Iona has never felt like she belonged anywhere. Always wanting a steady and true love and affection from those around her, but never really receiving it. The only person who has loved Iona unconditionally is her grandmother "Nan". Nan tells Iona about her family history. Iona is decended from the Dark Witch Sorcha who sacrificed her life so that her children and their power wouldn't fall into the hands of the evil Cabhan. Iona gave up everything to move to Ireland and connect with her family. Brenna and Connor (brother and sister) were more than happy to welcome their cousin into the fold. With Iona's arrival, the power triangle is complete once again. Evil is back and it's up to the cousins to put an end to it for good. 
 I'm kind of teetering on the edge about this book. There were a lot of things, looking back, that I wished Nora Roberts would have expanded upon. The beautiful Irish setting just didn't seem to get justice done to it. The magic also seemed a little lackluster and not decsribed very well at times. I felt like there were instances where a lot of time passed in a matter of pages where this could have been used to expand magical details of Iona's training. 
 But I think what I liked the most was the promise of the other two books in the trilogy and what is still left to come before the end. Nora Roberts built up her secondary characters Connor and Brenna moreso than Iona (who's story this was) to the point where I'm looking forward to reading their stories much more. Because Iona came into the fold as a complete novice at witchcraft, I wonder if that is the reason for the non-descriptiveness. Connor and Brenna have lived with the magic since they were born so I'm hoping we'll get a better sense of their powers in their books. 
 Overall, I guess it was appropriate to start out with Iona's story. She's just coming into her powers and it's the first book so the readers get to learn about everything as Iona does. Dark Witch is a good book, but I think it suffers being the first book in the trilogy tasked with setting up the backstory and everything. 
 I'm excited about where the series will go from here, happy that Shadow Spell is already out, and that Blood Magick will be out later this year as well. Until Then!