The Witch's Market

Mingmei Yip is an amazing writer who captures the essence of her characters. This intriguing novel allows the reader to see the courage and strength of Eileen, an assistant professor who is doing research about witchcraft and goes to the canary islands to seek out real witches. She finds herself surrounded by mysterious people she meets along the way. Mingmei Yip's style immerses the reader into the characters, the story and the places we visit through her writing. Highly recommend all of her novels - You will not be disappointed!

Mingmei Yip is an excellent writer but this book is below her standards. It is her first foray out of her element and it shows. It is still an enjoyable read and had the potential to be much, much better.

A patchwork of incidents and different people--what starts as an anthropologist's excuse for searching for witches (like or not like her) turns into a kind of murder mystery. Flat descriptive writing with short chapters. Would be better with a sound track, maybe.

I delighted in the author’s blending of Chinese wisdom and folk lore in her book “The Witch’s Market”. During her trip to the Canary Islands to research her professorial thesis, the reader follows Eileen Chen as she navigates a personal search for her own identity. As the story unfolds, Eileen is unaware of the adventures awaiting her as she sets out to find and record the activities of local witches. Readers wishing they could learn the secrets of communicating with the inhabitants of this world and that of the deceased, will be charmed by one woman’s search for her own destiny amid daily dramas of the local inhabitants.

This is Migmei Yip's best book yet. The main character is likeable and complicated, the setting exotic, with plenty of fascinating information about the Chinese witchcraft. With a murder mystery thrown it, the book made a really good read.

Yip is a favorite author but this book ,although twitchy, witchy and haunted, lacked the magic of her other books. Told in the first person, Eileen had everyone in love with her; leading a sexy life; chasing her to do her harm; moving herself from hotel, to castle, to house and back again; seeing the dead; solving crimes; getting rich but never writing the book we heard so much about in the story. I enjoyed the parts about her grandma and Chinese sorcery. I taught descendants of Canary Islanders and read this book expressly to learn little known details of the setting. No expansion on the Canary Islands at all, so the book could have been set anywhere with it's unnamed remote villages. I don't think Ms. Yip had ever been to the Canary Islands.

I have enjoyed all seven of Mingmei Yip's books and thoroughly enjoyed all seven. She is a gifted author and I look forward to reading book # eight. The Witch's Market was a perfect read: 5-Star.

I really love this author but this particular book wasn’t my favorite by her. The details in the story didn’t come together well for me and it seemed like at the end she just accounted for all the loose ends briefly. Also some of it just wasn’t believable for me. Disappointed with this one but I’d read another one of her books in the future.