This is my first year teaching Green Angel and Green Witch. Green Witch is the sequel to the post-apocalyptic/modern fairy tale that intentionally resembles the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Whereas Green Angel just focused on the protagonist’s (Green) transformation, Green Witch expands the stories of the other characters and ties up loose ends.

I think my students liked Green Witch better than Green Angel. There’s more action, more movement. However, it just felt sloppily written and totally unbelievable (yeah, yeah, yeah I know, it’s magical realism). The whole book leads to a [spoiler redacted] and it’s all over in a matter of paragraphs. The language is totally melodramatic. The ending wasn’t really satisfying.

Meh.

***Review based on an Advanced Reader Copy***

Lyrical, haunting characters in an emotionally deep and complex world. Green is the only one left on her family farm the day the mysterious Horde destroys the city and condemns everyone to a technologically-deprived existence.

But her village is coming back to life, and Green feels the need to seek out the women called the "enchanted" to learn their stories and write them down in order to save a childhood friend from the Horde.

This book was so moving and so beautiful, and so.....thin. Without the background of Green's love affair with Diamond, without the deeply layered histories of the Enchanted, it just wasn't enough to move me as much as the writing had the potential to do.

This Book's Food Designation Rating: a non-fat, soy-milk, decaffeinated latte with sugar free hazelnut flavoring for being so delicious on the surface level, but lacking real substance for me.

Green used to think her story was written. The day her beloved city was burned to the ground seemed to be the end of things. Her mother, her father, and her beautiful sister were gone. The boy she loves is far away searching for his own family. The past is filled with dangerous memories and the future seems like a distant hope. So Green tries to focus on the present.

As her village tries to rebuild, Green tends her garden and collects the stories of the survivors. When Green sets out to find the Enchanted--women the village calls witches--in the hopes of collecting their stories. And maybe something more. One of the witches can grant any person their heart's desire. With their help Green might be able make her heart whole and rescue a friend she thought was lost in Green Witch (2010) by Alice Hoffman.

Green Witch is the sequel to Green Angel--the story that introduced readers to Green and her world. It is also a story that Hoffman had not planned to write until fans asked to know what happened next to Green and the boy she loved.

Like its predecessor, this book is very short with sparse writing that hearkens back to traditional fairy tales and prose poetry in its meter and style.

While Green Angel focused on moving through tragedy for both the town and Green herself, Green Witch is all about rebuilding and transformation. This is a story where women who survived unspeakable loss can become witches imbued with magic, where gardens can grow from ashes, and where a girl who lost everything she loved can rediscover hope and love. As Green gathers stories and tends her gardens, she too begins to grow as she realizes her own power and finds her place in a world forever changed by one tragic day.

Possible Pairings: [b:Mockingjay|7260188|Mockingjay (Hunger Games, #3)|Suzanne Collins|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1282388315s/7260188.jpg|8812783] by Suzanne Collins, If I Stay by Gayle Forman, Madapple by Cristina Meldrum, How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

Beautiful

I just leanred that Green Angel and Green Witch (book 1) are combined into a book called Green Heart. I would get Green Heart because reading the two together makes so much more sense. I thought it was a beautifully crafted novel, rather lyrical.

This is more like lazy fan fiction.

Too many things were convenient and way too safe for a place that’s supposed to be in a dangerous post-apocalyptic setting. And it felt like half of the book was wasted talking about Green's past from the first novel.

(Spoilers ahead)

Diamond gave me the impression that he was just a friend in Green Angel. Apparently, in Green Witch he is the romantic love of her life she has been dying for.

Everything is unusually convenient from here: she easily finds and frees Diamond and his entire family. He learned to speak her language fluently during his time in prison, locks two guards into a cell easily without any mention of how he fought them, and knows where Heather is when he didn’t even know who she was in the first book.

When Green easily breaks the three locks on Heather's cell it made no sense to me. The locks were implying how dangerous Heather was, but there was no explanation for why they found her as such a threat, especially when she has a baby she gave birth to during her imprisonment. It's also odd that Heather is alive in the first place, considering the way she departed in Green Angel.

Another thing that didn't work for me is that Green became an omniscient narrator. She knew what people were thinking and we have no choice but to know she is correct.

Nothing was unique about the book. Green makes customized paper for each person to hear their story and finds all the characters that had left in the first book. That's pretty much it. I don't see any character development. Everything worked out perfectly with no explanations.

I am disappointed in this sequel. I'm glad to know there's a happy ending because I loved the characters in Green Angel, but the book was poor writing quality.

i love this book i just wish it didn't end