The Witch’s Orchard is an atmospheric tale, rich with eerie imagery and a haunting sense of place. Archer Sullivan weaves suspense and folklore into a compelling narrative that lingers long after reading. It was not flawless. But the mood and setting elevate the story, making it a memorable, immersive experience. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

When former Air Force Special Investigator and current private eye Annie Gore sees how young her latest client is, she almost immediately wants to send him home. Max Andrews isn’t even twenty years old, but has been saving money for almost a decade to hire someone to investigate the tragedy that destroyed his family.

Ten years ago, Max’s younger sister Molly was kidnapped from his own living room in broad daylight. His father had been at work, his mom out in the back garden, and he himself had been having a piano lesson further back in the house. Molly wasn’t the first girl to disappear from their town either. Jessica Hoyle, a little girl from a troubled family, had been the first to vanish, followed shortly thereafter by Olivia Jacobs. The pretty but mute Olivia was, however, returned before Molly was abducted. In all three cases, an applehead doll was left behind, as if in macabre trade.

Max has come to Annie not only because he finally has the money to hire an investigator of her caliber but because she comes from Appalachia too. Quartz Creek, North Carolina – where Max is from and from where the girls went missing – is a small town that can seem inscrutable to others. He desperately needs a detective who’s unfamiliar enough with the place to bring fresh eyes to the case but familiar enough with the culture to understand the nuances that outsiders might miss:

QUOTE
I know, instantly, what he means. Despite cell towers and spreading networks of broadband, mountain towns have retained a certain insular quality, hanging on to old traditions, old ways of speaking, old hierarchies with elders at the top. People in cities–living, working, talking at a fast clip–experience the quiet, slow pace that permeates these communities, and they assume a slowness of mind, a lack of character. Or, worse, they base everything they know about mountain people on the stereotypes in the media. And I should know. Jokes about illiteracy, incest, and shoelessness elicited more than one broken nose while I was in the Air Force.
END QUOTE

Despite her misgivings, Annie agrees to take on the case. Quartz Creek turns out to be a lot like her own Southern Kentucky hometown. There’s community, poverty and pride in abundance. And even though the case has long gone cold, almost everyone wants to be as helpful as possible when it comes to finding the missing girls, even though no one claims to know anything about their disappearance. Annie, however, knows that asking the right questions – and sometimes even the wrong ones – will stir up emotions that could help her get to the truth.

One thread of inquiry she’s been tugging on involves the local folktale of a witch, a story with odd parallels to the girls’ disappearance. According to legend, a witch transformed her two beautiful daughters into birds and then herself into a crow, leading to the formation of one of the natural wonders of Quartz Creek. But everyone seems to have a different version of the story, in ways that seem to speak volumes about each teller, as Annie discusses with Max’s close friend Shiloh:

QUOTE
”Which is why you’re asking about the witch,” Shiloh says.

“Yeah.”

“And you’re wondering who, among the old women of Quartz Creek, might be a witch.”

“Do I sound crazy?”

She laughs.

“No,” she says. “You’re just starting to sound like someone from around here. When I was a kid, it was practically common knowledge that the Witch of Quartz Creek took those girls. I remember it made Max’s dad furious.”

“Why?”

“Because I guess… in his mind, you’ll never find the truth if you go around trying to catch someone who doesn’t exist.”

I open my mouth and then close it, but an uneasy feeling flutters around my heart.

Are you so sure the witch doesn’t exist?
END QUOTE

Archer Sullivan expertly subverts reader expectations as she tells her complex, compelling tale of love, madness and desperation in the shadow of the Blue Ridge mountains. The twists were truly unexpected for me, as Ms Sullivan takes care to craft a story that is at once grounded in the realities of Appalachian life yet deftly avoids falling into stereotype. The superstitions of the area further make for as rich reading as the physical descriptions of the landscape, as seen through Annie’s eyes.

Annie herself is a terrific creation: smart, self-aware and scrappy in her pursuit of both the truth and justice. I’m hoping to read many more books starring Annie Gore as she investigates the strange and confounding cases that elude detectives who have neither the benefit of her background nor the resilience and intuition that growing up and living outside of the mainstream have given her.

