THE CURSE OF WILLOW COVE by Josh Roberts

Owl Hollow Press, 2024

THE WITCHES OF WILLOW COVE is a wonderful MG debut released in 2020 and I am delighted that the girls and their mortal friends are back and better than ever.

The character development in this stand alone second installment, THE CURSE OF WILLOW COVE is strong and will have you loving each and every one of these kids; and spoiler alert, rooting for their survival. Roberts does wonders adding to the depth of their personalities and quirks.

Not only is the story just creepy enough for any Middle Grade reader, it is also full of edge of your seat action. I’m only going to say as much as is already promoted on the cover because you really want to discover this plot for yourself. But when Abby, Amethyst, Olivia, Piper, Daisy and Delphi’s coven is threatened, Robby, Becca and Zeus step up.

Each of these characters possess a strength, a personal power, that the group needs to succeed and grow; like Olivia’s spellwork, Delphi’s visions, and Robby’s nerdy book knowledge. It’s a great message for all readers. The “it takes a village trope” rings true. Everyone has something to offer and when you ignore differences and work together, you can make magic happen!

Let’s talk about how Josh made this magical new novel happen.

(MJ) Josh, I am so pleased to talk with you about this fantastic addition to the Willow Cove books. As we speak, the release is coming up quick. I’m sure you’re excited, are you even sleeping nights?

(Josh) It’s exciting and nerve-wracking in roughly equal parts. Fortunately, the pre-release reviews have been very positive, so I’m excited for readers to get to return to Willow Cove or even discover it for the first time. And speaking of new readers, let me quickly introduce the series for anyone who hasn’t visited Willow Cove yet.

The first book in The Witches of Willow Cove series tells the story of a 13-year-old girl named Abby Shepherd, who learns she’s a witch just as a mysterious stranger arrives in town and offers to teach her everything there is to know about witchcraft. The only problem? This stranger might also be responsible for the disappearance of someone close to Abby years earlier . . . and she might have something equally wicked planned this time around.

In the brand-new sequel,The Curse of Willow Cove, Abby has a year of witchcraft under her belt and things are finally starting to go her way—until some of her classmates start vanishing in the night, only to come back as something different and dangerous. Set in a small New England town with a secret history dating back to the Salem Witch Trials, both The Witches of Willow Cove and The Curse of Willow Cove are full of magic, mystery, and adventure perfect for readers ages 10 and up.  

(MJ) I agree about it being full of magic, mystery, and adventure. I might add even a little bit of mischief! Congratulations on a sequel being equally as good as the first. But, let’s take a step back. The first book in this series, The Witches of Willow Cove, came out in May of 2020. A so-called COVID release. What was that like as a debut author? No book release parties? No signings? No school visits? How will this release be different? 

(Josh) This time around feels like an opportunity to introduce The Witches of Willow Cove series to readers in a way that wasn’t possible in 2020. I’ve been doing book fairs and I have a bookstore launch party and in-store events planned, and just the fact that people will be able to wander around a bookstore in person and discover the books—as opposed to relying almost entirely on social media promotion and an online algorithm—is refreshing.

Debuting during COVID was a challenge, as you might expect, but in many ways it also brought a lot of us debut authors together. I’ve become friends with many of the 2020 debuts and we’ve been able to meet in person at events and gatherings in the years since COVID.

(MJ) I don’t mean to poke a wound, however, I noticed in your acknowledgements a comment to your publisher about not taking so long to write your next book, suggesting you didn’t expect it to be four years to bring us The Curse of Willow Cove. Without getting too personal, was this a case of writer’s block or did life get in the way?

(Josh) I started writing The Curse of Willow Cove shortly before the first book in the series was published, and then the world shut down for COVID. I lost my day job as the executive editor at a travel media company due to layoffs. Then there were more jobs and more layoffs because of COVID. We moved to a new house. My kids entered middle school. It was a busy, challenging few years.

All the while, I was writing—but that was more challenging than I expected it to be, too. I had always envisioned The Witches of Willow Cove as a series, and my publisher encouraged me to think of it that way, too. But once I really dug into the story, not everything I’d planned for the second book made sense to me anymore. I had an entire draft that I eventually scrapped, so that set me back as well.

New ideas came along, some characters demanded more page time than I’d planned, other characters revealed new aspects of their personalities that I wanted to explore… and throughout that process I was grappling with expectations that weren’t there while I was writing book one. The first book was very well received, which was obviously gratifying as a writer—but I couldn’t help wondering if it was all a fluke. Maybe the sequel wouldn’t be as good? Maybe people would be disappointed with where I took the story?

Readers tend to want more of the same in a sequel, but as an author, I didn’t want The Curse of Willow Cove to feel like it was just a remix of The Witches of Willow Cove. I think the best sequels take the story and characters to surprising new places, and I wanted that for this book. But what if readers didn’t want to take the journey with me? It took a little while to get out of that headspace on focus on telling the story I wanted to tell.

(MJ) Do you have any words of warning, advice, or understanding to fellow authors facing similar frustrations? 

(Josh) I spent a lot of time worrying about whether The Curse of Willow Cove was a good book. But good and bad are subjective, aren’t they? Once I turned my focus to making sure this book turned out in a way that satisfied me, I felt liberated.

