The House Witch by Delemhach is described as a humorous and heartwarming mix of fantasy, mystery, and romance, following a witch with domestic (rather than mighty) powers and the royal household to whom he serves dinner.
It sounds utterly adorable.
Sadly I DNF’ed this book somewhere around 40%.
Delemhach The House Witch Book Review
The cover art is adorably gorgeous and what first made me want to read this.
The description / synopsis sounded great, too. I don’t need a book to be epic or full of saving-the-world quests in order to enjoy it. Low-stake, cozy fantasies can be great, too!
…But I still expect for SOMETHING to happen to advance the plot, and—unfortunately—I just felt like not much at all happened in this book. I kept trying to read further, thinking that it would get better soon or that more would happen in the plot soon, but it was so slow-paced that eventually I lost interest and gave up.
Even the descriptions of the food were boring to me. Normally I love reading descriptions of food in fantasy settings, but the food in this book was basically just real food that exists in the real world, so there was nothing exciting or appealing about it.
It was also a bit jarring how the author associated particular real-world ethnic foods with particular fantasy races in the book. One particular made-up fantasy country was known for eating kimchi, which is a distinctly Korean dish, so after that point I just began to view that fantasy country and its people as Koreans instead of as the make-believe country and race that the author had created for this book. It was just really weird for me that the author took the time to create multiple countries and races but then didn’t take any time to create unique, original foods for them. Every single time I read about kimchi or bulgogi, my brain refused to believe I was in a fantasy world and kept dragging me back to the real world.
If the romance in the book had been amazing, then I still would have been able to look past all these other little things and enjoy the book solely for the romance. But unfortunately even the romance was unappealing to me. I was just bored by it.
I really really really wanted to love this book. I’d been expecting a cozy read, but sadly this just put me to sleep.
2 stars for trying. Sorry to everyone who loves this book.
The House Witch Review Originally Written on April 20, 2023
Leave a Reply