Grief over the loss of a loved one can make people willing, and really emotionally needing, to believe in supernatural phenomena they’ve previously dismissed, such as reincarnation, communication with the dead, and witchcraft. Such is the case with teenager Claire Norton when her mother mysteriously disappears, in Ontario author Alison Baird’s latest YA fantasy novel, the first in the Willowmere Chronicles series.

Claire is a sharply etched, emotionally real character. She caustically mocks her trend-following classmates, but also longs for their friendship and acceptance, her aura of surety and superiority a coverup for her insecurity and neediness. However, the secondary teenage characters are a generically indistinguishable group and facile satirical targets. Even Claire’s main adversaries, Josie Sloan and Nick van Buren, members of a dark coven, are sketchily created, their motivations left murky (one of too many loose plot threads to be played out presumably in future instalments). Consequently, Claire’s clashes with them lack menace or thematic weight.

When Claire overhears her classmates chatter on about the Wiccan coven that Dr. Myra Moore allegedly belongs to, she contacts her to see if she knows anything more about the fate of her mother. A warm friendship develops between Claire and Myra, who’s a kindly, eccentric naturalist living in a whimsical Gothic mansion. Claire feels a strange affinity with the portrait of Myra’s 17th-century Scottish ancestor Alice Ramsay, who was accused of being a witch – so much so that Claire has vivid hallucinations in which she relives the last months of Alice’s life.

Since the dramatic ante doesn’t really crank into full gear until near the conclusion, the bulk of the story comes across as an attenuated setup for the series. While the novel is involving, what’s missing is the inventiveness and rich mythological breadth that distinguishes Baird’s previous fantasy fiction.