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A review by fictionmajorette
Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
https://fictionmajorette.blogspot.com/2021/04/hour-of-witch-chris-bohjalian.html
This was a really interesting genre mashup of a book - historical fiction / domestic thriller / courtroom drama. Historical fiction isn't really a go-to genre for me so I was really drawn in by the thriller and courtroom aspects. I think Bohjalian does a good job of balancing the different aspects of the story. The narration style was a little more modern than the dialogue, but not in a jarring way. It seemed like Bohjalian (and/or his editor) did a good job making sure to leave out any modern phrases or names for things. The dialogue uses a lot of 'thine', 'thee', 'thy', etc type of language that did take some getting used to. Since historical fiction isn't my usual genre, I don't know if this is a normal language choice for books set this far back in time, but it certainly made for an atmospheric read.
I really enjoyed the characters in this story and thought they were pretty well developed. It really felt like the reader was just dropped into the story one day and started following Mary around from there. We don't get a whole lot of backstory about the character relationships upfront other than the literal connections (X person is married to Y or A is best friends with B, etc). But as the story develops and Mary interacts with more people, the backstory slowly comes out in dialogue or Mary thinking back to how things used to be a few years ago. I think this is especially well done considering the amount of small town gossip and rumors that were just a matter of life back then.
Where I felt the book fell flat for me was the romance element.This person becomes pretty integral to the plot later on and while Mary's feelings for him grow, I just didn't get enough of their interactions together to really believe she would fall that hard for this man. Now, I do understand that this book being set amongst 1662 Puritans means I'm not going to get the very direct and explicit flirting I get when I read contemporary romance but I just wanted some more conversations, maybe a brief hand holding when he's helping her down some steps or something like that.
I think Bohjalian does a really great job at slowly building up the atmosphere and tension throughout the book. There isn't much by way of action in this story, but there's a lot of smaller events that all culminate at the end. I think the tension works really great in the courtroom scenes, especially. Mary is the center of 2 trials in this book and I think the courtroom suspense parts of this book are the real highlight. Since we are only following Mary's story, it is really easy to get emotionally invested in the trial outcome. I found the domestic thriller aspects to be pretty light so most of the drama and thrills for me came via the courtroom scenes.
Thanks to NetGalley and DoubleDay Books for the ARC in exchange for review
Expected publication date is May 4, 2021
This was a really interesting genre mashup of a book - historical fiction / domestic thriller / courtroom drama. Historical fiction isn't really a go-to genre for me so I was really drawn in by the thriller and courtroom aspects. I think Bohjalian does a good job of balancing the different aspects of the story. The narration style was a little more modern than the dialogue, but not in a jarring way. It seemed like Bohjalian (and/or his editor) did a good job making sure to leave out any modern phrases or names for things. The dialogue uses a lot of 'thine', 'thee', 'thy', etc type of language that did take some getting used to. Since historical fiction isn't my usual genre, I don't know if this is a normal language choice for books set this far back in time, but it certainly made for an atmospheric read.
I really enjoyed the characters in this story and thought they were pretty well developed. It really felt like the reader was just dropped into the story one day and started following Mary around from there. We don't get a whole lot of backstory about the character relationships upfront other than the literal connections (X person is married to Y or A is best friends with B, etc). But as the story develops and Mary interacts with more people, the backstory slowly comes out in dialogue or Mary thinking back to how things used to be a few years ago. I think this is especially well done considering the amount of small town gossip and rumors that were just a matter of life back then.
Where I felt the book fell flat for me was the romance element.This person becomes pretty integral to the plot later on and while Mary's feelings for him grow, I just didn't get enough of their interactions together to really believe she would fall that hard for this man. Now, I do understand that this book being set amongst 1662 Puritans means I'm not going to get the very direct and explicit flirting I get when I read contemporary romance but I just wanted some more conversations, maybe a brief hand holding when he's helping her down some steps or something like that.
I think Bohjalian does a really great job at slowly building up the atmosphere and tension throughout the book. There isn't much by way of action in this story, but there's a lot of smaller events that all culminate at the end. I think the tension works really great in the courtroom scenes, especially. Mary is the center of 2 trials in this book and I think the courtroom suspense parts of this book are the real highlight. Since we are only following Mary's story, it is really easy to get emotionally invested in the trial outcome. I found the domestic thriller aspects to be pretty light so most of the drama and thrills for me came via the courtroom scenes.
Thanks to NetGalley and DoubleDay Books for the ARC in exchange for review
Expected publication date is May 4, 2021
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse