Reviews with content warning for Pedophilia - Weyward

I had been seeing this book everywhere and I probably should have checked the trigger warnings. I highly recommend you do and I wish more people when advertising books did that.

The extremely graphic triggering part of the book doesn’t come in till like a third of the way through.

I liked the switching perspectives especially in the beginning. The chapters were short and there was a nice pace to the book. Toward the middle and end the chapters were long we and started to feel slow. The book was a bit predictable toward the end.

I did like the author’s writing style (although sometimes the dialogue got a bit cheesy) and would consider reading her future works.

What really irked me and took me out of the story is at the end Kate’s abusive ex-husband finds her and instead of immediately calling the police or her friend (which she later admits she should have done) she concocts this more complicated plan to hide in the attic. I just didn’t understand why she didn’t ask for help earlier in that crisis. Also I’m not sure why she came down from the attic, I would have phoned for help as the animals were attack Simon. I don’t intend to victim/survivor blame but rather point out that as a reader it took me out of the story because I was thinking “what are you doing?”

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doodlebeanz's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This book was a rollercoaster. It was definitely not what I was expecting and in some ways it was far heavier than I anticipated. I was given the book from a coworker and she described it as being about the Salem witch trials, which I’ve always been obsessed with since I was born and raised in Boston and learned about it, but this was not about that. It was about witches, and it had the vibes of the Salem witch trials from Althea’s POV, but the main story didn’t really have that same vibe.

I loved Altha and Violet’s POVs the most. Kate was very sad, but as I do with most FMC, she made such idiotic mistakes. She righted the mistakes before they really affected her, which makes her a smarter FMC than some, but she just wasn’t as alluring as the other two women and her chapters/POV felt so bland in comparison of Altha and Violet. I think Violet was my favorite.

My two favorite topics are feminine rage and nature and this book combined the two. I absolutely loved that the Weyward’s are one with nature and that they love all creatures. I resonate with that a lot. I’m the type of person who moves out of bird’s way on the street and apologize to them if I scare them and cause them to fly away. I also chased a squirrel in central park once because he had a Doritos bag stuck on his head. I’ve always tried to usher a cockroach to safety while intoxicated. Reading this book and how these women had their little animal sidekicks (or familiars 🙄) and they each had different critters (Altha with her goat and crow, Violet with her damselfly and Kate with her bees…) I just loved the magical realism of it all!

The main lesson I took away from this story is that… women are incredible and men fucking suck and that’s that on that!

there are some disturbing and graphic scenes in this book, please need the TW for this book before reading!

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kelburke's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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jjrivera's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

5.0

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fruitwash's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

After reading all the wonderful reviews, this book let me down a bit. Maybe I went in with incorrect assumptions, but I wanted MUCH MORE witchy magic. It was a lot of sexual abuse & violence against women to get through for a pretty lackluster ending and NOT MUCH MAGIC. Since there is a main character who is literally going through a witch trial, I thought it was safe to assume there would be some witchcraft? But there was only one spell alluded to in the entire book. No potions, no rituals, no sigils. 80% of the book was just relatively dull, slow-paced, magic-free descriptions of how men are abusing the three main characters.

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