BOOK REVIEW | THE CORN BRIDE | MARK STAY

 

Here we are again with another review. This time it is the fifth instalment of one of my favourite series, the Witches of Woodville series.

The Corn Bride by Mark Stay is released this week on 13 MARCH 2025 by Simon & Schuster. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Dear reader, you are cordially invited to the strangest wedding of the year . . . 
 
It’s May 1941, and the war is in full swing. Yet in the quiet village of Woodville in rural Kent a happy event is on the horizon, as Faye Bright interrupts her training with the British Secret Service to return home and marry her true love, Bertie.
 
But as preparations get underway, a ghostly premonition throws a spanner in the works. Who is the Corn Bride, and is her burning visage a warning, or a threat to the happiest day of Faye’s life?
 
As Faye and the witches investigate, it’s soon apparent that there’s much more on the line than dress fittings, cake and Bertie’s stag do. For an old enemy is stirring in the shadows, bent on vengeance. And he’s not above crashing a wedding to get it.
 
Will the happy couple make it to the church on time? Or, after all she’s survived, could it be getting hitched that finally spells Faye’s doom?

Embark upon an adventure that weaves together romance, undead Nazis, pensioner spies, spectral schoolchildren and a talking budgerigar, and still somehow manages to prove that love is the most powerful magic of all. 

REVIEW

The world is ablaze in Mark Stay’s fifth instalment of the Witches of Woodville series as we join the inimitably charming Faye Bright as she heads back to Woodville for her nuptials with the ever-reliable Bertie. Except things keep getting in the way.

For one, she has been moved over to London under mounds of secrecy to train in the newly established Special Operatives Executive: Paranormal Division with Bellamy Dumonde. Then there is the appearance of ghostly children who can only talk in rhyme and bring with them the apparition of The Corn Bride.

However, returning back to Woodville, she has to face her biggest trial yet – organising a wedding!

The fifth outing for the Woodville Witches is a fantastic read, bringing back friends and foes of the last five books, mixing the usual comedic asides of the residents of Woodville with smatterings of folk horror and nail-biting thrills as Mark Stay takes his characters on their toughest journey yet.

In The Corn Bride, Mark Stay turns the jeopardy up to eleven in what could be the final outing for our favourite witches, and you will be wondering who will survive by the end.

Masterfully treading the boards between light and dark, The Witches of Woodville is truly a joyous gem of a series and as I have been saying on countless occasions it needs to be read by more and more people. I loved every page of it!