I found this to be an entertaining read! There are parts that are a little slow and inclusion of things that don’t really further the story - the overabundance of information about Annie’s cari for example. Annie is a great main character - tough, tenacious and compassionate! The storyline documenting Annie’s investigation into the ten year old unsolved kidnapping of three little girls from a small Appalachian town is sure to capture your interest. Annie isn’t sure there’s any new information to be found, but she’s determined to find the truth if at all possible. The setting is atmospheric, the applehead dolls left behind at the site of the kidnappings and the folklore/legend of a witch’s orchard that is woven into the town’s fabric add a sense of creepiness.

Atmospheric, moody, and tense... this mystery was an impressive debut!

Ten years ago, three little girls went missing from their tiny mountain town. While one was returned, the others were never seen again. Set in the Appalachian Mountains, we follow PI Annie Gore as she investigates, and she will leave no stone unturned in this small mountain town.

Somehow I never get tired of missing persons stories. This one was a fantastic mix of mystery, buried secrets, and one determined MC. The audio was also very well done!

Another DNF at 30% for me unfortunately. Everything about this screamed interesting to me until i started reading it. I found it a bit slow & I couldn't get over how much she kept talk about her car?? Felt.odd and just made me uninterested in reading.

I wasn’t over the top crazy about this one. I will admit that I am very particular when it comes to dialogue and I found that the dialogue in this made my skin crawl, ESPECIALLY in regards to the car named Honey. The FMC talks to and about her car like it’s a child, her friend is overly concerned about HER car and her bringing the car back unharmed which really creeped me out… I don’t know why but all the Honey-talk made me want to stop reading it. That said, I was invested in the folklore of the witch, the kidnappings and the creepy apple-head dolls that replaced the stolen children. I do wish that there was more about the witch other than everyone’s version of the story because it really didn’t pertain to the kidnappings at all. I do love that it’s set in a small town in Appalachia, because unfortunately I live in one.😅 The ending was abrupt and a little unlikely but hey, that’s why it’s fiction.

I think if you enjoy PI novels and you’re not an overly picky reader like I know I am, you will still enjoy it. Thanks to Minotaur for my finished copy and to MacMillan Audio for my advanced audiobook.

This was a debut novel for Archer, and it absolutely was fantastic. The way that Archer is able to story tell with such well thought out vivid descriptions about what was unfolding around Annie. Annie was a very likable character, her interactions with the other characters in the book made the investigation process much more intriguing. I found myself not able to put this book down for long periods of time without wondering where the story was going to go next and that I should absolutely pick the book back up to finish. I can't wait to read more from Archer Sullivan in the future.

Sign me up for Archer Sullivan's next book. I would love to see a series with PI Annie Gore. She is a bad ass. This book is about 3 girls that disappeared from their homes in the Appalachians, 10 years ago. Two are still missing, while one was returned home as "defective." Max, the brother to Molly (the third girl taken) is now 18 and hires Annie to find his sister. His whole life has been centered on Molly's disappearance. He is unable to move forward without knowing what happened. In this book we have suspense, thrills and romance. The setting, small town Appalachia, was interesting with a multitude of characters. I couldn't put it down. I thank NetGalley and Minotaur Books for the privilege of receiving a complementary digital ARC. In exchange I leave this review, which is my own honest opinion. This is one of my favorite books this year.

I enjoyed this mystery! Annie is a fabulous PI. And she is on the hunt to find several missing girls.
This is full of questions and folk lore! And this ending…I did not see it coming!

Atmospheric and gripping. The mystery might pull you in initially but the scrappy cast of characters will make you stay.

The folklore of the town and the "witch" was a fascinating aspect to the story and the mystery. I loved Annie's character with her sense of "F it" to anything that doesn't serve her. When she decided to take on the case of the young man looking to find out what happened to his sister the reader is unsure if she will see it through based on her character traits revealed in the beginning. As the story progresses we see that she's resilient and determined to find answers.

The setting is a character of the story in its own right. It adds wonderful complexity and a layer to the story that any other setting wouldn't provide. The way this is described by the author is fantastic.

Twisted, mysterious, wonderful character development and an eerie setting all make this a compelling and utterly bingable debut!

