**𝔄ℜℭ ℜ𝔢𝔳𝔦𝔢𝔴** 𝔗𝔥𝔢 ℭ𝔞𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔴𝔞𝔶 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔚𝔦𝔱𝔠𝔥 𝔟𝔶 ℑ𝔬𝔞𝔫𝔫𝔞 𝔓𝔞𝔭𝔞𝔡𝔬𝔭𝔬𝔲𝔩𝔬𝔲

Release Date: September 23, 2025

4.5⭐️1🌶

This is a spooky little horror gem. I will not be forgetting this book anytime soon. It is very unique, and I can tell this is a story that sat in Ioanna Papadopoulou mind and soul demanding to be written.

Nefele is a nine year old girl left in a boat with her father's dead body. This is her story of survival, when she's shipwrecked on a floating forested island. A wild elk seems to spy her upon being shipwrecked and takes her under his wing, and then takes her to what appears to be an unoccupied witch's house built to look like a tree.

Nefele spends many years on this floating island with only herself and her animal friends for company. Plus, the old house full of books and research. From reading the contents of the house, she finds out that there were many women before her that stayed in solitary confinement in the exact same house. That each person seems to have been brought to the island for the sole purpose of habituating on it, and learning and practicing witch craft.

I can't wait to see more from Ioanna Papadopoulou, and this book got me in the mood to dip my toe into more horror stories.

Themes/Tropes:
🍁Horror
🍁Survivalist
🍁Ship wrecked
🍁Princess Mononoke Vibes
🍁Evil witch origin story
🍁Wickedness born of isolation
🍁All who cross her path are destroyed

TW:
✨Death
✨Violence
✨Sexual Violence
✨Child Isolation
✨Murder
✨Starvation
✨Forced bodily changes
✨Loss of bodily autonomy
✨Misogyny
✨Sexism
✨Classism

Thank you to @netgalley for this ARC ebook!

#thecastawayandthewitch #ioannapapadopoulou #netgalley #arcreview

My reading experience with **The Castaway and The Witch** by Ioanna Papadopoulou was unfortunately disappointing, leading me to ultimately dislike the book. While the premise of a girl, **Nefele**, shipwrecked on a mythical island and becoming its witch was deeply compelling, the novel's execution fell short. I found the **highly metaphorical, cerebral prose** made the narrative feel confusing and the timeline disorienting, which prevented me from building a strong connection to the story or the protagonist. Furthermore, Nefele’s character felt frustratingly **uncompelling and difficult to sympathize with**, and the later **romance subplot** felt entirely **forced and unearned**, serving only to disrupt the main journey rather than enhance it. Overall, the book felt like a fascinating but ultimately **unengaging exploration** of large themes that were **insufficiently developed**, leaving me disconnected from what could have been a powerful modern fable.

Hidden gem alert!
My thanks to Ghost Orchid Press and Net Galley for a free DRC of "The Castaway and The Witch" by Ioanna Papadopoulou.
Dark witchy Fairytale meets Madeline Miller's "Circe".
This is a Novella that I had the pleasure to devour in an afternoon and enjoyed it much more than "Circe".
Coming of age, survival and romance all created a compelling story with a morally gray heroine.
If you love Dark Fairytales and atmospheric reads, please give "The Castaway and the Witch" a try.

