Blurb from Goodreads:
In 1893, there’s no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box.
But when the Eastwood sisters–James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna–join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women’s movement into the witch’s movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote-and perhaps not even to live-the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.
There’s no such thing as witches. But there will be.
(Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book)
Have you ever read a book with such good writing that you kind of want to cry, and that’s before you even take into account the magnificent characters and incredible story? And when it comes to review it, you just kind of want to flail your hands around like Kermit after a few cocktails? The Once and Future Witches is, without a doubt, the best book I’ve read in 2021.
As an aspiring writer, this book is kind of devastating because I could never, but as a reader, this book is. Well, Kind of devastating, but in the best way. It is a feminist book, sure, and even though the antagonist is a man, it is not a man-hating book. It’s a story about magic, witchcraft and an incredible community that comes together to defy the odds and I love an odds-defying story. I love that there are so many characters to root for; this is a book in which the background characters come alive, as much as our three heroines. I cannot stress enough how clever this book is. It starts out by introducing us to the three Eastwood sisters, who are deeply dissimilar to each other. The recurrent themes of Crone and Mother and Maiden are woven through this book, together with fairytales and a cleverly gender-switched history (the Grimm Sisters, and Alexandra Pope).
You do not meet a character like Juniper very often; she’s special and she’s stubborn and she’s fierce and she’s not always likeable but she’s impossible not to root for.
She’s the fierce one, the feral one, the witch who lives free in the wild woods. She’s the siren and the selkie, the virgin and the valkyrie; Artemis and Athena. She’s the little girl in the red cloak who doesn’t run from the wolf but walks arm in arm with him deeper into the woods.
Her sisters, Agnes and Beatrice, are just as compelling, with their own ferocity, Mother and Crone. Agnes is driven by the force of her love for her unborn daughter and Beatrice, a librarian without a library, comes into her strength too, and hers is a wonderful love story, as she finds herself entranced by Cleopatra Quinn.
This is a story about how the Eastwood sisters find their way back to each other, and back to witching, and it’s a story about so many revolutions, which ripple out from the town of New Salem. It’s a story about witchcraft – the way, the word and the will: That’s all magic is, really: the space between what you have and what you need.
This is also a story with superb LGBT representation; not just the evolving relationship between Beatrice and Cleo, but look out for the story of Jennie Lind, too.
Rating: 5 stars (I’d give it six)
TL;DR: A gorgeously written book about witchcraft, and sisters, and power.
whelmed.blog 