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A review by the_evergrowing_library
Water Shall Refuse Them by Lucie McKnight Hardy
4.0
‘When I was younger, I used to see if I could make myself cry by imagining myself dead.’
I had no idea what to expect with this one, but it turns out: an atmospheric retro coming of age story, dealing with loss, grief and a heatwave in the 70s.
This an absolute slowburn. Do not be expecting fast paced action with this one, but at just shy of 260 pages it’s not going to be a hard going read.
The writing in this book is completely sublime. I loved all the little details and the perfect atmospheric tone of both style and substance. Honestly if we forget the parts talking about Nif’s tits, it’s probably the best writing I have read in a while.
It gave me Wasp Factory vibes throughout and I think if you enjoyed that, you’ll like this. The use of self created witchcraft elements without being overly leaned into was interesting and I found there to be a lot of OCD elements to it too.
So, It’s not a perfect book and I do feel like outside of our main cast, the village inhabitants seemed very 2-dimensional and “mob” like, but that would be my biggest gripe really.
Witchy, folky, sweaty.
I had no idea what to expect with this one, but it turns out: an atmospheric retro coming of age story, dealing with loss, grief and a heatwave in the 70s.
This an absolute slowburn. Do not be expecting fast paced action with this one, but at just shy of 260 pages it’s not going to be a hard going read.
The writing in this book is completely sublime. I loved all the little details and the perfect atmospheric tone of both style and substance. Honestly if we forget the parts talking about Nif’s tits, it’s probably the best writing I have read in a while.
It gave me Wasp Factory vibes throughout and I think if you enjoyed that, you’ll like this. The use of self created witchcraft elements without being overly leaned into was interesting and I found there to be a lot of OCD elements to it too.
So, It’s not a perfect book and I do feel like outside of our main cast, the village inhabitants seemed very 2-dimensional and “mob” like, but that would be my biggest gripe really.
Witchy, folky, sweaty.