Rating: 2/5 stars Pages: 448 Genre: Historical Fantasy Publisher: Redhook Books Release Date: April 7, 2020 Annis Allington only wants to breed her horses, and live in peace. But when her step-mother Frances starts planning to marry her into a title, in order to raise their family from new money into one of the elite Four Hundred families in New York, she’ll stand to lose everything she holds dear. Just as Annis is about to give up, she learns her great aunt, Harriet Bishop, is a witch and uses her magic to help women in need. And she’s willing to step in to assist Annis, as well as teach her how to wield her own nascent power. But Frances is also a witch—a distant cousin—who isn’t afraid to use dark magic to manipulate those around her into doing her bidding. It will take both Annis and Harriet to thwart Frances plan so that Annis—and the young lord she’s quickly falling for—can each continue to have their own choice in their lives, and protect all they hold dear.
** Thanks to NetGalley and Redhook Books for providing me with an eARC of this book**
I found this book to be pretty disappointing. Frankly, it felt like a book that didn’t know what it wanted to be. Does it want to be about warring witches? Or is it a love story? What about Annis? ?s she a compelling feminist character? No. The answer to all questions is no because it fails to accomplish any of these things. This is the book that had me screaming: “LIKING HORSES AND HATING SIDESADDLES CANNOT BE YOUR ENTIRE PERSONALITY.” As always, for my lackluster reviews, I’ve tried to keep it short, and I realize it’s a little ranty in places, but I’m chapped about this book. Basically, I loved the concept, and I really wanted to love this book (Intergenerational witch wars? YES PLEASE). But it just sorely lacked the execution it needed to be compelling. First off, there’s a major plot issue, in that the main plot appears to reach its climax at around 60%, the rest of the book is then spent cleaning up, and then tying up the romantic subplot. And finally, it just didn’t feel as if the stakes were that high. They didn’t seem to matter, and the characters seemed to lack agency outside of their writer’s will. What do I mean by that? I mean that if it’s clear characters are only behaving a certain way to serve the author, I’m gonna call bullshit. Also, there was so much exposition in the dialogue I wanted to throw my kindle. Just no. NO. That’s the exact opposite of what I want when I’m reading. And the romantic subplot is my other complaint. And it’s not that there was one, I fully expected there to be one. It’s that it didn’t feel fleshed out and that was frustrating. The growth from disliking each other to reluctantly kind of liking each other/not being sure if it was magic to actually loving each other just needed work. I mean, if I’m gonna get into a romantic subplot, I actually need to go through the motions with the characters, not be told “oh, by the way, they’re in love now.” otherwise I sit there going… well wtf the was the point of that. OH and didn’t appreciate the attempted sexual assault as a plot device. Not cool. Overall, I don’t know who I’d recommend this one too. I think readers of historical fantasy would be a little disappointed, and I think anyone, who like me, was like sweet witch wars, will also be a little disappointed. So, yeah…
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