This is a story about a grief-stricken nine-year-old Nefele being stranded on an island, but not just any island; this is a land steeped in mythology that never stays in one place and is home to a witch who was imprisoned there ages ago. Soon the main character learns that she must take on the role of the witch and the story that unfolds is one of coming-of-age and struggling with her own identity. She is caught between her memories and questions her actions and whether she should be embracing her role as the witch. or if there's still a piece of her previous humanity as Nefele left within her.
The atmosphere was rather rich, and I liked the setting and little bits of magic we see. As we spend so much time in Nefele's head, we see her struggle with what she's meant to do and who she is meant to become, and she raises many questions surrounding morality and power and identity. There is heavy influence from Greek myths such as Circe, but I am not familiar with those stories so maybe I am missing out on some of those parallel themes, but ultimately, I like the messages and themes surrounding desire, female power, lonliness and isolation, and wanting to take control of the narrative.
Unfortunately, due to this being a novella, there were parts that weren't expanded upon which still left me with questions unanswered and a feeling of indifference. I also was not entirely convinced about the romance, I don't think there was enough substance or reason that showed why or how they might've fallen in love, it felt much more like a matter of convenience and coincidence than actual romance. Additionally, their interactions felt a bit repetitive as they continuously kept things from each other, furthering my question as to how they would develop feelings if they don't get to know each other, leading to a superficial impression of the relationship.
I would recommend this for young adult readers who are looking for a quick read with a cozy atmosphere but that also has dark twists and questions of morality and development of self-identity.
Thank you to the author and to NetGalley for a copy of the ARC!

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.25
Romance level: ❤️❤️ (a tiny bit steamy)

“‘I wish for you to have the world.’”

I absolutely loved the concept of this story and the impact of how it ended. The writing was a bit repetitive/rough around the edges and the pacing inconsistent at times, but overall very clearly paints the story of the Witch and her “Floating Forest” (which was such an intriguing idea from the start).

I loved the lore passed down through generations of witches and just wished we were able to see more specifics of those past stories - since they were so influential to the FMC and how she develops over the years.

This story reads like a detailed fairy tale, but with a bit of a unique narrative structure and a dark edge (think Brother’s Grimm), and the way it’s told ends up connecting beautifully back to the main themes and the ending perspective.

The romance was more built-out and believable than I had expected out of a book so short, so that was a pleasant surprise - I could’ve gone for some more romantic depth and development but it also wasn’t a let-down!

Overall, this was a unique and rewarding spin on a dark fairy tale and I’ll definitely continue to look out for more work by this author!

The Castaway and the Witch by Ionna Papadopoulou has all the trappings of a fairytale: morals and metaphors to chew on, magic shaped by wishes, and characters who are meant to learn their lesson. The world and characters of the book are beautiful and lush. Nefele is complex, torn between living the life prescribed by the island and the one she really wants. Her journey over the course of the book feels real, and I think readers will be able to empathize with the feeling of being stuck in cycles that feel pre-written whether for comfort or out of fear. In the acknowledgement, Papadopoulou writes that some of the characters in the book reflect her own desires to escape into lives that seem simpler or preordained instead of the difficult reality we wake up to each morning. The book really grapples with that, and with what it means to choose the difficult path anyway.

However, despite the strong worldbuilding, characters, and plot... the book felt like a bit of a drag. No matter how concentrated I was on what was happening on the page, each paragraph seemed to slip out of my focus and I'd have to reread some passages three or four times to make sense of them. This was especially prevalent around the big or magically charged moments of the book. Time also passed oddly in the book, which was understandable, as the book covers a span of about nine years if not more, but which added to the confusion. As a result, the book's 162 pages feel a lot longer. I'd like to imagine that all these elements were used purposefully, to add to the very personal and confusing (or "cerebral" as the author called it) journey that Nefele goes on, but they also made the plot harder to follow, and difficult to pick up once I'd lost the thread.

Still, I think that the book is worth checking out if you're following the trend of myth and fairytale retellings that is taking over book review spaces. The tropical and treacherous landscape of the book is also a perfect transitional read for this period between summer and fall, providing just enough of both soft summery vibes and frankly gruesome scenes to walk that line easily. And outside of the occasionally clunky or confusing writing, Papadopoulou's big ideas shine, and readers will definitely come away thinking about the morals and messages she explores throughout the novel.

