Two star review, originally posted here on June 19th, 2024.
Another instance where I dip my toe into the waters of popular literature only to get burned. I dunno, everyone loved this book, it was nominated for reader awards, it sounded like a plot I would have fun getting lost in, etc. I wasn’t expecting great literature, but I was at least hoping for a fun story. A little escapism. Maybe a guilty pleasure.
Things started well enough, and at the beginning, I was thinking maybe this might even be a 4 or 5 star book. We are introduced to 3 women living in 3 different time periods. It very quickly becomes evident that the three women are related, and that maybe/probably witchcraft runs in their blood. We quickly figure out that actual links between them, and get plenty of foreshadowing about what will likely to happen to them. Their individual stories are interesting enough. One goes through a witch trial in the 17th (?) century, another is a 20th century rich girl whose dad fears she’ll wind up being a witch and/or insane like her dead mom so he shelters her in a giant manor house then introduces her to a pervy male cousin, and the third is a present-day DV victim who hides out in a great aunt’s cottage to protect her unborn baby and winds up researching her witchy family.
You can probably see where these plots are going. In fact, that is 100% the problem with this book. We know exactly where every. Single. Plot. Is. Going. There is nothing remotely surprising. Which means… why are we bothering to read? It just got super boring. The present-day character was easily the most boring, because she’s not really doing anything the whole time except learning about these other two characters. But we already know the other two characters, so what do we even need this 3rd lady for? What are we trying to learn? What is supposed to be holding out interest? Why is this book still dragging on when we have nothing new left to learn? We were just going through the motions by the end. Like “Oh, finally, the abusive husband is back. We’ve been waiting for this since chapter 2. I assume this means we’re nearing the end.” It was a shame to see the stars dropping off as we just got slower and slower moving through this thing, but there ya go. Totally wasted potential with nothing new to say. At least the other disappointing popular witch book I just read, Once and Future Witches, had plenty of creativity involved.
Sometimes I add a little disclaimer if I think my doing the audiobook version impacted my experience. I did not like the audiobook narration here, but in this case I don’t think I would have liked the book any more in a different format. We have 3 different narrators here, which I assume means a narrator per each protagonist’s chapters. But 2 of the 3 sound exactly the same. The 3rd had an accept that differentiated her, but honestly that could have been the same voice, too. Either have the voices actually be different, or don’t bother, ya know? Also, the narrator in the present-day character’s timeline kept getting super excited and dramatic like something crazy was happening, but in parts where really nothing exciting or crazy was happening. It made no sense. Just weird choices on when and how to try to build tension.
Helga without the H 