The Whitby trilogy by Robin Jarvis is one of the best trilogies… ever. This is a Whitby Witches review of sorts, but one which explores the trilogy’s place in literature instead of trying to rate it against other books.
I first read Robin Jarvis’ The Whitby Witches when I was a child. I can’t have been any older than ten, because by the time I finished the series I had yet to leave primary school. And actually, I didn’t read them – my mum read them to me. It was probably her eyes that first alighted upon that fateful tome, bound with a leering hound front cover that arrested both our attentions in that little library up the road. We devoured it swiftly and ordered the sequels shortly after. After reading and loving those too, I requested the boxset from my Grandma for Christmas. She even lived near Whitby! Finally, I owned those fantastic stories for myself.
I re-read the trilogy a few of times as a child. Yyou can see how well-loved those books were in the picture above. But I hadn’t done so since before my late teens. By the time I took them from the shelf a couple of months ago it must have been ten years since I’d indulged. I thought I’d give them a read for a bit of a nostalgia hit, but even before I’d reached the halfway point of Book One I knew that I was reading something truly special. It wasn’t my childhood love of The Whitby Witches that was informing my enjoyment of it. It was simply that it is a fantastic, gripping and scary book. I finished the trilogy’s finale, The Whitby Child, this very morning – and I can’t wait to laud its brilliance.
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