I wish I could hate this book. I really wish it had something to it that I could sink my teeth into, whether a stupid plot or irritating characters or a general disrespect for the reader's intelligence. At least then it would have been interesting. As it is I found this book so innocuous, so bereft of anything truly attention grabbing, that it is too boring to even be an annoyance.
Oh, sure, there's the dead kids with the witch's mark on their backs but the mark only serves to stir up witch anxiety among the villagers and the killings all happen in the first 1/4 of the book. Other stuff happens but nothing on par with child murder, leaving the book feeling a little top heavy.
The marks are only in the plot to get the local midwife accused of witchcraft so that we have someone to worry about during the story. Only the midwife doesn't exist outside of the role of "innocent victim who needs to be exonerated". I mean, I don't want to see her tortured and killed, but I never want to see anyone tortured and killed. I don't really have any feelings for her otherwise.
The characters on the whole are pretty stereotypical and flat. The young doctor is enlightened and prissy, the titular daughter is feisty and intelligent, and her father is phlegmatic and practical. He's the only character I really had any interest in and he still had little in the way of an inner life. The villain has the looks and sartorial sense of a Disney antagonist and the townspeople are petty and stupid.
The hangman wants to find the real killer so he doesn't have to torture the midwife but all he seems to do is smoke and drink and then he ends up torturing her anyway. The mystery itself is straight out of an episode of Scooby-doo. This book had the potential to be way more interesting but it seemed to keep retreating into safe blandness.
