.

The sound wakes Wren, who mumbles and peels her half-sleeping form from between the sheets, stumbling through the moonlit room. She doesn’t even see me standing at the window, staring at the wooden slats that have blotted out the stranger and the moor. I hear her pad across the threshold, slide open our mother’s door, and disappear within. The room is suddenly quiet. I pry the window open, the wood protesting as it drags against itself, and throw the shutters back.

The stranger is gone.

I feel like there should be a mark in the air where he was wiped away. But there is no trace. No matter how much I stare, there is nothing but trees, and rocks, and rolling hills.

I stare out at this empty landscape, and it seems impossible that I saw him, saw anyone. After all, there are no strangers in the town of Near. There haven’t been since long ago, before I was born, before the house was built, before the Council… And he didn’t even seem real, didn’t seem there. I rub my eyes, and realize I’ve been holding my breath.

I use the air to blow the candles out.

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About the authors

V. E. Schwab

V. E. Schwab

VICTORIA “V. E.” SCHWAB is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including the acclaimed Shades of Magic series, the Villains series, the Cassidy Blake series and the international bestseller The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. Her work has received critical acclaim, translated into over two dozen languages, and optioned for television and film. First Kill – a YA vampire series based on Schwab’s short story of the same name – is currently in the works at Netflix with Emma Roberts’ Belletrist Productions producing. When she's not haunting Paris streets or trudging up English hillsides, she lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is usually tucked in the corner of a coffee shop, dreaming up monsters.

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Reviews

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

2,183 global ratings

Church

Church

5

Loved it

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2024

Verified Purchase

Another creative story by an amazing author.

K. J. Avila

K. J. Avila

5

If you're a fan of fairy tales, then this should definitely be your next read!

Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2019

Verified Purchase

My first encounter with V.E. Schwab's work was her Shades of Magic series, and I immediately fell in love. So when I heard that her out-of-print debut was around the corner, I didn't hesitate to hit that pre-order button. I knew I was in for a treat and I was not disappointed!

As the blurb says, this story is part fairy tale and part love story. The narrative centers around a young woman who lives in a small town, trapped by the expectations of the men around her, but aching to follow in her late father's footsteps. She's wise beyond her years, and living in that special point of adolescence/young adulthood where she hovers between relating to children and wanting to be an adult, taken seriously by her seniors. Add to that that the men in her life are dismissive of her ideas on the basis of her needing to stay in her place as a girl, and that makes for a great heroine with a righteous rebellious streak. Lexi doesn't care what rules she has to break if it means saving the people she cares about.

The world of this book is one I didn't want to leave. Its mythos, while simple, was so well-developed and immersive that it felt like it could be real. My favorite kind of fantasy is the kind that feels like it could be happening in real life, and fairy tales that manage to spin magic with a touch of realism are my kryptonite. It made me wish the story was longer, if only so I could spend more time in that world.

I think my favorite part of the story, however, was how the character that should have been the prince in shining armor was more of a damsel in distress. Lexi was very much in command, and though she had many forces acting against her, she never really needed saving, or felt helpless, and was fully capable of kicking ass and doing what needed doing. Cole, on the other hand, while valiant and brave, played more of the role of the person that needed saving. This story had the familiarity of a fairy tale, but has a unique spin to it I wasn't expecting.

All in all, if you're a fan of fairy tales (think Holly Black's work), then this should definitely be your next read!

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18 people found this helpful

MAP

MAP

5

A hauntingly beautiful tale

Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2019

Verified Purchase

Lexi Harris lives in the village of Near. Secluded in the vast stretches of the moor, Near and its residents live a quiet, if mundane, existence. That is until a strange, ethereal boy arrives in town. As young children begin to go missing in the middle of the night, the outsider is blamed, but Lexi is convinced a dark, older, more nefarious entity is behind the disappearances: The Near Witch. A story filled with magic, love, and heart, VE Schwab's THE NEAR WITCH is an absolutely beautiful read.

I will always freely admit i am a massive VE Schwab fan. THE NEAR WITCH seems different than her other works. As her first novel, THE NEAR WITCH is smaller, a more intimate story. Her characters don't quite have the complexity she is now known for, but you can see the beginnings of everything to come. Lexi is stubborn and filled with angst and conviction. She's the character you want to root for. Cole's mystery is what seems compelling. The love story is alright, but it is secondary to the overall conflict.

There are many themes throughout: family, love, acceptance, isolation. Everything is brought together well but unexceptionally.

What truly sets this book apart is the absolutely gorgeous writing and amazing setting/atmosphere. Schwab has a lyrical storytelling quality that makes you feel the grass of the moors at your feet, see the wind blown trees, and connect with the natural rhythm and beauty of Near just like Lexi does. This has become one of my favorite books for the writing alone.

THE NEAR WITCH is one of those hauntingly beautiful books you should crack open on a blustery, rainy night. It is subtle, quiet, and unimposing, but settles around you like a comfortable blanket. There is something familiar in the tale of witches and young love that makes this simple story a treat to experience. I have a feeling I'm going to read this book again and again.

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28 people found this helpful

L. L.

L. L.

5

The Near witch, set in the town of Near

Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2023

Verified Purchase

This was a true surprise, by a gifted writer. I found I really loved this book, loved the lead characters, and loved the sister witches that were not "wicked at all" but helpful. A mysterious young man arrives one night, and happens on Near as children are missing.. Is the long dead Near back to punish these men who chose to murder her, falsely blaming her for missing children a century ago, that she's not guilty of taking back then, or is she's just looking for peace and a respectful burial..Can they get her bones be found in time before another innocent victim is killed by these men that feel they'll never get their kids back, and now want to hurt a strange but sweet, innocent young man with his own past traumas. The characters are loveable, but in Near only the women seem wise, but exist at a time when men rule by brute force and thick headedness.. Does Lexi get help before it's too late and get back the stolen children...You'll devour this book in two nights, I did. I hope there's a sequel. I love this authors work. I promise you'll love this one too. The end of this book has a short story that is some of the best writing I have read in years. I was riveted and my heart beat as it wrapped up explaining who Cole is. His story deserves a book in itself..You can start at the end and then read again. Amazing writing. Every sentence of "Cole's'" story is breathtaking.

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2 people found this helpful

Beguiled By Books

Beguiled By Books

5

Underrated book!

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2023

Verified Purchase

Sometimes, when you fall in love with a book, you wonder if it’s the book itself or the author. After reading The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, I wanted to read more by V.E. Schwab. After a quick search and social media follows, I read Schwab’s first published book, The Near Witch.

The Near Witch is a lovely story about magic and witches and family, trust, and judgment. I loved how the story captures you and takes you to the moors. There’s enough detail about all the right things and enough ambiguity where there needs to be as well. I read the book quickly because, like Addie LaRue, you’re focused on the character and what she does and experiences. Schwab doesn’t bog you down with overly descriptive passages about things that don’t matter.

The Near Witch tells the tale of Lexi Harris in her small community called Near. Everyone knows everyone, so when a mysterious stranger enters their town, and unexplainable things happen, the best – and the worst – is brought out within the community.

This is one of those underrated books that, I hope, stands the test of time. The themes within it are present today in fear of the unknown, fear of strangers, fear of different beliefs, and fear of change. Be kind and be curious, but don’t assume malice before proof.

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15 people found this helpful

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