PORTRAIT OF A WITCH UNDONE, charming and fun and amusing

PORTRAIT OF A WITCH UNDONE
K.S. SHAY
Erewhon Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$22.95 ebook, preorder now for delivery 25 August 2026

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Thirteen stolen works of art. One haunted marsh.
And a Boston witch willing to risk everything for the friend she’s already failed.

An atmospheric, eerie debut for readers of Starling House and A Discovery of Witches, Isabella Stewart Gardner art heist aficionados, witchy girls, burnt-out former gifted kids, New England history buffs, the coven curious, ride-or-die friends, folklore fanatics, and anyone who’s ever wanted to wander through the looking glass.

Once, Maeve Ryan was the strongest witch of her generation. But Maeve messed up a spell to contact the Lady of the Fens, an eerie Revenant who lures the unwary to their deaths in the brackish marshlands of the North Shore. Maeve destroyed her reputation, hurt her best friend Ash, and tainted herself with unbound, wild magic that transforms witches into insane Revenants.

With unbound power eating away at Maeve’s mind, all she wants is to get rid of her magic. Forever. But Ash’s research into how the spell went awry leads in an unexpected direction: the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and a link between the Lady and a decades-old art theft worth $500 million. When Ash disappears through a stolen painting’s empty frame, Maeve has to follow.

Inside is the Other Marsh, a haunting, deadly realm where only the Lady’s rules apply. Within this half-world lie secrets about North Shore’s history, Maeve’s failure, and the fate of the masterpieces that disappeared over three decades ago. But as Maeve fights toward the truth, she risks her friendship, her coven, and her life against enemies hiding in plain sight.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: The hardcover might be preferable to order, y'all:

Are these endsheets to die for or what?

And then there are the seven maps that this bloody program will not let me upload; just know that they'll enhance your reading experience for the mappish among you, like me. They're there because this is an undertaking to explain the long-ago, still unsolved, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist. After almost forty years, I think it's safe to say the solution presented here...it's magic...might as well become the final word. Nothin' else but the death of some powerful people will bust open the truth and maybe not even then, so heck...why not magic?

Maeve, all of twenty-three during this story, is a really interesting magical practitioner. She's filled with insecurity after very publicly failing at an important working that unintentionally hurts her bestie in the Salem coven. This is the woman who still comes to her rescue when the cursed apartment she lives in is overrun by frogs...without harming the frogs. It was refreshing. Not a frog-fancier, me, but I do get the joke about witches who famously use frogs in magical working that don't turn out well for the frogs subverting that silly stereotype. Also subversive of stereotypes is the way these witches actually *fly*on*their*brooms* and still don't play it for a cheap snigger.

There's a male main character. He is Maeve's "love interest." Nothing about this part of the plot adds anything very interesting to the story. I'm moving on. The interplay among the coven members really exemplifies the use...bordering on overuse...of the miscommunication among people who have one big thing in common but little else drawing them together. It's a problem as the mystery of the art heist steadily takes over the coven's activities; the stolen artworks are, like much art, imbued with magical capability of being bridges between worlds. Maeve is forced to do her best magic in the scenes where she's working to focus everyone on the common goal of regaining these stolen portals. May not be all spells but it's for sure magic.

Maeve has the chops innate in her to be a leader, but she's twenty-three. The action spins out of her control as we-the-reader watch, amused and bemused, while the coven attempts solving the heist for their own, not-law-enforcing, purposes. It is clear Maeve could become the focus of a series with her coven as they redress imbalances and resolve mysteries. I hope they all come back soon. I also hope potential future lovely, fun reads will show Maeve grow into her leadership and not rely on the chaos that comes from poor communication again. Magic carries in its basis the wildness and chaos of Life, untrammelled; Maeve can shape that, can form it...if she's written that way.

Debuts seldom come with this much promise. Hope it's pointed in a positive way.