Sometimes you become what you're expected to become, even if it's not who you really are. "The Castaway and the Witch" challenges the reader to separate the myth from the reality as Nefele is faced with the dilemma of living life as she thinks she should or living it more closely to the way she would have if she hadn't been marooned on an island.
The story leads to personal introspection. Am I, life Nefele, living the life prescribed by others? Or do I have the freedom to choose my own path? Definitely a query that should be reviewed on a regular basis.

I received an ARC of The Castaway and the Witch from NetGalley. The beginning hooked me right away with its dark and emotional opening, but the pacing after that felt uneven. I liked Simon a lot and really enjoyed the parts with him and the witch together, though I wished their relationship had been explored more. Overall, it was just an okay read for me—neutral but with an intriguing premise.

i really enjoyed the worldbuilding and loved seeing nefele’s personal journey but the romance its self didn’t really hit for me and maybe that has to do with the length of the book more than anything… really loved the creatures and the island itself and would’ve loved to see even more of that and nefele’s interactions there

thank you netgalley for the arc!!

The Castaway and the Witch is a hauntingly beautiful novel that lingers with you long after the last page. At its heart is a nine-year old girl, left stranded on an island beside her father’s lifeless body. From the very beginning, her solitude is overwhelming yet there is an eerie, mystical current that runs through every moment of her survival. The author captures the raw terror and heartbreaking innocence of a child forced to confront both grief and the supernatural, while also weaving in threads of myth, folklore, and dark enchantment.

The island itself is alive, a shifting presence that feels at once like a sanctuary and a sinister trap. The way the girl adapts, facing storms, hunger, and unexplainable visions, makes for a deeply immersive experience. She becomes the witch of the island not because of choice, but because of survival and her evolution from helpless child to an almost otherworldly figure is both tragic and empowering.

Papadopoulou’s prose is lyrical and atmospheric, painting vivid pictures of bone white beaches, twisting woods, and spectral encounters that feel pulled from half remembered dreams. The story blurs the lines between fairy tale and nightmare, offering both a chilling adventure and a meditation on loneliness, resilience, and the strange power of imagination. The characters though sparse are unforgettable, particularly the girl herself, who embodies innocence and darkness in equal measure.

This book is magical, melancholic, and utterly spellbinding. It reminds me of why I love stories that sit on the edge of horror and myth: they allow us to see the human heart through the eyes of monsters, witches, and ghosts.

Wow. The last time I read a fairy tale was during childhood. This is written in the style of a fairy tale, but for adults (or young adults. I loved it!
Nefele lands on a mysterious floating forest….and island that floats and travels the seas all over the world. Her father lies dead in the boat beside her and she is devastated and scared. Through the forest comes a bull elk. This elk becomes her best friend, her guardian, her teacher. Years pass and others come to the island, but they must not stay. Nefele must take on the role of the island witch to scare them away. She learns this, , and other island rules in the written diaries she founds in her treehouse. One such visitor refuses to leave and Nefele calls upon her magic, and the guilt that result from her powerful spell torments her….but she now finds herself with a companion that offers the affection the child in her still craves. More visitors come and go, and one, Simon, feels he has nothing to go home to. Is he dangerous or harmless? She searches the diaries for clues on how to handle this visitor whom she has banished to live in the forest and to stay away from her and her treehouse. The tale gets more and more captivating as we follow what happens between Nefele, Simon, Auntie (sort of a pet of Nefele’s making, and the elk king).
Excellent writing and true to the fairy tale style. I highly recommend #TheCastawayAndTheWitch. Thank you #netgalley for allowing me to read this magical tale.

I found myself unable to connect to the characters in this book. Neither Nefele or Simon were especially compelling to me, and the last few chapters felt very rushed. The conclusion was bland, and the additional little commentaries did not add much to the story. However, the writing was very beautiful. Still, the island itself felt very lacking in atmosphere, which is disappointing, as it is meant to be a character itself. Overall, an unremarkable read.

