A review by missjaward
Weyward by Emilia Hart

dark mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

SPOILERS AHEAD three women's stories from different age spans.

In 1619 Althea is on trial for potential witchcraft, accused of putting a spell on her friend's husband, John, to kill him after finding out he was abusing his wife (Althea's friend Grace who was being beaten up because she could not provide him with an heir), Althea is actually involved in his death by proxy when 'her' crow causes his cows to stampede and kill him. Althea is found not-guilty in trial and very bizarrely at the end invites a local boy into her house to have sex with her one time so she can get pregnant and have a daughter. That was a bit weird.
 
Violet 1942 - doesn't know much about her own dead mother and lives a lonely life in a grand house. Her cousin comes to visit and rapes her (let's not forget not only was she a child but this is quite incestuous). When she becomes pregnant she is cast out of the family home into her mothers old poor cottage where she finds her mother old 'recipe/concoction' books and induces her own miscarriage. Its never really explained why her father chose the mother in the first place as she was obviously from such poor background and never seemed to care about her. Why would a man with all the riches and wealth choose someone like her (who he himself calls strange) without actually being truly in love with her? She lives the rest of her life without children but has visions of her brothers kid suffering in the future (she sees visions of a car accident and a horrible man), so she chooses to leave all of her possessions to her when she dies rather than try and make contact again. hmm.  the cousin also basically gets away with the rape, although it is alluded that Violet puts a curse on the family home so it is infested with bugs until her death

Modern day Kate - finds the courage to leave her abusive relationship when she realises she is pregnant. She flees in the night to the cottage left to her and tries to start anew. While I totally get fleeing the abusive relationship - there is no real thought to what is going to happen after the baby comes. Unless its reported in the right ways, the father is likely to find out and demand visitation because he is so controlling anyway. She also keeps blaming herself for her dad's death after he was hit by a car when she was distracted by a crow (the crow in question being her aunts - so really did she ultimately kill her brother?!) 

The endings of each story were pretty predicable. The only one I really didn't like was Altheas where it was so important to her to have a child that she just randomly bedded a guy from the village once so she could be impregnated. I quite liked the end of Kates story where she was able to almost use her witchy powers to have the birds and spiders attack Simon making him leave. I think I would have preferred more of the witchy elements rather than just the abusive men storylines but heyho.
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