This is apparently an Amazon Original Story, whatever that means? I knew that it was free and it was a short one, that’s for sure. I’ve read a bunch of Margaret Atwood’s books, so I thought I’d give this one a try, since it was only an hour long. I basically only read kindle books and audiobooks, so my books are measured in hours, not pages!
Our main character is fifteen and growing up in the fifties with a mother who basically claims she’s a witch. She tells our heroine that her dad was turned into the garden gnome in the yard, which the girl talks to regularly. I loved the visual of her as a small child asking the garden gnome for ice cream after her mother said no. “Ask your father”, the mom would say. She’d ask the gnome, and he’d always say yes. It just made me giggle.
The girl has some struggles, because classmates make fun of her witchy mother. Her mother doesn’t help either, as she tells her she must break up with her boyfriend or he’ll die in a car accident. We’re basically back to the Salem witch trials where any single woman or mother is suspect because there isn’t a man in the house. It turns out to be a touching story where the mother was trying to protect the girl and make her feel like a witch was watching over her. We don’t really know if the mom was a witch or not though…