Witch of the Week – Camille, from the YA Urban Fantasy Kingdom of Darkness
Continuing my Witch of the Week series for June 2021, I’m highlighting Camille. Camille is the MC in Kingdom of Darkness, Kingdom Journals Vol. 2, Camille’s Story. I had a ton of fun researching for this book set in modern day Iceland and Italy. The story begins in Reykjavik, Iceland where Camille lives with her mother and brother.
Her mother moves them every other year in an effort to improve Camille’s mental health. Camille suffers from bouts of what they believe to be is schizophrenia, seeing visions of people she’s never met, like a silent movie playing in her head. Iceland seems to be the cure for her issues until Camille is thrust back into episodes of seeing a teen girl and boy. But the pair seem awfully familiar, like she knows them. The scenes continue and she sees the pair performing magic, battling witches in a forest. She feels she’s going crazy until she hears, physically hears, them call a name she hasn’t thought of in years, Ivy.
Ivy is the name her preschool age imaginary friends assigned to her. But she hasn’t seen them since the age of four when, convinced she’d gone crazy, her mother put her on psychiatric medication. And after she hears the name the visions begin to include sound, like she is watching people in the same room with her. They wake her during the night and plague her all day.
Convinced she must get to the bottom of these visions without her mother’s interference, Camille goes on a quest to learn all she can about a magical dagger the two witches, Alena and Hunter, of her visions, want. She gets close to unraveling the mystery, but her mother discovers the secrets Camille’s been keeping.
Locked away in a mental hospital, Camille fears she’ll never see Alena and Hunter again. Never learn the truth. Until she finds a camp for troubled youth at a national park in Iceland and convinces her mother to let Camille go. Dr. Antos promises a way to stop the visions without medication, and Camille decides this is the best route.
At the camp Camille meets Jude, a teen, that like her wears bracelets of lode stones meant to stop hallucinations. The camp is like nothing she’s ever experienced, glacier hikes, rappelling, and kayaking in the ocean are activities she never dreamed of doing. Camille and Jude gravitate towards each other, bonding over mutual experiences. Then Jude reveals that he can do magic when his bracelets are off. Shocked, Camille can’t figure out who to trust. Is Jude lying? Is Dr. Antos?
Still, Camille can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to this than meets the eye. Plus, her dad goes missing and she becomes convinced Dr. Antos is behind it. Seeing no other option, she travels with Jude and Dr. Antos to a castle compound inhabited by a cover of witches in Sardinia, Italy. Trapped in the castle, the choice will either be her best way to finding her father and the truth, or the worse mistake she’s ever made.
You can find out what happens to Camille in the YA urban fantasy, Kingdom of Darkness, on audio and in ebook and paperback.
Happy reading and happy listening!
Tricia
P.S. Don’t miss my prior Witch of the Week post featuring Alena of Kingdom of Embers here!