Very confusing story to say the least but I’m sure I live in a different zip code from those other people who rated this as 5 stars (no judgment, we're all different). I thought on many occasions this was a take on ‘The Cast Away’ with Tom Hanks, until I read about the magic and even then, without the label of Fantasy on the book, I was still skeptical that this girl actually turned into a witch.

The Castaway and the Witch is a deeply perplexing book that defies simple genre categorization. The story opens with a grim and heartbreaking scene: a nine-year-old girl named Nefele floating in a boat with her dead father. The early pages are gut-wrenching as she tries to find comfort from his cold body, and it creates a powerful, somber atmosphere.

As Nefele reaches the shore, she is led by a stag into the forest, a journey that feels straight out of a fable. She survives for three years with animals as her only companions, finding shelter in a treehouse and using the old diaries of previous cast aways as tools to forge herself an identity. This process of self-discovery, shaped by her surroundings, is the most beautiful and compelling part of the story. The books and animals become her teachers, helping her grow into a functioning woman despite her isolation. The following years she simply perfected her new identity and acquired new companions.

The book has been labeled also as horror, but I have to disagree. Aside from the initial tragic scene, there's nothing in this story that fits the genre's definition. The horror seems to be more about a person's descent into a kind of psychological isolation or insanity, which makes me wonder if she's simply living out a delusion, but again, we have the Fantasy label and the strange magic Nefele used while on the island, so I’ll admit it might not be about insanity.

The romance subplot that is introduced later with a man named Simon feels forced and undermines the otherwise beautiful solo journey Nefele has been on. Simon's choice to remain on the island because "it's easier to live in a fairytale" speaks volumes about their connection, and I found myself questioning if their bond was genuine or simply an escape from reality. There was no chemistry, no spark, it was just…forced and while I understand the craving for human connection and touch while in isolation, I doubt it needed to be sexual in this instance (and again, nothing wrong with a sexual connection, but this felt just out of place). Perhaps the story was also too short to fully convey the message here.

Many, many thanks to Ioanna Papadopoulou, Ghost Orchid Press, and NetGalley for the ARC. This is a voluntary review, reflecting solely my personal opinion.

This book promised something it didn't really deliver in my opinion. The themes of identity, fate, magic was mentioned, but not explored, the love story was incredibly bland and has nothing resembling chemistry or real connection. I found the prose plain and simple (not in a good way), I found a lot of modern words and phrases that didn't fit the tone, the story was either uninteresting or outright stupid, the mystique of the elks and the island quickly evaporated.

A comforting fantasy. There is a Floating Island that occasionally appears and there is rumoured to be an evil witch on that island. This book is about Legacy, finding home, and fears about falling in love.

Reminiscent of Jessie Burton’s Medusa, Ioanna Papadopoulou’s The Castaway and the Witch gives voices to a woman trying to find her identity when she only knows what society has told her she must be.

Nefele’s little boat washes up on the shore of the Floating Forest when she is only a child. Stranded and alone, Nefele befriends the local wildlife and learns who she must be from the diary entries of the many women that came to the island before her. As she grows, she becomes part of the island, taking up the mantle of the witch trapped there, scaring off intruders in order to remain safe.

Papadopoulou’s writing has a captivating, almost fairytale quality to it. Reading the novel is like playing out a dream. This works extremely well in the context of the story, as if the reader is taking part, reading Nefele’s own entries into the dozens of diaries that the island keeps. It also led to me questioning what was real and what was just Nefele’s imaginings after being trapped, isolated on the island for so long.

The setting and characters were perfectly done and impactful. I felt each of their voices, and Nefele’s voice change as she grew older and tried to figure out just who she wanted to be. I particularly liked the inserts from the previous witches and the short snippets that felt like they came straight from Nefele’s own diary.

