I should have stopped the second a character from the 17th century used the word “sadistic”. That would have saved me a lot of frustration. Allegedly TWO editors worked on this book, and this isn’t the only instance in which a word spoken by a character in the 1660s would not be coined (or achieve the meaning the book used it in) until a century or two later.

You cannot write good historical fiction unless you undertake the little process called “research”. Because clearly none at all went into this, a book meant to be folk horror had ZERO atmospheric quality. As if this weren’t enough, the book went in circles, repeating itself and the points it wanted to make, instead of advancing the story. The story does not advance a single inch until the very end when there is finally a witch, but by then you have been bored to death so the very little revenge gore does absolutely nothing to salvage the book. Yes, horror is an incredibly broad genre, but folk horror requires two things: atmosphere, and actual horror lore.

Read this if you want to experience the slow death of all happiness and will to live at the hands of rage-inducing boredom.