THE WITCH'S ORCHARD
BY: ARCHER SULLIVAN

WOW! This was an incredibly above average, impeccably written, wildly atmospheric debut, that was just fabulous. I absolutely loved every minute of reading this eerie page turning, suspenseful novel. It would be the perfect spooky kind of reading experience that readers would enjoy around Halloween. I couldn't put this novel down once I started reading it since it not only has the perfect insulated town in Quartz Creek, North Carolina way up in an Appalachian holler a young man named Max has been haunted by the abduction of his sweet younger sister Molly a decade ago. He has been saving his money to hire a Private Investigator named Annie Gore who he drove six hours to meet her in person with desperation for her to take the job. She has military experience from her time in the Air Force in the Special Investigations Division. He offers her a large sum of money, with her own free lodging in a small cabin on the land where it's just him and his father.. Annie accepts the job since she has bills to pay, but after ten years how likely is she going to find Molly?

There were two other young girls besides Molly who disappeared around the same time period. They were just snatched in broad daylight with no witnesses to see how they disappeared. One of the three girls was returned. The other two Molly, and Jessica were not. Poof! Just like that. Snap your fingers, and they were gone, vanished. Left in the spot where the three girls were snatched was an old home made doll with a dried apple face. There's plenty of Witches folklore about a mother in the frozen winter famine visiting the witch who depending on who Annie asks the story varies. One is the witch offered the mother with two beautiful daughters a trade. In exchange for the daughters the mother is offered all of the fresh apples in the orchard which magically are thriving during the ice cold winter. The mother accepts. The two daughters get turned into birds and fly away.

During the first morning when Annie Gore arrives she goes out early every morning for a run and sees around a trail in the woods a circle of boulders where she saw a women who is supposedly a with named Susan, and there's a surrounding flock of Black Crows that screech. As Annie gets on with her day she goes around the town questioning the three families, and there are some people in the town who are rude, and some that are really welcoming like Max and the woman who owns the bakery where she attended Culinary School and Makes delicious bakery sweets. The Sheriff and his nice deputy named A. J. stop Annie and the Sheriff wants to see her license. The mother of the girl who was returned is one of the rude town inhabitants and during the next day while Annie's out for her morning run in the woods on the trail she sees a ruckus with the Black Crows and to her horror she sees this perfectly coiffed young woman lying down that looks like she's been strangled near those rocks and it's Molly, Maxes sister dead. Annie had met the other missing girl's mother named Mandy who wants Annie to keep looking for her daughter Jessica. Max is told about Molly which he's devastated and she has agreed to keep questioning everybody in town.

At this point she teams up with A. J. who puts his job on the line to get her all of the old case files from when the ten years ago when the three girls went missing. Her cabin has been burglarized with among her computer, Maxes case book is gone. I loved Annie Gore's characterization. She's determined, resourceful and intelligent. There is both an eerie atmosphere and beautiful mountains with one woman who has every kind of rose bushes. I highly, highly recommend this to all readers since it's masterfully written with a fast paced, suspenseful, and superb character development. Additionally, its atmosphere is spectacularly woven to make this a Five, Plus reading experience which honestly, I was sad when I finished it.

Publication Date: August 12, 2025.

Thank you to Net Galley, Archer Sullivan, St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books for generously providing me with my DAZZLING ARC, in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own, as always.

#TheWitchsOrchard #ArcherSullivan #StMartinsPress MinotaurBooks #NetGalley

The Witches Orchard is the perfect read for fall! Full of atmosphere, chilling secrets and an unsettling stillness that creeps into your bones. I loved the folklore elements & felt they were well balanced with the actual mystery at hand. Definitely one to recommend!

I enjoyed this book! I liked the setting, plot, and writing. I also liked the characters and wanted to know what was going on. I did think it dragged a little. It was a little slow moving especially in the middle. I wish Annie had learned more information as the story moved along. Instead, it felt repetitive of her going over the case and then everything was revealed very quickly at the end. I’d give it 3.5 stars.

Private investigator Annie Gore needs a client, so when she is offered a job in a small mountain town in North Carolina, she takes it. Ten years ago three girls went missing, and the brother of one of the girls is looking for something -- the answer to what happened to his sister, and whether she's still alive. Annie comes to town to uncover all the secrets and shake things up in a big way.

The action moves along quite nicely in this story, with the witch's tale bring a taste of the supernatural and it illustrates just how a story can change as it gets told over and over. I liked that part of the story.

Annie runs afoul of the locals as she investigates the missing girls. She might be an outsider, but she's aware of how folks in a small town act and react to strangers poking around. It isn't long before she finds herself in real trouble.