The novel is short, like very short, but that’s honestly okay. It really captured the moments it wanted, skimming over the less important bits, to get right to the meat of the plot. That said, I still would have preferred more. Nefele thinks a lot throughout the novel about how she’d picked up the mantle of the witch and will do what she needs to to keep the guise up, but I really just didn’t feel like we had much of that from her. I really didn’t feel the intense drive to be the witch that Nefele herself said she had. I would have liked to see more of that, because I think it would have made her turning back, finding her identify, and her crisis over what to do with Simon so much more impactful. As it is, I just didn’t feel her internal struggle as much as I should have, as much as the narration made it seem like I should have.

Overall, I did like this one. It’s a quick read, and I liked the fairytale vibe of it.

I loved the premise of this book, a young girl trying to fit a narrative forced on her whole trying to figure out who she is herself. I also enjoyed the writing style. It really fit the story and added another layer to the mystery and magic present.

The characters are compelling and though not much really happened in the grand scheme, I was intrigued enough to want to keep reading.

That being said, I felt this would have done better as a novel than a novella. I liked having an air of mystery around all of our characters and not getting their full backgrounds, but even their time and growth on the island was just barely brushed over. More depth of their time on the island and how they grew and suffered would have made it even better, I think.

Jesus Christ, where to even start. SPOILER WARNING for some elements because I need to talk about plot developments to review this book.

On a conceptual level, The Castaway and the Witch could be super interesting. 9-year-old Nefele washes up on the Floating Forest, an island that moves on its own and is said to have been used to imprison a powerful witch. Completely alone, she stumbles upon a home built into a tree and finds a multitude of diaries written in different languages - diaries written by all the women that washed up before her, adopting the PERSONA (keep that in mind) of the evil, powerful witch to scare off intruders that might harm them. That's cool, right? A child growing up with only elks and ghosts living between pages of diaries for company could make for such an interesting coming-of-age novel(la) in which they try to form their own identity amid the roles they have to play, trying to simultaneously place themselves among the women before them, keep a character from a myth alive, and detangle themselves from the role forced upon them, but that's not what this book is.
To make things worse, the whole concept crumbles since the witch persona isn't actually just a persona - the inhabitants of the island can ACTUALLY wield magic. The magic in this novella is so poorly conceptualized and explained too - it's basically manifest desire and, theoretically, anyone can do magic if they just get rid of all their inhibitions and let themselves be filled by their desire (??), but since the greater population doesn't have access to the diaries, they can't learn how to do all that? And on the other hand, Nefele talks about the island needing someone to put blood and sweat into its soil by working the land or it wouldn't be happy with her, so there DOES seem to be a special bond between the current witch and the island? The rules don't make sense, and the way a very specific passage about Nefele working a spell "to end it all" is so utterly confusing and disjointed that I couldn't tell you what was going on at all. Plus, how this spell supposedly worked is completely beyond me; it's mentioned once in a while, but fuck if I know what it's supposed to have done (besides make her question if Simon does/says something out of his or her own desire, but do spells work that way? Can you just DELETE someone's personality? That wouldn't make sense to me if DESIRE is its driving force - others' desires should remain untouched or at most slightly altered then).

So yes, there are questions surrounding identity in the book, but they are never explored DEEPLY. Instead, the story moves on to focus on a romance devoid of chemistry, which is how the novella fails on a structural level. The identity questions now only exist in relation to whether the love interest Simon, a good-looking sailor who gets left behind by his crew, will still like Nefele when he finds out what she's done. What she's done, btw, is the following: when a mother washed up on the shore in a boat with her two little children, Nefele tried and failed to intimidate her and, in the ensuing fight, turned her into a blob being without any features (albeit accidentally) that now follows her around the island. In a fit of what can only be complete insanity cause how the fuck would anyone do that, she then pushed the boat with her two terrified, crying children into the sea for them to die (not accidentally). Although Nefele sometimes professes how guilty she feels, the absolute evil of her actions gets pretty glossed over, the children are only mentioned once or twice, and the blob being she now calls Auntie (and also uses they/them pronouns for, which I find hilarious) is depicted in the vein of a clumsy animal companion more often than not. Nefele sometimes asks herself if Auntie has any free will left, but it's apparently not that important to her. So, apparently, the magic can completely erase a person? Maybe that insinuates that Simon actually IS under Nefele's spell, but what does that have to do with "ending it all" then? I genuinely don't think this was properly explained, or worked out, for that matter.
Also, Simon is thoroughly unlikable and, which is even worse, incredibly boring. There's no reason to root for the two of them, especially since he arrives on the island talking about his wife and dead child, which gives Nefele pause when he later expresses his wish to stay on the island with her, only for him to basically say, "well, I actually didn't love my wife long before our child died so it's all good." What could have been an interesting obstacle leading to genuinely touching conversations was simply turned into a non-obstacle instead of engaging with it.

