BookBrowse Reviews Verity Vox and the Curse of Foxfire by Don Martin

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This heartfelt and humorous young adult novel follows a self-assured witch in training as she uses magic and friendship to battle a devilish salesman and save a small Appalachian town.

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In Don Martin's debut young adult novel Verity Vox and the Curse of Foxfire, witch-in-training Verity and her familiar, a cat named Jack, are led by a cryptic magical distress call to Foxfire, an isolated town in the valley of the Appalachian Mountains. As part of her witch training, she'll be stationed in the town for a year, during which time she must work to reverse the complex curse wrought on Foxfire by Earl, a shady salesman who derives his magical powers from deals with the impoverished townsfolk. Having been run out of the town years earlier for his fraudulent ways, Earl now resides in the mountains and has cursed the land in revenge: vegetation withers, animals die, beloved mementos break, and the single bridge connecting Foxfire with the outside world is doomed to remain in disrepair. While solving these blights on the land, Verity must also recover the Foxfire denizens, including a young woman her age named Tacita, who have gone missing venturing into Earl's mountains, either desperate for a way out of Foxfire or deliberately seeking him out for a last-ditch, ill-fated deal.

The book's premise is quite heavy and dark—the inhabitants were first exploited by mining companies who left after depleting Foxfire of its natural resources, then endured years of abuse under Earl—but the setting remains defiantly vibrant, chiefly because of its lively, unforgettable inhabitants. Early on, Verity finds friendship, a base of operations, and a home with Gilly, the owner of Foxfire's general goods store and a talented aspiring dressmaker. Gilly is bold and brave; at one point, she joins Verity in a climactic magical battle armed with just a pair of knitting needles and steely determination. Later, Verity works to earn the trust and friendship of Mae, the straight-talking and protective matriarch of the Miller dairy farm; Mae is a solid and reassuring bedrock for friends, family, and others who have earned her loyalty.

Verity's antics, magical plans, and interactions with the Foxfire folk are narrated in a charming omniscient third person, replete with cheeky direct addresses to the reader that break the fourth wall. And even Verity is not free from the narrator's good-natured teasing: when she's challenged by Gilly, as a test of her powers, to magically fix a gramophone, the narrator playfully quips, "Between you and me, Verity wouldn't have a clue whether there was a missing piece or ten missing pieces. She's a witch, not an engineer."

This teasing is never cynical or mean-spirited; instead, the storytelling voice is compassionate towards those whom it describes, and the narrator patiently contextualizes Foxfire's initial mistrust of Verity within the history of Earl's curse: "It might sound silly to you, perhaps, not to immediately trust in the young witch who eagerly showcased that she had arrived in good faith. If so, congratulations. You have never felt betrayal or the consequences of other people deciding your fate for you."

Verity is a loveable heroine; she works tirelessly to assist those in need, wielding her powerful magic—her specialization is to channel magic and spells through inventive songs—to reassemble homes, revive gardens, and reinvigorate livestock. But she's also a flawed novice: hubristic, self-righteous, and overly reliant on using magic forcefully, often attempting to strong-arm Earl's curse into complacency, instead of focusing on enacting her spells with precision. The "idea of failure never entered her mind," Martin writes. "She would succeed because she believed she could. What was magic after all but having the gall to believe you could tell the world around you how it ought to be and then watching as it did as it was told?"

Martin fleshes out, too, the taxing nature of Verity's perfectionist mindset as a gifted witch. Any failures or setbacks she encounters are devastating to her identity and self-esteem, because she's completely pinned her worth to being able to deliver magical remedies. To succeed at breaking Earl's curse and complete her training, Verity must hone the mental conjurations central to her spell-making—while also maintaining the tentative trust the Foxfire townsfolk hold for her, an additional source of compelling interpersonal tension.

Training to be a witch, as depicted in Verity Vox, can be a lonely process—relocating on a yearly basis, belonging "neither to a home of family nor a home of community." Yet the novel is never despondent or melancholy about witching; for the most part, it is a source of wonder, hope, and laughter. Bonding with Tacita, Verity shares a goofy family story about how one great-aunt was accidentally transformed into a tortoise for over twenty years and met the darkly humorous end of being eaten by a fox. The presence of Jack is an acknowledged source of "comic relief," too, for his feline antics as he playfully chases and bonds with other Foxfire animals. Uplifting and comforting, Verity Vox and the Curse of Foxfire is a delightful book for young adults who refuse to outgrow a love for fairy tales and relentlessly believe in the magic of good triumphing over evil.

This review first ran in the August 27, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.