Rating: 
Summary: what a disappointment!
Review: after all these fabulous reviews, i was eager to get my hands on this book. now i'm just glad i didn't pay for it. ok, interesting concept: three modern women (in one case, a little girl) begin experiencing the same nightmares of life in 17th century new england. oh my! they seem to have something to do with the "town witches" hung exactly 300 years ago. too bad they weren't burnded at the stake!! they just happened to have been transformed by their leader into evil flying creatures who need to feed every hundred years. and our three gals just happen to be their idea of halloween dinner. still, i kept reading. i was hoping something exciting would eventually occur. no such luck. there was nothing to make me at all interested in the characters. i absolutely hated the professor (karen), who seemed to think that her boyfriend (& father of her unborn child) was beneath her because he was "only" a contractor. wendy was so one-dimensional--"oooh, i'm a witch! i'm so different! i cast spells in the nude!!"--that i just kept thinking SO WHAT??? and the little girl (abby) just seemed to be tossed in because witches come in threes, right? the end was so ridiculous, it seemed like even the author was tired of these people. midnight (the witching hour, of course!) came and went, and with it, convenient ends to the icky flying nightmares. OR WAS IT??!!? ah, the author is hoping to make it into a tv movie: pg-13 all the way, with two naked "rituals" in the woods (could be shot from the back--no full frontal, now), and one fade-to-black sex scene to spice up the previews!! save your money and your time. skip this one, and it's inevitable sequel.
Rating: 
Summary: Needed Something New
Review: All I can say is I was looking for something new and have now read Wither & Withers Rain 2 times apiece! I cannot wait for Withers Legacy to come out. I love fantasy fiction like Anne Rice, Laurell Hamilton, Stephen King, Koontz, Buffy, Angel, charmed ect ect ect. So if you like this stuff I cant push these books on you enough.Read them read them read them!! You wont be able to put them down. As a matter of fact I think I'll go read them again!!!!lololol! Can you feel me pushing?? My best freind and reading buddy is an Oprahs bookclub kind of reader and SHE loved them too.They are for everyone...especially me!
Rating:
Summary: Kept turning the pages
Review: I don't usually read horror, but when I saw that the author was from my hometown, I knew I had to read his book - and am I glad I did! Wither is a very exciting novel that makes you turn the pages quickly. The main characters were fleshed out very well and the dialogue was crisp. I particularly liked the flashbacks and the action was terrific. This really would make a great movie. I plan to read all the Wendy Ward novels. John Passarella is a terrific author. Do yourself a favor and read his books!
Rating:
Summary: Wither and a new author that you should watch
Review: I love this novel! You get to follow Wendy as she takes risks and pushes her Wiccan spiritually to new levels. Mean while she has to use her powers to fight an evil that has been dormant for centuries and has now awakened to feed and rejuvenate. This evil is causing 3 Windale women (8 year old Abby, Wendy, and Karen a professor) to relive the lives of 3 executed witches as they begin to realize that they are targets also.
This is a must read for all horror fiction fans. It is also the first of a series of three novels (Wither's Rain and Wither's Legacy) and the series only gets better.
Rating:
Summary: Excellant!
Review: I really don't have all that much to say about this book other than the fact that it's one the best horror books you will probably ever read. Anyone who hasn't read this is missing out on a great story with wonderful characters that bring the story to life like few other books do. Do yourself a favor and buy or get this at your local library, you won't regret it i promise you.
Rating:
Summary: Wither is a wonderful read !
Review: If you are looking for a good horror story to curl up and read, then you will want to pick up Wither. John Passarella can weave a good story and create some full-bodied characters. I recomend checking this book out, you will enjoy it. It is worth a getting read over and over as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent debut.
Review: J. G. Passarella, Wither (Pocket, 1999)
It is surprising, to say the least, that a non-A-list horror novelist got a book out through a major press in 1999. It is even more surprising that said novel was the authors' debut. It is not surprising, in fact it's downright boring, that the cover blurbs compare the book to... Stephen King. Why is it that every publisher who puts out a horror novel, from the Big Five all the way down to (and what more of a Stephen King connection could there be?) Overlook Connection press, has to have at least one cover blurb on every book comparing the author's writing to that of Stephen King? You should know better, people. All horror is not alike. Wither has far more in common with Barbara Michaels than it does with Stephen King.
Passarella, in actuality author John Passarella and screenwriter Joe Gangemi (Eliza Graves, etc.), and the two of them combine to turn in a creepy, compulsively readable first novel. More importantly, they also take a lot of the "emotional shortcut" conventions that plague mainstream American media these days and throw them out the window, creating a book with a completely different atmosphere than most.
Wendy Ward is a college student with problems. She's a Wiccan in a small Connecticut whitebread-Protestant town. Worse than that, her father is the president of the college. Not exactly a recipe for fitting in with your classmates. Things get even more sticky, though, when she is noticed by one, and a jock, no less. Add in a three-hundred-year-old curse on the town, and you've got all the makings of your basic supernatural thriller.
Passarella's devil is in the details. Never, in any horror novel I have read (and I have read hundreds, perhaps thousands), have I seen such a fair and balanced treatment of Wicca. Wendy Ward is not a stereotypical goth (viz. the lovely Fairuza in The Craft), nor is Wicca here used as trappings for a spooky story; Wendy Ward is a complex character who, ironically, is just like you were at that age, expect she wears all black and communes with mother nature via magical spells. It's rare, if not unique, in horror (if not in all literature). Thankfully, this thread of finger-in-the-face-of-convention pops up everywhere in the novel. In an unusual and refreshing turn of events, the reader is wondering less about what will happen with the plot than when Passarella and Gangemi will come up with another fantastic twist in the personalities of one of the characters. There are very few cardboard cutouts here, and even the ones who walk around with "kill me" stamped on their foreheads get some fleshing out. (There's one complete stereotype. Guess who the first person is to die in the book. Well, the authors needed SOME conventions...)
Highly recommended. One of the better novels I've run across this year. ****
Rating:
Summary: Witches
Review: Passarella turns the mythos of witches on its ear. He writes one of the most engaging Witches in Wendy Ward that I have ever come across. Steeping himself well in wiccan knowledge he makes this tale of horror all too real. I could not stop reading!
Rating:
Summary: i highly recommend the wendy ward trilogy!
Review: when i first saw wither i didnt think much about it and put in in my pile of to be read. then someone recommended it to me, it was the best recommendation i have recieved! as soon as the second book came out i grabbed it up! these 2 wendy ward books are truly spookalicious! i cant wait to read the third book coming out in october! john passarella is one of the best writers i have come across! thank god it was recommended to me!if you love horror, love witch stories this is for you! superbly written and simply enchanting! highly recommended to all!
Rating:
Summary: Fan for life
Review: While browsing a Borders Paperback section looking for interesting titles to buy my wife for her Birthday one year I came upon 'Wither's Rain' which I later found out was a sequel story to the first entitled 'Wither'. Not knowing who John Passarella was at the time, neither of us read the book and honestly it sat in the pile of 'to read' books for almost two years collecting dust... Browsing a different Borders I came upon 'Wither' and without a moments hesitation picked it up because of its familiarity. This was yesterday. Today, John Passarella has a lifetime fan! 'Wither' is by far one the BEST stories I've ever read. As an avid reader of all genres I can honestly say that this book was not only written extremely well but it was fun, thought provoking, and so well developed that you will fall in love with the characters overnight. I know I did.
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