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Andrew Cairns

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The Witch's List Kindle Edition

by Andrew Cairns (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

3.9 53 ratings

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Sandy Beech doesn't believe in witches and the supernatural. However, certain strange events occur which put his scepticism to the test: a burning book, a falling crucifix, a mysterious illness, and a fire in a convent which kills all twelve nuns. On her deathbed, Bernadette, the last surviving nun, warns him to control his lusts and avoid African women. Sandy finds this difficult, since he is attracted to exotic, dark-skinned women and after his hedonistic university exchange year in Paris, marries Rocky from the Ivory Coast. Five years later, childless and with the marriage souring, they decide to visit Rocky's home country. Sandy is drawn into a world of strange beliefs and practices: he finds out about the Witch's List - a list of people destined to die, and is attacked by various animals starting with a ferocious dog in Abidjan. He delves further and further into the realm of African witchcraft, but the horrific truth remains obscure... The Witch's List is the first of a trilogy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Andrew Cairns has written, quite literally, a bewitching novel, one that speaks to an underbelly which lies dormant in us all. The Witch's List bridges our world of convention, with that of a fabulous Twilight Zone, what may be true reality -- a realm of magic and ultimate possibility. I recommend this book because, behind the smokescreen of simplicity, there lies a masked bedrock of extraordinary power. (Tahir Shah, author of The Caliph's House 2016)

Review Rating:4 stars."Once you're on the witch's list, you're as good as dead." Andrew Cairns' novel, The Witch's List, is a beguiling supernatural novel that follows Sandy Beech through childhood into his adult years. His attraction to exotic black women lures him into the dark world of witchcraft. Peculiar things happen when his girlfriend's cousin casts a spell and he becomes ill. Sandy ignores the warning of a dying nun and marries Rocky, another woman from the Ivory Coast. They visit her homeland where Sandy learns about the nonconforming culture and witchcraft. He observes how a few people suddenly become ill, and the superstitious reactions of others who believe the sick were on the witch's list. Sandy meets a strange old woman in the woods who warns him of danger, but the horrific truth remains obscure.Andrew Cairns writes convincingly and The Witch's List is a compelling dark story. Its protagonist, Sandy Beech, brings out his conflicting emotions through flowing narration. Although he is a nice person in general, Sandy's character is weak, especially around women, and he can be manipulated into doing things he knows are wrong. The author's writing is very detailed. I liked learning about the cultural differences that divide the Ivory Coast, as well as its intriguing black magic that still plays a dominant role in many Ivorian lives. I think the book's cover is so appealing and appropriate. The Witch's List by Andrew Cairns is an interesting story. (Michelle Stanley Readers' Favorite, May 2016)

About the Author

Andrew Cairns is a Scot, living in the suburbs of Paris with his wife and two daughters. He enjoys travelling and notably visited the Ivory Coast in 1999; experiences and stories which he heard out there inspired this book.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01G2M4N16
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cosmic Egg Books (June 24, 2016)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 24, 2016
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2616 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 233 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1785353489

Best Sellers Rank: #3,954,742 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #10,410 in Witch & Wizard Mysteries
- #21,856 in Coming of Age Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #50,849 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)

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3.9 53 ratings

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Andrew Cairns

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Andrew Cairns wrote "The Witch's List" in 2014-2015 - about fifteen years after a memorable one-month visit to the Ivory Coast in 1999. The book is inspired by some of the experiences and stories which he heard out there, and also by his experiences of growing up in Scotland and moving to France where he has lived/worked most of his adult life.

Keep up to date with information/events on "The Witch's List" and the next two books in the trilogy, by following his blog/facebook page:

https://thewitchslist.blogspot.com

https://www.facebook.com/thewitchslist

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3.9 out of 5

53 global ratings

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A well rounded adventure!

Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2016

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A well rounded adventure! With The Witch's List, Andrew Cairns has told a unique and unforgettable tale of a white man from Scotland named Sandy. One thing that I loved about this book is that it does not center itself on one particular event or portion of the main character's life. It actually covers the majority of Sandy's lifespan. Cairns is able to cover such a vast amount of time smoothly and effortlessly. It doesn't seem choppy or as if important times are missed. There is a good flow, it's very well written.
Despite the painful bullying Sandy endured growing up, he was able to press forward and obtain an impressive education. A good chunk of the story explains Sandy's life through-out Catholic school as a young boy, then he heads to a regular Scottish school to finish out grades before he is accepted to attend a college in Paris. During this time of education Sandy has an utter infatuation for African women. His first love is in High school with a black girl from the Ivory cost. Upon getting busted by her family, Sandy experienced his first run in with a touch of black magic. The encounter with witch craft is un-nerving and only the beginning. It leaves the once unbelieving Sandy confused, curious, and weary of African Witchcraft.
The conscious effort to steer clear of black African women doesn't last long. He is drawn to them on a strange almost magical level, as if bewitched from the beginning. Sandy becomes a bit of a player with the ladies while attending school in Paris. He experiences the young free-spirited lifestyle that most college students strive for. After a few non-committed or failed relationships he settles down with what he assumes to be the love of his life, Rocky. Coincidentally, she is also from the Ivory coast as was Gabriella, his first sweetheart. It's this lifelong infatuation with exotic dark beauties that brings him to Africa, wherein the remainder of the story lies.
Andrew Cairns is able to successfully weave a series of dark and magical events through the entire book including death, fire, animal attacks, illness and more. Every event has a reason and a place. Cairns is refreshingly knowledgeable in cultures, race, geography, and even languages. There's no shortage of suspense and/or adversity. The Witch's List brings about a very realistic and eye opening feel for the raw graphic lifestyle in the heart of Africa.
The ending of the book ties up all of the loose ends in a unique way that I never saw coming! I was left shocked and wanting more. There is a fun usage of Scottish slang through-out and I absolutely love the name pun. The splash of humor is just enough. The only thing I wasn't particularly fond of was that at times the pace seemed slow, and a bit like a narration. I felt like I was being told a story rather then experiencing it. A few of the very traumatic and scary events seemed to lack emotion. But, all in all, it was a great book and I enjoyed it very much!

One person found this helpful

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Kayla Frederick

A Supernatural Memoir

Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2018

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The Witch’s List is a combination of a supernatural story and a coming of age tale. The story focuses around the main character named Sandy Beech and we see his shenanigans and life as he graduates high school and moves onto his life. Sandy isn’t like his Scottish ancestors who have a thing for pale skin, blue eye girls. He likes African girls from the Ivory coast. After his first girlfriend, Gabriella, Sandy gets his first taste of witchcraft and what being on the wrong end of it can feel like. But that doesn’t stop him on his quest. In fact, it might just become his biggest aide yet.

This was a different type of book than I was expecting. I thought it would air more on the paranormal side but it read sort of like a memoir. I’m not saying it was bad or anything, just a lot different than what the summary led me to believe it would be about. The ending of the story was actually quite sudden which caught me off guard because I was under the impression that this was a standalone book and the ending is a definite cliffhanger. After reading the synopsis, however, I’m happy to see that there will be more books and more answers in the future.

One person found this helpful

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JZ

Narrators need be neither good nor appealing

Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2018

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The protagonist of Andrew Cairns’ “The Witch’s List,” Sandy Beech (who ends up in relationships with an Ivoirian named Rocky Coste and another with a Kurd named Leman), is . . . problematic. As a middle-aged-white-man, I’m not much into reflexively beating on people in my own “categories.” That said, Sandy comes off as a sexist and something of a racist—of the “exoticizing” variety. The fact that he basically has more of a fetish than a preference for black women isn’t a “get out of jail free card,” rather the opposite.

Narrators need be neither good nor appealing; they do need to be compelling, given that they “carry most of the load,” in terms of moving things forward and carrying the reader along. Negative emotions, like anger or disapproval, can make us want to keep reading. For the most part I just found myself increasingly irritated by Sandy, all but muttering “not again” with greater and greater frequency as I read on.

We follow Sandy from early school days in Scotland, and Paris, to Africa as a married man, to an epilog in which we find him in middle age. The way he describes women, throughout, is illustrative, projecting that a Spanish woman has a “Latin libido,” looking forward to meeting “sexy French women”; while the phrase “jungle fever” only comes up three times, it feels like more, and he says things like, (with one of several black women), he was “interested in the exotic fruits of her body.” There is a great deal of Sandy telling us of his passion(s). As a reader, I didn’t feel them.

