A review by crystalvaughan0603
Conversion by Katherine Howe

4.0

Ok, this book was a page turner for me. I started it, thinking I would take a break from another book that I was reading which is looooong! Anyway, I finished it quickly because of the suspense. A group of girls from an elite prep school in Danvers (formerly Salem), Massachusetts fall prey to a mysterious illness. Katherine Howe moves the story back and forth between the present day (well, ok, 2012, but whatever!) and 1706 as Ann Putnam tells her version of the Salem Witch Trial events. I actually found Ann's story more compelling than Colleen Rowley's, our entre into the present day occurrences. Of course, the Salem Witch Trials fascinate everyone. What happened? Why? How? What caused the girls to accuse their neighbors of witchcraft? Howe posits that the girls were lying for attention and also to get out of work- most of the girls were servants. All in all, I raced through the book to get to the end and the final answers. I was a bit disappointed in the final outcome as I was expected something else. It seemed to me that Howe was going in another direction than she ended in. Maybe she chose to go the other way or maybe she meant to go that way the whole time.