A Witch In Love - Ruth Warburton

I read the first book in the Winter Trilogy, A Witch In Winter, a few months ago and completely loved it; from the British coastal setting, to the magic, to the steamy romance brewing throughout. So I was naturally eager for the sequel to come out and quickly checked the publishing date: luckily I only had a few months to wait (February to July 5th).
I was actually fortunate to find a copy on sale a week early and snapped it up immediately. I had it devoured in less than 24 hours.

These were my thoughts:
This book is a lot darker than the other at points and there's an awful lot of drama (torture!!). As in the last, the writing is vivid and fun and Anna's voice isn't at all whiney or irritating; just an ordinary teenage girl with some extra-ordinary powers. Her lack of faith in her and Seth's relationship did begin to grate, especially as he was trying so hard to convince her and really putting himself out there in the open. I completely understood his decision at the end (which I will not share - spoilers!), though it still was very upsetting: Anna needs to sort herself out. Hopefully they can work things out in the next book.
The intrigue has certainly stepped up in this book and, as a reader, I've got no idea who Anna should trust and who she shouldn't; this definitely made things very interesting and unpredictable. It's also nice that we're finding out more and more of Anna's background as she does, though there's still more for her to find.  There's still an awful lot of unanswered questions at the end, but that's going to keep me hanging on for the last book in the trilogy.
I liked seeing more sides to some of the characters that we met in the last book: Emmeline's girly side and Anna's Dad's angry side, for example. They're feeling a lot more 3-dimensional now. And then - one of my personal favourites - we references to things like A-Levels: things that ordinary girls have to worry about and that I've just gone through myself. It grounds the whole thing a little bit.

My only negative thing to say, is that I'm sensing a love triangle being set up. In some situations I do like them and they add levels, but I think in this book there are loads of those already and this might just be too much. For all I know it could be really good and play out well, but - for now - I'm a bit wary.

Overall, I really enjoyed it and I look forward to A Witch Alone.