How to Hang a Witch by Adriana Mather
It is no secret that I am incredibly fascinated by the Salem Witch Trials. Even better is when you get to read a work of fiction written by a descendant of someone involved with the trials. In this case, the author is a descendant of Cotton Mather, who wrote materials on how to determine if someone was a witch or not.
This has been described as Mean Girls meets the Salem Witch Trials, and that is not so far from the truth, except this time it is the descendants of the accused witches who are the bullies.
Samantha Mather has spent most of her life in New York City with her father and stepmother, Vivian. Recently, Sam's father fell into a coma, and he was being moved to a hospital in Boston because it was too expensive to keep living in New York with the bills mounting up. So, Sam and Vivian move to Sam's deceased grandmother's house in Salem to be closer to her father.
Things don't go so great for Sam. In the first week of school, she has earned the enmity of The Descendants--the girls and guy who are descended from the accused witches--because she is a Mather, who was partly to blame for the Witch Trials. It doesn't help that people started dying when Sam came to town.
As it turns out, there is a curse that rears its ugly head when ALL of the descendants of those involved with the Trials are in Salem. With the help of a spirit named Elijah, Sam seeks to break the curse.
I am not going further than that, but there are some interesting twists in this novel. The ending was a little bit of a surprise, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I just really loved this one, and hope that there are more like this in the future.
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