Readers can decide whether they like a book or not, but as writers all we can do is make sure the book that goes out into the world matches our vision for what it should be. I feel really satisfied with where The Curse of Willow Cove ended up.

(MJ) I want to ask you about your characters in a minute but I have to say, I miss the kids already. Will there be more?

(Josh) Yes! The third book is under contract and I’m excited to dig into it. As with The Curse of Willow Cove, the next book in the series will jump ahead another year—putting the main cast of characters in high school for the first time. So, a new school, new friends, new rivals . . . and lots of new opportunities for storytelling. It’s tentatively titled The Haunting of Willow Cove, and as with the previous books in the series, I know exactly how I want it to end. The exciting part for me will be the journey to get there.

(MJ) I’m already looking forward to it. I commented in my review that while the plot is suspenseful and entertaining, it is your characters that I fell in love with. The girls, actually all the characters – Zeus and Robby included – have really unique gifts i.e. individual traits that set them apart. I absolutely love this and wondered if that was by design or something that just happened as you wrote.

(Josh) It makes me so happy to hear you say that. I love all of these characters, too. It’s a big cast, and so to some extent I did set out to make sure each character had a unique trait or two that would be easily identifiable to the reader, especially early on to help people keep track of who was who.

Both the story and the characters grew in the telling, and over time they’ve all come to feel like fully realized people to me. I love spending time with them, and I love that when I’m writing these characters I feel as if I know exactly how each one would react to something as soon as it happens.

(MJ) Do you have a favorite character? I think Amethyst is mine. She’s so open and honest and cynical. I just love her. And she has a pet raccoon!

(Josh) I enjoy hearing about everyone’s favorite characters, especially because different people tend to love different things about them. I got a message from a reader this week who absolutely adores Piper. A lot of people identify with Zeus. It’s all over the map and that’s one of the great joys of having a big cast of characters who all feel like central players in the story.

I love writing all of them. Amethyst is probably what I would be like if I could speak without any sort of filter at all. She has opinions and she is not afraid to speak them. She has a very dark sense of humor. Deep down she’s also sensitive and caring, but she definitely does not want people to know that.

My favorite character to write, though, is Abby. I love that she always tries to do the right thing and that she has so much empathy for others. She’s flawed and she knows it, so she doesn’t necessarily recognize all of her many good qualities, which I think is something that’s probably true of most of us.

Recently I listened to the audiobook performance of The Witches of Willow Cove (read by the incredible Saskia Maarleveld) and that gave me a new appreciation for some of the characters, too. As a writer, sometimes it’s revealing to hear someone else’s interpretation of your characters.

(MJ) How could you not love Abby. She’s the focal point of your delightfully imaginative world. Tell me about growing up in an old Victorian funeral home and how it inspires your writing. 

(Josh) My dad was a funeral director, and we lived in a spooky old Victorian funeral home for my entire childhood. In fact, my dad was the fifth generation in our family to work as a mortician, dating all the way back to the Civil War. Growing up, it never occurred to me that other people might find living in a funeral home odd because to me it was just home. Still, I developed a love of all things spooky and a comfort level with death and the macabre, and that has certainly influenced my writing!

So, too, did growing up in New England just a few towns over from Salem. As a lifelong resident of Massachusetts, I became fascinated by the fact that not only were there accused witches all across the state—including one in my hometown—but also that the witch trials did not actually occur in modern day Salem. I think there’s even a line in one of my books that basically amounts to “Salem gets all the tourists, but the real witch history happened elsewhere.”

My fictional town of Willow Cove is the result of a lot of those influences, including the idea of a town with a secret history of witchcraft.

(MJ) I also grew up in a Massachusetts ‘witch’ town. It certainly lends perspective to your storytelling. Let’s talk about you. How are you? Everything heading in the right direction for your writing career? Are you writing full-time, now?

(Josh) I’m not writing full time as a novelist, but I am writing every day. After all of those COVID-related layoffs in the travel space, I decided to stop working for other people and cofound my own travel media company instead. I’m now able to split my time between writing books and writing about travel, which is a great balance for me.

(MJ) Have you worked on anything other than Abby’s adventures? What can we look forward to in the future from Josh Roberts?

(Josh) My next book is another series starter called Victoria Dare and the Blood of Kings. Set in 1939 on the eve of World War II, it comes out in 2026 and follows the adventures of 16-year-old Victoria Dare, who accompanies her father on an excavation to uncover a lost Egyptian tomb and gets drawn into a plot involving Nazi occultists, Bolshevik assassins, and a mysterious figure her psychic friend calls “The Shrouded Man.”

Readers who enjoy The Curse of Willow Cove may be interested to discover that one of the minor new characters introduced in that book plays a major role in this new series. The third Willow Cove book will come out after Victoria Dare, and I’ve already started work on it.

(MJ) Wow, you have me curious. I can only think of three new characters. I’ve already made a guess as to who we will meet again in Victoria Dare. I wish you all the best with the release of THE CURSE OF WILLOW COVE and all your future works. Thanks for taking the time to speak with me today.

Josh Roberts provided me with an ARC of his latest release which hit stores October 8th.  Order yours today!