I’m a little ambivalent about the “background information” that we get, both as a matter of quantity—or, perhaps better said, density—and as a matter of style. If we think of a narrative as a kind of “journey described,” we might set the pole points as an impressionistic poem at one extreme and a hybrid itinerary/diary at the other. At one end, we are taking “the writer’s trip” and s/he is only minimally concerned about our keeping up; at the other, we get data-dense precision and a great deal of detail, which can suffocate the “music” and the emotion of the story.

I don’t know enough about college (or primary school) in Scotland, or studying in Paris, or the geography or culture of Africa to assess the accuracy of the descriptions here (although I’m a little skeptical about the role of the pentagram in African Magic). But Cairns’ thoroughness came to feel more burden than benefit, the more I read. In a section that precedes a visit to French cultural site, for example, we get a list of some dozen tourist attractions the narrator has seen in his time in France. Half that number would have been more than enough.

There is also an ongoing tendency toward “parenthetical clarification,” as in, “They lived in an HLM (council flat) in a small block of flats . . .” that quickly comes to feel like the narrator is giving us little theatrical explanatory asides, which, however briefly, take us away from the story and divert us into the details.

What a lot of this does is blunt the emotional impact of the story. The protagonist’s adventures with women and the repeating thread of “African Magic” should hit us, should captivate us, as readers. Instead, I too often felt like I was reading slightly personalized reportage. Sandy tells us about his feelings; he doesn’t much make us feel them.

I won’t spoil this, but the book takes a stab at “tying up loose ends” in the last few pages, providing us with a lens through which we can view many of the important events in the story from a different angle. For me that triggered as many questions as it resolved.

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William Blackwell

Not bad for a first effort

Reviewed in Canada on May 3, 2018

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I presume The Witch’s List is a debut novel from Andrew Cairns. Written in the first person, this supernatural thriller takes the reader on an epic journey in the life of lead protagonist Sandy Beech. Over many years, it spans Sandy’s upbringing and school days in Scotland, to his life in France, and finally a trip to Africa with his African wife Rocky—an adventure he hopes will rekindle the waning romance.

I’ll start with the shortcomings. In the first part of the novel, Cairns rushes through it, providing very little insight into Scotland or France for that matter. Character descriptions of family and friends are minimal or non-existent, and so many names keep popping up, it's difficult if not impossible to keep track of them all. We don’t find out much about Sandy’s mother and father and other siblings until deep into the novel.

It feels like Cairns is learning his craft on the fly, which I suppose is par for the course for a debut effort. The story falls short on backstory, character development and motivation. One thing we do realize—Sandy is a womanizing party animal who in his early life at least views most women as little more than mere sex objects to be conquered.

It could also use a good polish from a good editor. I found one too many grammar and punctuation errors.

Out with the bad, in with the good. When we arrive in Africa with his bride Rocky, the writing all of a sudden slows down. Characters are fleshed out, motivations become clearer and things don’t appear so rushed. Although sometimes the description is frivolous and overdone (as with the lengthy description of San Pedro), the story becomes compelling, the writing improves, and we are given a unique glimpse into the strange and mysterious world of witchcraft practiced in Africa. It becomes obvious Cairns writes from first-hand experience and it makes you wonder how much of it is fiction and how much of it is real. I have to admit that once I hit the three-quarter mark, I couldn’t put the book down. And to be fair, even the beginning and middle were interesting, although I had a difficult time sympathizing with the main character.

Overall, The Witch’s List is an entertaining, interesting and compelling read. I hope Cairns takes constructive criticism to heart and his future novels become much more refined and polished. He’s certainly demonstrated a flair for storytelling.

Sarah Stuart - Readers' Favorite Reviewer

Be prepared to buy the rest of the trilogy.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 16, 2017

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I could empathise with the young Sandy, and his teenage peeps into Witches and Warlocks attracted by the sexy illustrations, and his story of the schoolmaster who ran a chess club for pupils and heated the laboratory with Bunsen burners. It became harder as Sandy grew up; he seemed to have a poor attitude to women. However, the story moves along at a good pace, has a strong plot, and the settings are very real, or they must have been not so long ago. Africa tends to change slowly short of a revolution, or of course witchcraft.

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The Witch's List Kindle Edition

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