A review by pinxsol
The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

2.0

This book is very on the nose. If your nose was Pinnochio's, that is. It has more cheap one liners than your average marvel movie, it's just that bad. It feels like 500 pages of cheap copout of female empowerment (when there are so many better and more profound ways to write that!).
I hated most of the book, if I'm gonna be honest. It's very showy about its themes, to the point that it feels crude and cheesy. It tells you: oh this girl is smart or this woman is strong and then makes these women do absolutely nothing to show how smart or strong they might be. It's all tell and no show.
Also, every line in this book is so dramatic that it's tiring to read. It all goes back to those annoying one-liners like fire in her hair, steel in her spine and other stuff like that which I find very cringe. It's so unsubtle I just can't take it seriously.
The characters are so hyperfocused on their one quirk or theme that they feel one-dimensional.

Spoiler

Also, you want to tell me that a girl who was tortured and beaten by a man would just go 'oh I understand him now so it's all good'? At first I thought it was a joke, it was so absurd. But i guess it was not.