Bookbuster Review: An Accursed Witch Read?
Netherwood By Jake Arnott
Published by Titan, 2026, RRP £18.99
REVIEW BY TIM BARTON
Unlocking the bookshop one morning in June, the door lodged against something. It was dark and hard to see, but I guessed it must be a package dropped through the letterbox. Pushing harder, but gently, I squeezed in and retrieved from the floor a book. An ‘uncorrected bound proof’, said the cover. A folk-horror novel, apparently. The blurb said that ‘Justine and Adam’ had moved from London to Hastings, ‘after personal trauma and professional failure’. I knew the feeling.
They had moved to ‘a fisherman’s cottage’ backing onto a cave, wherein lay a witch bottle. The blurb mentions Crowley, the ‘Great Beast’. And the book? Named after his residence on the Ridge, Netherwood. By Jake Arnott, an established thriller writer, whose ‘The Long Firm’ had been televised.
I put the book aside by the printer, and opened up, thinking to myself, this is one to review, seeing as it has a local angle. Life was busy, I forgot all about it.
RAMBLINGS OF A MADMAN
Some weeks later a dishevelled man came, nervously it seemed, to the counter. ‘Did you get my book? A friend said he’d drop it by for you. Netherwood?’
‘Oh, yes’, I said, ‘but I haven’t gotten around to reading it’
‘Don’t, please. Don’t!’, he said rather emphatically.
‘Why ever not?’
‘Just… please don’t. It’s cursed!’
‘Cursed? Cursed how?’, I said in a tone that he clearly interpreted as indicating I was unlikely to pay attention to such foolishness.
So, he hesitantly went further: ‘Three reviewers were found dead next to copies of the book… it’s cursed, I say!’
And with that, he stumbled from the store.
Naturally, he was right to think I would see his tale as the ramblings of a madman, and shrug off the supposed deaths as at worst, coincidence and, more likely, imagined. I, of course, resolved to take a peek. Standing at the counter I began to read. Nice short chapters, snappy prose, building a growing spooky atmosphere. Early on, the protagonists begin to hear voices and crying sounds from beyond the padlocked door to the cave. And Adam has taken the witch bottle and, unbeknown to Justine, opened it. I was quite taken by the events unfolding, so closed up at five as usual but stayed in the now dark shop, at the back counter, and read on.
It was now late, I’d lost track of time. But was dragged back to reality by a chill air from the kitchen, and whisperings in the dark. The shop is not well insulated and people live upstairs, so I thought nothing of it… at first. But when entering the kitchen to get a coffee, the chill increased and the noises got louder. The cold emanated from the dark space below the sink, on the back wall, behind which were the lower reaches of the castle hill. It occurred to me to wonder where the cottage in the story actually was. The geography was vague, but it felt to me as if it must be off the terrace backing onto the castle by Castle Hill Road. An entirely different chill gripped me. In a sudden and unexpected burst of superstition, I remembered the warning from the strange man – perhaps a gap had opened up into a smugglers network laced through the hill, connecting with the cottages of the terrace above? I tried to remind myself that Netherwood was only a work of fiction. But fear gripped me anyway. Petrifying fear, that grew and grew as the noises became darker and darker – indeed, occult, in character.
CURSES BE DAMNED
I left the shop hastily, and ran blindly through the precinct. I was almost as far as Primark, unconsciously heading for the station, when a hand gripped my shoulder from behind. I whirled around to face my assailant. It was the man who’d warned me off reading the book.
‘How far did you read? How far!?’, he shouted into my face.
‘About… about… halfway’, I gasped.
He sighed. ‘You may be OK, I’m not sure’, he said, ‘Here, take this!’ – he shoved a stone into my hand, a stone with a hole in it. ‘It’s a hagstone. To break Crowley’s curse. Leave, if you can, it may not be too late!’
‘Who are you? Who the hell are you?’, I cried.
‘The author, of course!’, he said, ‘Jake Arnott! Now go, for heaven’s sake!’
I turned and ran. But, passing the Sea Dog, tripped, the stone falling from my hand. It rolled, hit a drain, ‘tink… tink tink’ across the cold iron slats, and dropped into the abyss. The sky seemed to darken behind me, thunder rolled, voices – in my head? – grew louder… I turned, panicked. Jake was still standing down the slope. He looked ashen. ‘Too late,’ he said, ‘too late!’ and turned and ran.
I decided all bets were off, I’d return to the shop and finish the book, curses be damned. Back at the counter, the book lay where I’d left it. The witch bottle on the cover was dark and filled with bones, shells, pins, ichor… Netherwood, by Jake Arnott…
Available from Bookbuster, 39 Queens Road, Hastings TN34 1RE
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