He doesn't want me to see him worrying, but the truth is, I'm happy to be gone. Ansel likes to have a plan of attack, like he did back on the football field in high school, but right now, we've got nothing more than the clothes in the car and the gasoline in the tank. 'Are we in South Carolina yet? I zoned out,' Ansel says, his voice a forced calm as he peers over the steering wheel. We were obligations left behind by a father eaten alive by mourning, remnants of a shattered family. She said she just couldn't afford to keep us on anymore and, with me having just turned eighteen and Ansel nineteen, was no longer obligated to. She's never liked us, after all, especially me-she didn't like the way my father loved me, didn't like the fact that I perfectly matched the daughter she'd never met but my father ached for, the way I looked like his dead wife when she'd been a teenager. The truth is, I can't believe it took our stepmother this long to throw us out.

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Gretchen is certain of only one thing: a monster is coming, and it will never go away hungry. Yet the further she investigates the mystery of what the witch is and how it chooses its victims, the more she wonders who the real monster is. Gretchen is determined to stop running and start fighting back. He tells her the witch isn’t gone - it’s lurking in the forest, preying on girls every year after Live Oak’s infamous chocolate festival, and looking to make Gretchen its next victim. Life seems idyllic and Gretchen and Ansel gradually forget their haunted past - until Gretchen meets handsome local outcast Samuel. They’re invited to stay with Sophia Kelly, a beautiful candy maker who molds sugary magic: coveted treats that create confidence, bravery, and passion. Years later, when their stepmother casts Gretchen and Ansel out, they find themselves in sleepy Live Oak, South Carolina. Ever since, Gretchen and her brother, Ansel, have felt the long branches of the witch’s forest threatening to make them disappear, too. As a child, Gretchen’s twin sister was taken by a witch in the woods.

Sweetly by jackson pearce