The Warbler

A Novel

By: Sarah Beth Durst

Narrated by: Caitlin Davies, Sara Sheckells, Marni Penning

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Lies Among Us comes a magical tale about mothers and daughters, choices and consequences, and the real meaning of home when every place feels like a cage.

Ten months. That’s the longest Elisa has stayed anyplace, constantly propelled by her fear that if she puts down roots, a family curse will turn her into a tree.

But she’s grown tired of flitting from town to town and in and out of relationships. When she discovers a small town in Massachusetts where mysterious forces make it impossible for the residents to leave, she hopes she can change her fate.

As Elisa learns about the town’s history, she understands more about the women in her family, who seem doomed to never get what they want. Now she believes she’s stuck, too—is that a patch of bark on her arm? But her neighbor’s collection of pet birds sings secrets that Elisa can almost understand—secrets she must unravel in order to be truly alive.

©2025 by Sarah Beth Durst. (P)2024 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Absolutely Magical & Mesmerizing

I originally purchased this audiobook because I stumbled across it while writing a flash fiction about a hedge witch turning into a willow tree as a side effect of her use of green magic. Then I couldn’t bring myself to start it for reasons I can’t explain. But faced with a 6-hour drive I decided to give it a chance. Wow!!! This book is amazing. The writing is rich and lyrical without sacrificing compelling storytelling. The narrator is excellent. That said, when I reached my destination, I immediately downloaded the ebook because I couldn’t wait for my return drive to find out how it ended. Highly recommended!

Uniquely amazing! Must read

Wow! This book was like unlike anything I’ve read before. Twists and turns I didn’t see coming, that made me not want to put it down. Following 3 generations of women that each thought they were caged for different reasons and tried to protect their daughters from their wrong choices that doesn’t always work out

Well written but full of generational trauma.

In many ways this book reminded me of Kelly Barnhill’s When Women Were Dragons. Both are very well written both are significantly hard for me to read. The “villain” of this story was written in so accurate a way that I wanted to yell at them about how awful they were. If you want a book filled with trauma and difficult relationships you’ll love this. It will live in my memory but I can’t bring myself to read it again.

Good

When I first started reading this book, I was a little bit confused because it went from one character to another to another. Then I realized that all these women were connected and every time I changed to another character it was telling a little bit more about how the curse started. The ending was a little bit surprising though I was not expecting that. I did feel bad for Lori and Alyssa for having to move around so much because of the curse that was put on them by somebody else because they thought they knew best. Sometimes I thought the narrator got a little bit too emotional.

Well written, but did I even like it?

I was more than 80% through this book and was asking myself ‘do I even like this book’? And in the end it was … fine? The Warbler is the story of three women - Rose, Lori and Elisa - and their dreams and limitations. There is a mystery Elisa is seeking clues to solve, and that is the main plot line of the book. But unfortunately the ‘clues’ were more like flashing screens in Times Square in their lack of subtlety. And that ends up making for an overall mediocre experience - because for quite a while all I could think was “it can’t all be that simple and obvious, can it?”

You Can Check In, But You Can Never Leave: A Slow-Motion Slog Through The Warbler

I wanted to love *The Warbler*. Truly. I cleared my schedule, made tea, even arranged myself in a way that suggested deep engagement—legs tucked just so, a well-placed blanket, the works. But within pages, I realized I’d walked into literary quicksand.

Reading *The Warbler* is like being trapped inside a slow-motion montage set to *Hotel California*—specifically, that drawn-out, meandering guitar solo that never quite ends. I live in California. I avoid *Hotel California* like the plague. You can imagine how well this went for me.

The writing is lush, yes, but in the way of a dinner guest who describes every dish in agonizing detail while you nod politely, wondering if you’ll ever get to eat. The atmosphere is so thick with meaning that the plot—if you can call it that—moves with the urgency of a heavily sedated house cat.


If you love novels where plot is more of a suggestion than a requirement, this might be your thing. But if you, like me, have spent years perfecting the art of dodging *Hotel California*, do yourself a favor and keep walking.