I also think this book desperately needs another round of line editing. On a sentence level, it's laughably bad at times. Some examples:

"She closed her eyes and imagined walking in the apple and pear orchard with her brother and sisters. She could taste their juices; she could smell their sweetness." - Am I dumb or does it read like like she's referring to her siblings' juices and sweetness?

"Nefele was greeted with the sight of two large dark eyes. She froze and stayed still as those two black orbs examined her." - Not the orbs, this isn't Wattpad fanfiction

"The creature's brown face sniffed her, then took on a disgusted look, as if it could smell her sad wretchedness." - Is it detached...?

"... a tall, cylindrical house, smelling of wet mould and wood, and giving off a yeast-like odour." - It smells of things AND gives off an odor? Riveting.

"She turned and saw a black cat on the bed. Its hair was silky black ..." - The black cat was black. Also, shouldn't it be fur? Also, did ANYONE edit this?

"Whether she opened or not the door, Nefele realised she couldn’t avoid being broken." - Whether she opened OR NOT the door??

"'I know what I am doing,' she said, protesting Auntie’s silence—as if she could expect anything but it from them." - Anything BUT IT?

"The loose diary pages, of a witch with a husband who abandoned her, were a foreshadow the house offered her" - A foreshadow??? It's not a noun

"Even if this vessel doesn’t send boats here, another one will come and will." - This is relatively minor compared to the rest, but it does show how badly written/edited The Castaway and the Witch is. Just say "Even if this vessel doesn’t send boats here, another one will." What's with the "will come and will"???

"She had banished them all, dirtied them with her wilful ignoring to extinction so she could be the witch and nothing else." - Why we didn't just say "willful ignorance", we will never know.

So, all in all, you can fault this book for A LOT of things - but definitely not for being boring. It gets 2 stars from me because it kept me entertained, but I think it needs to go through another round of edits on multiple levels.

The Castaway and the Witch is a haunting retelling of the Circe myth, set on the shifting island. The story begins with a young girl washing ashore in a small boat, her father’s corpse her only companion. From there, she must learn to survive in solitude with only the strange herd of elk that roam the island.

At under 200 pages, this novella is the kind of book you can devour in a single day. It blends dark fantasy with mythic undertones, offering a sparse but evocative world. The minimal background details leave much to the imagination, adding to the air of mystery and unease that lingers through the story. There are flickers of romance, threads of unexplained magic, and a creeping sense of isolation that makes the tale feel both intimate and unsettling.

If you’re drawn to retellings that lean into atmosphere and ambiguity rather than over-explaining their mythology, The Castaway and the Witch is worth picking up. It’s a dark, quiet, and strangely beautiful take on Circe’s island—one that lingers after you close the final page.

This book was a nice little short story. It had some somber themes but they weren’t too dark compared to some books, that were beautifully written and almost a cozy witch vibe while also exploring unsure adolescence. Normally my themes tend to go towards a much darker vibe when I read witch fantasy books but I still definitely enjoyed this story and following Nefele learning how to survive and live how she believes she has to for the ‘fairytale’ of the island to become reality.
I would recommend this book to someone looking for a quick read of a cozy witchy book with some wonder and mystery.