Her auntie died. That's, of course, too bad. But Lou didn't really know her very well and Auntie left her a cottage in the woods at the edge of some village on a little island in the Baltic. That, to Lou, sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime chance to back out of the outwardly successful but inwardly dissatisfying life situation she finds herself in and figure out what she really wants.

Regarding the "not having known auntie very well": one thing Lou didn't know was that auntie was a powerful witch. With her cottage comes a whole lot of magical baggage. As things get weird real fast around Lou, she needs to discover her own dormant witchy powers, if she wants to keep her neck in this neck of the woods.

Her constantly quibbling inner voices - the ‘part that knows' and the ‘part that doubts' - have many (conflicting) opinions along the way. The magical bookshelf is only helpful when asked the right question, Luke, the talking raven, is more rude than erudite, and other witches can only be trusted as far as you can fling their broomsticks. Come hell, highwater or a thunderstorm of turkeys, Lou must find her witch powers, and in the process, a whole new path begins to reveal itself to her that might just help her reimagine her life. That is, if she manages to survive.