K.S. Shay’s Portrait of a Witch Undone is an unforgettable fantasy set in the marshes of the North Shore of Massachusetts, following the adventures of coven outcast Maeve Ryan. Ever since a spell went wildly wrong for Maeve and her best friend and ritual partner, Ash, their coven has been plagued by visits from the Lady of the Fens, a dangerous revenant whose appearances are usually accompanied by tragedy. The Lady’s presence on the marsh threatens already heightened tensions in the coven as the contest for the new matriarch looms. Ash and the other witches want Maeve to use her powerful magic to save the coven from the Lady, but they don’t know that the botched ritual tainted Maeve’s spellcasting abilities. It’s safer for her to avoid using magic, lest she become a revenant herself.
When Ash discovers that the famous, unsolved theft of paintings from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum might be linked to the coven’s issues with the Lady, her quest leads her to the Other Marsh, a mysterious, otherworldly dimension whose horrors might reveal very scary truths about the coven’s history. It’s up to Maeve and Gabriel, an uncovened witch she reluctantly allies with, to save Ash from the Other Marsh and its inhabitants, and maybe uncover the truth about the Lady along the way.
Shay excels at crafting magic that feels fresh: Ash can magick her broomstick into a pin that she wears on her jacket and constructs spells like math equations; Gabriel draws power from emotions and the fine arts. Maeve is an instantly likable and relatable protagonist, and her adventures are exciting with high stakes for both herself and the North Shore coven. Portrait of a Witch Undone is a deep, dark exploration of what it means to not only be linked to cruel intergenerational trauma, but have that trauma freshly unearthed. The Other Marsh contains the answers to plenty of uncomfortable questions the younger witches are starting to ask themselves, and is the home to terrifying guardians who will haunt readers long after the final page.
Maeve and Gabriel’s adventure is interspersed with images of the paintings stolen in the very real theft from the Gardner Museum in March of 1990, when the ominous number of 13 paintings were stolen and never recovered. Shay’s inventive reimagining of what that mystery would look like if a modern witch coven were involved is a delight, an energetic fantasy with a twist of mystery and a splash of art history.