As always, tight, fun story but subpar writing. Fantastic stinger close.

Insightful and a full of a realistic mythos covering an 8 year period of the lives of Marina Warner's parents.

While all the stories and prose is lovely, I especially found the descriptions and internal monologues she provides of her mother were so real and vulnerable brought me closer to my own Sicilian family in a lot of ways. My grandparents were first generation Sicilian immigrants about the same age as her mom, and I honestly felt such a kindred cultural loneliness present. The same one I know my Grandpa had from time to time.

Definitely gonna retread this one again in the future

The longer I sat with this book, the more feelings I got about it.

I think Morgan's writing is clean and easy to follow. It's engaging and draws you in. It does read more like YA fiction than adult fiction, though.

This book itself is such a mess though! I don't think it knows what it wants to be at all so it tries to be all of them.

THE PART WITH SPOILERS:

Is this Harriet's story of overcoming her guilty conscience? Annis' story of coming of age? The moral greys of magic? A commentary on the historical roles of women and achieving power in spite of it? A romance? I honestly have no idea because it actively bounces between all of them constantly and as a result does none of them well.

I also cannot stand the way Frances was treated. The characters we are supposed to support basically performed a lobotomy on the woman and blame it on her magic corrupting her. Like, I literally just read the characters actively doing this thing, so maybe don't try to cast them as morally unquestionable here. This could have been an emotional and ethical quandary, but instead our "good" witches are righteously unscathed and the only evil visited upon Frances is actually when her husband sends his catatonic wife to an asylum for long term care.

Also it's 2022, can we please PLEASE strike 'rape that is never revisited as the moral event horizon' from our everything? It's tired, it's triggering, and there are hundreds of better ways to demonstrate someone giving into their darker desires. Let's do better, yeah?

The first 100 pages or so are a slog, but that's the cost of the thorough and engrossing world building being set up. And once it is, its so good. Like, *so good*.

I still find the intermittent second person a bit distancing, but by the last few chapters it didn't throw me out of the story anymore and I am excited for more.