She sells her services to clients with lost loved ones, but it isn’t quite enough to keep the power on or pay the rent. The story follows a Black witch named Katrell who possesses the power to summon the ghosts of the dead. Bad Witch Burning may be the kind of story that pulls you right in and never lets you go, but it is also, unexpectedly emotionally-charged, heart-wrenching, and utterly devastating story that I loved. If you were living in poverty living with the constant anxiety of housing insecurity and you discovered that you not only could raise the dead but could sell your services for several thousand to bring someone’s loved one back, would you do it? This is a question that is asked again and again in Bad Witch Burning, Jessica Lewis’s dark and phenomenal debut. Katrell faces a choice: resign herself to poverty, or confront the darkness before it’s too late.

The further she goes, the more she risks the lives of not only herself, but those she loves. And, warning or not, she has no intention of letting this lucrative new business go.īut magic doesn’t come for free, and soon dark forces are closing in on Katrell. However, when her next summoning accidentally raises someone from the dead, Katrell realizes that a live body is worth a lot more than a dead apparition. What do ghosts know about eating peanut butter for dinner? Things get worse, when a ghost warns her to stop the summonings or she’ll “burn everything down.” Katrell is willing to call them on their bluff, though. Clients pay her to talk to their deceased loved ones, but it isn’t enough to support her unemployed mother and Mom’s deadbeat boyfriend-of-the-week.

Katrell doesn’t mind talking to the dead she just wishes it made more money.

Bad witch burning