jacey | Booklog 94/2025: Sarah Painter: The Ward Witch – Unholy Island #1

Audiobook read by Katie Villa.

Luke Taylor has been looking for his missing twin brother for eighteen months with no success. A vague clue leads him to Unholy Island, a little further off the Northumbrian coast than Lindisfarne, and accessible only by a causeway at low tide. The locals, all with their own secrets, don’t like tourists and the island itself usually ensures that visitors spend no more than two nights there, but Luke is determined to stay longer and – surprise – the island lets him. He stays at Esme Gray’s B&B. Esme, who has run away from a troubled past with a controlling partner, is the island’s ward witch. She’s drawn to Luke, but still very wary of him. When Luke finds one of the villagers dead on the shore, suspicion falls on him, though Esme doesn’t believe he’s guilty. Gradually the truth is revealed, and Luke finds himself accepted by the suspicious islanders. This is set in the same world as Sarah Painter’s Crow Investigations books, which I very much enjoyed, but it’s a completely new sequence and can be read without having read the Crow books. Nicely read by Katie Villa