J.A. White’s The Thickety Series: Thrills, Chills, and Not-Quite-Happily Ever After

The Whispering Trees is the second book in the Thickety series by J. A. White. In the first book,  A Path Begins, we meet Kara Westfall, and her younger brother, Taff. At the tender age of five, Kara witnesses her mother’s execution for witchcraft. Years later, she and her brother find themselves still shunned by the villagers, who cannot forgive their mother’s sins. The only thing the villagers of De’Noran are more fearful of than witchcraft is the Thickety: a dense forest, filled with strange creatures, which covers most of their island. When Kara is lured into the forest, she discovers magic of her own, and the dangerous consequences that come with it.

Book two, The Whispering Trees, reunites us with Kara and Taff, now 12 and 7 years old, who have fled to the Thickety to escape the wrath of the villagers. They’re also searching for their father, who has fallen under a spell himself. Immediately, we find ourselves immersed in the world of the Thickety, domain of Sordyr the Forest Demon, and his strange, cursed creatures. Everywhere is destruction and fear. We barely have the chance to catch our breaths before we, along with Kara and Taff, realize that only way for them to survive is for Kara to embrace her gift as a wexari; a witch.
Fortunately, there’s Mary Kettle, who offers to help Kara hone her skills. But Mary has a dark history of her own, and in a world of branchwolves, shadow people and ravenous monsters, it’s hard to know whom to trust.

J.A. White doesn’t pull any punches. He weaves a story reminiscent of the style of original fairytales, those dark stories that were meant to thrill, to instruct, and yes, perhaps even to scare the reader a little. Kara and Taff, two young children, find themselves in danger time and time again. Not the kind of danger that can be escaped by taking a different path through the woods, but an ever-present, hauntingly nightmarish, scare-the-pants-off-of-you kind of danger that leaves the reader fluctuating between wanting to slam the book shut…and frantically flipping the pages to see what happens next.
As an avid reader of middle grade novels, I pride myself on expecting the unexpected, and anticipating the road an author will choose to take. But The Whispering Trees is a roller coaster ride with surprise twists, swerving loop-the-loops, and death-defying plunges, ending in a shocking finale that has me eagerly anticipating the next volume. Best of all, underneath the fear and the sorrow, there remains a sense of hope: A belief that Kara and Taff will survive, that evil can be overcome, and that people can change for the better. And that’s what makes this kind of story so popular, isn’t it? We like to be scared. But then we also like to be reassured that the monsters under the bed (or lurking in the woods) can’t actually hurt us.
Are you a fan of The Thickety series?