I enjoyed The Coven but I agree with the comments saying it fell flat. The end felt especially rushed and it was sometimes hard to keep up with the characters - there were so many!

This book had me in an absolute chokehold.

Feminism, witches, prison escapes, rebellion, villains, action, strong female characters littered throughout. What more could you want??

This book so cleverly blurs the line between this fictional world where magic exists and is feared with the very real issues women face in our misogynistic society. It felt dystopian in a way that wouldn’t be too far fetched if witches were in fact real.

I loved the multiple perspectives and narratives throughout so we could really get a glimpse into each character and what drives them. The pacing felt spot on for me and the end tied up nicely.

Probably one of my favourite books I’ve ever read.

Some of the world building felt a little clunky for me in the beginning.
I think the end third was at it’s strongest except I’m also not sure on the ending

Had potential and I enjoyed the witches and feminist aspects but some things were a bit too straightforward and some things about the writing itself were quite unnatural and strange , worth a read but felt like it needed something extra. Also there was a weird revenge-rape thing that framed somewhat positively and was never addressed and that has put me off

This novel was like Joan of Arc - great idea, but bad execution. Really wanted to like it more but I found the editing very sloppy.
As for the story itself - no shade but to me it read very YA. If YA is your thing then kudos, but it's not mine so my expectations were disappointed. The characters were two dimensional and could have been developed more beyond bland clichéd stereotypes (i.e lovely virtuous good guys, very villainous bad guys). Also I felt that the romantic sub plot was very blegh and just thrown in for the sake of it.
There was an attempt at urgency throughout the novel that just read as abrupt and hurried writing.

What I did like was the dystopian atmosphere and the creativity in the author's different types of witches.

Lastly, although there was an effort at diverse characters, there was a very lazy sense of white feminism that pervaded the whole novel, sort of like a "we are the granddaughters of the witches you couldn't burn" rubbish that left a bad taste in my mouth.

I so wanted to love this book but it was definitely not what I thought it was going to be (and not in a good way).

I found the main character Chloe kind of pathetic in that she barely does anything in the book except have magical temper tantrums. She barely even speaks we don’t get to experience her personality in anyway. The relationship with her mother is completely forgotten about until the last chapter, and then glossed over as if it was no big deal.

I liked Adelita and Ethan but there was so much about them that was confusing or annoying. I don’t buy in to the whole “I met you yesterday and now we are in love” storylines so this one annoyed me.

I liked that Marianne ended up being the bad guy but wasn’t too convinced by her motivations. Also cannot stop cringing at the fact at one point she said she wanted to take over the world. It was too Saturday morning cartoon villain-esque for me.

I kind of liked the magic system but it seemed to convenient to me. The fact the powers that are supposedly elemental could just be altered to fit a situation like Air Elementals being able to control peoples minds??? Lots of the magic system was never really explained, like Adelita’s and Ethan’s spellbinding: you just had to go along with it.

Pacing was a huge problem. The writing was extremely jarring, going from coarse language to cheesy sayings so quickly. The phrase “sorry butt” appeared a page after “Elemental c**t”.

The add-on final chapter was shockingly bad. Really disappointing ending, seemingly trying to emulate Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale but missing the mark by miles.

Too many underdeveloped side characters. A strange and uncomfortable rape sequence slotted in. Character built up to be extremely important to then be sniffed out very easily.


All in all a very lack lustre jarring novel that would not inspire me to read more of Fry’s works in the future.