3.5 rounded up
"Magic is just the space between what you have and what you need" — and in the late 1800s, the women of New Salem are waking up to a powerful need for equal rights and acknowledgment. Enter the Eastwood sisters, drawn back together by a mysterious bond of sisterhood; drawn into the battle for rights by the undeniable needs of Sisterhood. "It’s easy to ignore a woman.” Juniper’s lips twist in a feral smile. “But a hell of a lot harder to ignore a witch.”

I love this kind of blended alt-history fantasy tale that leans hard into folklore and nursery rhymes and the power of stories and the fierceness of female friendship and enduring love. Harrow is very good at clever, satisfying character-driven storytelling. But I've also struggled through a few very good books recently, and this one joins the list — very good and a bit of a struggle. The writing is beautiful, the story is smart and well crafted, the characters are sharply drawn, and the setting is perfect, but it felt sluggishly paced at times and overlong as a whole. With a good trim, I think this would've sailed right into the 5-star range.

Content notes: racism, misogyny, homophobia, anti-trans parents, sexual harassment, oppression, addiction, abuse, public execution, torture, murder in self-defense, possession, forced will/stolen souls; Black, indigenous, people of color, and characters of various ethnicities are represented as powerful in their own right but have merely supportive roles, giving this a pretty white-centered feminist lens