Truthwitch by Susan Dennard had been on my wishlist for quite a while and almost a year ago I finally added it to my collection. After that it still took me a while to actually pick it up even though I heard so many good things about it. BUT this winter, I finally picked it up for a buddy read with my friend Willemijn. Today I’ll tell you all about it!

Cover

While I usually don’t like people on covers, I quite like this one! I love the outfit the girl is wearing a lot and the whole cover has something mysterious. The girl looks pretty badass and that bodes well for the story! After reading the book I think it fit well.

Plot

I don’t want to say too much about the actual plot of the book, I personally like going into fantasy novels without knowing too much. I knew this book was about two girls with a great friendship, one of them being a truthwitch, something that has to be kept a secret. It took me a while to get into the story, you get thrown into the world of the witchlands and nothing is really explained right away. I was quite confused at first, the characters use words that we don’t know and at first you kinda have to guess what they mean. While I really dislike info dumps where everything is explained, this time around I would have liked some explanations. At the same time I really enjoyed just being immersed in the world and after a while you understand everything.

The book and the plot had such a fantasy feel to it, if you know what I mean. The world gets bigger and bigger while reading and there were a couple of plot twists I DID NOT SEE COMING. Those are the best kind of twists and I love whenever that happens. All in all I really enjoyed the plot.

“he was pleased to find he’d left a trail of muddy boot-prints throughout the house. Sometimes justice was all about the small victories.”

Characters

The characters and their interactions are probably what made the book so amazing. Everyone has been talking about the female friendship that’s at the center of the story. Safi and Iseult are pretty much the main characters but I would also count Merik and Aeduan as main characters.

Safi is a great main character and while I don’t necessarily relate to her I really enjoyed reading about her. She has a great hart and as I mentioned her friendship with Iseult is amazing, I really want a threadsister as well <3 I loved Iseult, I could relate to her a lot more and liked her diversity. The diversity in this book is pretty good in general! Iseult doubts herself a lot and doesn’t know how great she is yet. She’s super loyal and I like the development she’s going through.

“I hate this. Both the storm and the plan. Why does it have to be ‘we’? Why not just me?”
“Because ‘just me’ isn’t who we are,” Iseult hollered back. “I’ll always follow you, Safi, and you’ll always follow me. Threadsisters to the end.”

Merik is another amazing character, I really enjoyed getting to know him. He’s such a good guy and wants to do good for his people. He would do anything for them and that inspires loyalty. I loved his banter with Safi and can’t wait to read more about him. Aeduan is quite different from Merik and I have a feeling he will be an antihero. He starts out as a bit of a villain or a bad guy but right away you can tell there’s more to him than just that. He already is going through a development and I can only imagine how that is going to go on throughout the next installments.

“Oh, the Bloodwitch named Aeduan was no longer bored. No longer bored at all. And now he had work to do.”

Than there are a couple of supporting characters and I enjoyed them a lot. I would like to get to know them better and hope we’ll get to see more of them in the next books.

Worldbuilding

 I absolutely adored this world. As I said there were some words in the book that are specific to this world and you can tell that Susan put a lot of thought in this world. The world is really well developed and you can just tell that there is more for us to discover. I enjoyed reading about the Witchlands so so much and got that warm and fuzzy feeling that tells me this series will be another favorite.

“Initiate. Complete.”

Have you read this book yet? What did you think? And who’s your favorite?!