A review by ebonwilde
Bright I Burn by Molly Aitken

3.0

★★★¾ — “inspired by the first recorded person in ireland to have been condemned as a witch, bright i burn gives voice to a woman lost to history, who dared to carve her own space in a man's world”—by sucking the souls of every woman around her. this isn't a feminist story in the modern sense of the word. alice is many things, but a girl's girl she is not. which obviously makes this a more realistic and immersive experience than certain other works of historical fiction because who in the year 1280 was? alice is not necessarily a sympathetic character, but she is raw and angry and real, a woman who claws for every breath she takes, a woman who burns the men in her vicinity before they can cage her first. her character and the plotline were impressively crafted, but i wasn’t the biggest fan of the prose. hence, the lower rating.

also, i opened this expecting absolutely nothing because i forgot to read the blurb. but if you're expecting anything about witch hunts, that's barely the last 15% of the book. this chronicles alice's life from when she was a child to after her fourth husband, and the witchery is a rather small part of it all.

thank you to netgalley for the advanced copy.