The forest is too quiet. A suffocating quiet that makes you wonder if you lost your hearing, or lost your mind. Nova Scotia has places this still. For now.
page 25
Table of Contents
Why The Witch of Willow Sound?
I first heard about The Witch of Willow Sound from Plant Based Bride aka Elizabeth a while ago, the book resurfaced again when she mentioned it in her August and September reading wrap up video.
When I had first heard about it, I didn’t quite vibe with it but the second time around with the smell of autumn air and falling leaves around me, I thought that a gothic mystery set in rural Nova Scotia fit the season quite perfectly. Additionally, I had never read a book set in rural Nova Scotia before. So I put in a library hold for it in early October and ended up reading it about a month later.
I read a paperback edition (ISBN/UID – 9781770418424) published by ECW Press in September 2025. There are no review or author blurbs on this edition of the book. Notably (for me) is that ECW Press is a Canadian independent publisher based out of Toronto. Always cool to read a book published by a independent publisher.
Let’s get into it.
The Book
The Witch of Willow Sound is a gothic mystery novel starring the down on her luck Phaedra Luck aka Fade who wakes up in a cemetery because she is homeless and likes to sleep in cemeteries because they are peaceful. This book wastes no time setting up the atmosphere – this is a dark, gloomy book set in rural Nova Scotia, in quiet forests and small towns that hold grudges, of places that are on the map but otherwise forgotten by society at large.
The mystery at the core of this book is that Phaedra’s aunt Madeline is missing and Phaedra’s mom wants Fade to go find her and bring her back safe. Madeline lived in the woods, in what is described as a rather cozy cottage, except when Fade gets there it is anything but. Madeline’s gardens are falling apart and so is her cottage. And something about Madeline’s disappearance seems off and Phaedra keeps finding things that don’t make sense.
In addition to being very atmospheric, this book is also very fast-paced. The description on the back cover says as much and I find that the book kept up that fast pace throughout. In very short order, the book introduces its small cast of characters – Madeline the alleged witch, Quill the RCMP officer investigating Madeline’s disappearance, Rita the proprietor of the convenience store in Grand Tea, Dr Nishant Chaudry aka Nish, the nerdy town historian/archivist, and Dinwald H. Davish, the sniveling mayor of Grand Tea.
Grand Tea itself is interesting and a character all on its own. It is a fictional town hamlet in the very real Colchester County in Nova Scotia. The interesting thing about Grand Tea is that the entire village is in the shadow of a massive, looming rock that looks like a teacup (hence Grand Tea) that could tip and crush them all at any time. In addition to that doom literally hanging over them, the townspeople have over the years invented some really quite bizarre lore about the Weird Old Lady (Madeline) who lives in the woods and is allegedly a witch.
The Witch of Willow Sound wears its themes on its sleeve, quite literally since it gives away the primary theme of the book in the description on the back cover. This is a story about family and very pointedly it is also a story about what society does to the people it deems too Weird both now and in the past. More specifically, this is a book about witches who are often women who are cast out of society for being eccentric (read: different in a way that makes the normies uncomfortable).
In contrast to that are Phaedra’s memories of her aunt Madeline who was a kind (and eccentric) woman who loved her tea and was very meticulous about how she lived in her little cottage in the forest away from everyone. Throughout the book, we get “memory” sections where Phaedra recalls her childhood living with her aunt and how much she misses her; this is in fact the primary way we get to learn what Madeline was like as a person.
In Phaedra I also see parallels to her aunt Madeline in the sense that they are both strong willed weird women. Phaedra used to work for the police on child exploitation cases and one day that sort of work (understandably) got to her and she just walked out in what she describes as a fit of dissociation. It is never explicitly stated but Phaedra reads as a person suffering from CPTSD and she is generally avoidant of people and hesitant to trust anyone.
It was beautiful to see her slowly develop a friendship with Nish, the nerdy historian who is very excited to find out more about Madeline and the history of witchcraft in Nova Scotia, who like Phaedra is very isolated from his family (albeit for different reasons). Phaedra slowly starts to thaw over the course of the story and comes to trust Nish and I’ll let Vanessa F. Penney describe a particularly lovely scene.
Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Nova Scotia, I sit beside my friend on the hood of my car. Our dusty boots planted on the bumper, we tear into rose-flavoured bread together and talk and laugh with our mouths full. Snow covers the ground. Evergreens surround us. A path cuts through the snow along the treeline nearby. It looks like the even-edged trail of a toboggan pulled through the snow. The cold winter air swirls with the warm scent of butter and roses.
page 302
As far as the mystery is concerned, it was a pretty good one. I couldn’t quite figure out what was happening with Madeline and her disappearance until the book started putting the pieces together near the end. The investigative sections of the book also felt connected to Phaedra’s character as she explored bits of Madeline and her family’s past through the records that Nish digs up. It all just fit in together quite nicely.
Concluding Thoughts
I enjoyed my time with The Witch of Willow Sound. It had the right balance of spooky atmosphere and mystery with just enough character development to keep things interesting throughout the book. The fast pacing meant that the book never got bogged down in over description like gothic novels are sometimes prone to do.
I am willing to read more from Vanessa F. Penney in the future. Especially if she is going to write more books set in rural Nova Scotia. Along those lines, I would love to read more books set in rural Nova Scotia and rural Canada more broadly. Suggestions welcome. Bonus points if they happen to be mysteries or family dramas.
That’s all from me, see y’all in the next one.
P. S – Phaedra is an…interesting name to pick for a character. The story of Phaedra in Ancient Greek mythology doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the Phaedra in this book so I wonder why it was chosen.
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