"She stood among the empty beds, hands trembling, remembering what her Mama Mags told her: 'Every woman draws a circle around herself. Sometimes she has to be the only thing inside it.'"

It was this line on page 12 when I realized I had once again found a book I love at the library and would now have to buy the hardcover to keep it with me forever. The Once and Future Witches was the perfect read to end my witchy season - it is explosively magical, with spells starting each chapter, handcrafted wands and grand displays of enchantment. Set in a fictional "New Salem" in 1893, the Eastwood sisters are reunited after seven years apart, and have to decide individually and collectively how large to draw their circles as they fight for the right to witching, reclaiming power for the marginalized, hungry, impoverished, abused and forgotten.

The layers of folklore in this were so much fun - if you enjoy Brothers Grimm (or Sisters Grimm, here!), you will love how these stories are woven throughout, blending the harsh reality of late 19th century America (and the accompanying trials of the working class) with pure fantasy. Women discover spells (the words) hidden generations before where men would never think to look for them - in children's stories and songs - and bring to the words both the will and the ways... and magic happens. I loved this focus on will over bloodline - that with the words, will and ways, anyone can be a witch.

But what I will carry with me in this story is the balancing act of loving yourself and loving others, surviving and saving. The Eastwood sisters sometimes choose themselves and sometimes choose each other and sometimes choose the collective, but each choice will set in motion a series of events, and the sisters have to learn to live within the ripples. This was a five-star read for me.

Thistlefoot was not even remotely what I expected. It's Baba Yaga! We've got Eastern European folklore, a house on chicken legs, two 20-something siblings and a traveling puppet show. Whimsical, right? Whew. Thistlefoot deftly reimagines the story of Baba Yaga by framing it within the intergenerational trauma of a Jewish family, bringing heartbreaking humanity to Baba Yaga and her mythical descendants while pushing the reader to bear witness to their grief. Nethercott blends folklore and personal legacy here, drawing on the history of her own family's shtetl in Eastern Europe in the early 20th century. Multiple alternating POVs create slow-building tension throughout, and a recurring POV from our chicken-legged house brings present day together with memories and folktales.

Thistlefoot is haunting and macabre and tragic and also lovely. It is all of those things because the history and reality it reflects for us is all of those things. When terms like genocide give us the false impression of a start and an end, a defined historical timetable of violence, a book like Thistlefoot reminds us that for the Jewish people, this history stretches back millennia and continues into present day. Thistlefoot reminds us it only takes a single lie to start a mob: "... what is a lie if not a story? ... what power a story has when whispered into the ear of a man with a gun."

It is always important to read Jewish stories, and now would be a particularly good time for those of us who did not inherit this trauma to spend time with this story. The writing is poetic, the characters are flawed and dynamic and the folklore is mesmerizing. This was a five-star read for me.

This book is phenomenal, and I generally believe that anyone who identifies as a fantasy reader needs to read this book. First, it’s incredibly compelling. I read it in a couple (busy) days and brought it with me everywhere I went so I could sneak in a few more pages. Once you’re drawn into this world, it’s hard to leave. Second, it's thematically brilliant. A blend of fantasy and dark academia and mythology retelling that manages to be greater than the sum of its parts. Deonn has retaken Arthurian legend, adding her own point of view to the canon and using it as an allegory for colonialism, giving it real-world authenticity in the process. Bree's family history intersects with legend in such poignant ways, adding depth and new meaning to both Arthurian myth and the reality of intergenerational trauma. And third, it is so emotionally insightful. Deonn shares in the author's note that the idea for this story was born in the aftermath of her mother's death as a means of processing and giving voice to her grief. Seeing Bree commune with generations of women in her family is remarkable, and it is that much more compelling because Deonn shares with us how closely the early losses in Bree's family mirror her own. I have already preordered a copy of the next book in the series and cannot wait to reenter this world. I would highly recommend this book to all fantasy readers. 

This is a perfect example of a book that is three stars for me, but that I can absolutely see as a five-star book for a different reader.

My favorite elements in the earlier books were largely the atmospheric writing, the focus on magical realism vs. full fantasy and the use of the Owens family curse to theoretically reflect on fate vs. freewill. Did I want witchy books? Yes, but honestly, what KEPT me in this series was Hoffman's writing. The way she sweeps through a decade in a few sentences and then pulls you into an afternoon for several pages, her attention to the natural world as it reflects the emotional state of each character, her insight into the human need to explain why bad things happen to good people. I loved that the curse was both explicit and not, real and not, and in this book, we really depart from that. The Book of Magic is the witchiest and most magical in the series, it is the most plot-driven and it provides the most explanation and context for everything that has happened to the Owens women. For those reasons, I can absolutely see why so many readers loved this conclusion. For me, it was too straightforward. I didn't actually need closure on the curse, and by making the curse so explicitly a magical construct, the story lost a bit of its magic for me?

I also struggled with the repetition of certain descriptions, the plot summary of previous books and the inconsistencies in previous storylines.