I finished the book and it did actually made me think a lot—mostly about gender, womanhood, and the witch trope in contemporary literature (especially the more serious/historical ones)—but since all my thoughts are basically *against* what the book seems to say and that I found the whole thing frustrating especially considering its popularity and high rating, I’m just gonna pettily give it a 1.5 rounded down.

The tl;dr crux of it though is that I think as a multi-generational historical female narrative, it did nothing new or interesting enough that other books haven’t done better, so it won’t scratch that itch, and the magical/witchy elements are rare and mostly absent until the very end where they are used in mostly righteous vengeance but unsatisfactorily enough that it also doesn’t scratch the witchy or female rage itch either.

spoilers ahead I guess

I honestly could go on and on and on about the gender politics of this book, but I don’t feel like writing it all right now (edit: oops I did write a fair bit anyway). I’m wary to draw definite conclusions as to the author’s beliefs based sorely on fictional portrayals, but I will say that this book felt to me borderline anti-choice, or treats it almost as a necessary bad. The book presents 3 pregnancies over 3 time periods, *all* of them the result of rape, 2 of them ending in abortion that are portrayed as sad, perhaps even immoral—but with historical plausible deniability of the “people at the time did think it was a sin” variety. We learn that the Weyward women always have a female first born, and so the second woman grieves the loss of her daughter (the fetus she aborted), convinced that she has ended their line/won’t be able to pass down her lineage’s gift. This is framed as the rapist’s fault, the inevitable consequence of, another thing destroyed by, male violence against women. The third woman decides to keep her baby, but only when she has a dream of a daughter that convinces her that her baby will be a girl (which is then confirmed later by her gynaecologist). Despite the horrible origins of her pregnancy, it is portrayed as beautiful, described by the character as a miracle, and the fierce love she has for her unborn child even heals the wound she’s carried all her life over her father’s death in saving her life and the guilt she carried thinking it was her fault, by making her understand that this is the strength of a parent’s love. The book seems to say that abortion is only the consequence of male sexual violence and that, what? without it it wouldn’t happened? It just kinda all stinks.

And consciously or not, the book is just very gender essentialist. It seemed, to me, to define womanhood as sorely rooted in shared oppression and in our womb/ability to have children (a character’s mother even dies after being given an hysterectomy which is probably historically accurate, but the symbolism amidst the rest of the narrative was extremely side-eye worthy). To put it bluntly, it had TERFy vibes. I think it also goes without saying that the book is extremely white. I am not one to think that a story that deals with oppression has to be all intersectional about it, but when the narrative is as shallow and as cliché as this one, the absence of race, class, disability, etc is just very glaring. I think it’s a fair reading to say that the first women is queer as she is at least portrayed as having feelings of love for her female friend, but she also has sex with a man once just so she can get pregnant and continue their lineage and idk all of these things put together just annoyed the fuck out of me and I thought it made the whole messy, frustrating, and at times, offensive.

I think at best, at my most charitable, I could only say that this book is empty of anything interesting, and is shallow in its portrayal of women, womanhood, sisterhood, motherhood, witchiness as a symbol of women’s inherent connection to nature/primal forces (barf), oppression and sexual violence, all things that it seemed to want to seriously explored.