The pacing is good, and Annie is an interesting main character. There are hints of a relationship with a former colleague throughout, but it's all very hazy at this point. Annie likes to shake things up and I liked that about her.

Overall, a very engaging mystery with plenty of what-happened-there moments and a few twists. I really didn't see the ending coming about the way it did, and that contributes to the suspense of the story. The secondary characters, especially the witch in the woods, help round out the story by representing their unique environment. I enjoyed this look inside the small Appalachian town and the mystery of the missing girls. It kept me interested until the very end.

Unfortunately, I got about 30% into this book and couldn't finish it. There just wasn't enough plot there to keep me engaged. It felt very flat and uninteresting. I had high hopes for it as I really liked the premise!

This was a last minute Netgalley request, and I love it when something random ends up being so worth it. The Witch’s Orchard is both a mystery suspense and a look at a niche section of Americana. When Annie Gore is hired by a brother whose sister disappeared without a trace ten years ago, she finds herself transported back to her own memories of growing up in a holler, in a dysfunctional family, and as she grows more attached to the case, secrets unravel in a way that’s unexpected and explosive.

As a debut, I had few expectations, but immersive writing and sharp characterizations make this story stand out. I *hope* there’s a second in series for the main character, and ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2.

4

This was a really strong debut! I’ve been on a string of a romance books, so I really needed something thriller-y to switch things up and this delivered.

I liked Archer Sullivan’s writing and descriptive narrative of Appalachia. It’s not a region I have visited before, but I could truly picture the town and the holler in general.

It was really cool how the Quartz Orchard Witch myth was interwoven throughout the book and the final resolution. I didn’t even pick up on it until close to the end, but it was really clever.

In terms of thrillers and twists, I didn’t foresee the ending here. I did have a strong guess (and was right) on who had initially taken the girls, but everything else did surprise me.

Annie as a character was really cool. She’s this PI with kind of a tragic backstory, and I can see more books from her perspective. She also kind of drove me crazy because she feels reckless at times, but it’s just her determination to solve this case.

It took me a few days to get through this, mostly because I’ve kind of been in a slump since I’ve moved and have 1 million things to do, but this book kept me engaged every time I picked it up.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this eARC, The Witch’s Orchard is out now!

Overall I enjoyed reading The Witch's Orchard, but once finished I didn't feel satisfied. Throughout the book I kept wishing we had more insight into Annie's thoughts and process for investigating the case. We did get some thoughts, like that she was following a certain lead, but we didn't get her detailed thoughts about her process, feelings, and opinions. I did like the explanation for the mystery, it was concluded nicely. I was extremely confused with the ending regarding Leo and their relationship, and honestly he didn't feel like he fit in or added to the story very well. The descriptions and sense of place were great for giving the book atmosphere.

The Witch’s Orchard is a unique “cold case” considering it’s a very recent case with a magical realism aspect in a small Appalachian town. Our main character is an orphaned private investigator with a sorted history that slowly reveals itself through the novel. It almost felt like this book was a sequel with the way things unraveled like I should have already known the backstory, which, in my opinion, just meant that the writing was pretty excellent- especially for a debut.
The overall tragedy of a struggling small town who’s local factory had closed was a rough and vivid picture and the missing girls’ families were truly heartbreaking. The creepiness of the local church and the local tale of the “witch” were unique aspects to the mystery and the found family surrounding Max was really sweet. The mystery was truly riveting and I finished this audiobook/ebook in one day trip of travel and a long run.
I’d definitely recommend this to cold case/small town mystery fans and I’d certainly read another novel by Archer Sullivan.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Witch's Orchard. This atmospheric mystery is set in the misty hollows of Western North Carolina, where folklore and reality intertwine. Private investigator Annie Gore is hired to investigate the decade-old disappearance of a young girl, leading her into a web of small-town secrets and supernatural whispers. The setting is richly described, immersing readers in the eerie ambiance of the Appalachian mountains.

Annie's character is compelling—tough, resourceful, and haunted by her past. As she delves deeper into the case, the line between myth and reality blurs, especially with the recurring tale of the Quartz Creek Witch. The narrative keeps readers guessing, with each retelling of the witch's story offering new clues and perspectives. The pacing is steady, allowing for a gradual buildup of tension and suspense.