In the afterword, the author describes this debut of hers as a melancholy, witchy, sapphic book. Accurate, but then again, that’s only the mood of it. And we can’t go by mood alone…
I often wonder how books come to be. For instance, did Francesca May read The Great Gatsby and thought, ‘well, yeah, that’s fun, but what if Gatsby was a female and Nick was a female and they were both witches and had a special connection?’ Then again, the Gatsby connection here is pretty tenuous – this book is very much its own thing. It’s set in a post WWI England on a small island known for its witches in a world very recognizable but with a distinct addition of magic. Magic has been outlawed, but it’s still very much a valued and present commodity in this world – think booze in the US post-prohibition. In this world, a master witch, the striking Emmeline Delacroix, with her masculine clothing and her feminine wiles is the Gatsby to Annie’s naïve provincial innocence of Nick. Emmeline is a local, once taken in by a grand witch before here and now the inheritor of that estate, the estate she shares with a pair of adopted siblings with powers of their own. Annie’s on the island to collect her own inheritance from the father she’s barely known and also to track down a beloved childhood friend. She rents a cottage next to Emmeline’s. Sparks, sparks, sparks, etc. But their will-they-or-won’t-they thing is outrageously dragged out because of Emmeline’s buckets of drama. You can just see a tagline for Em…So complicated, so sexy, so reluctant. So it’s a soap opera, for sure. But a fairly entertaining one. The writing’s nice in that dreamy witchy sort of way. The world building is very good – the island comes alive in descriptions. The characters are…well, very dramatic and quite young, but interesting enough. The romance is so very drawn out and chaste, you might fall asleep cheering for it, but it is there and for all its leisurely pace, passionate in its own way. I love magic and all things to do with it, but a different kind, the prestidigitation and trickery, not the spells and potions. So this wasn’t quite my thing, but it did have that hypnotic quality that V.E. Schwab Magic trilogy has the draw-you-in-and-make-the-time-disappear kind. At 423 pages it’s much longer than I prefer my novels (apparently magic novels tend to be overlong), it does move along nicely, but it's fairly rambling and languid of a narrative. Overall, much like with Schwab’s novels, I was entertained but in a one off that was a lot don’t know if I’d do it again sort of way. Fans of witches and fantasies might get more out of it. So, user milage may vary. Thanks Netgalley.
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