Weyward by Emilia Hart

Amy   

fantasy, historical fiction

Weyward is a story about three witches. Altha lives in 1619 and has been accused of witchcraft, Violet feels invisible to her unloving father in 1942 and desires an education and freedom like her younger brother is afforded, and Kate has just escaped her abusive partner by running to a country home she inherited without his knowledge in 2019.

Just this week, Weyward by Emilia Hart won two categories in the 2023 Goodreads Choice Awards--Best Historical Fiction and Best Debut Novel. It looks like my review has bad timing because I didn't think it was extraordinary.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy witch stories—I have enjoyed many of them. It’s just that they’re all sort of the same.  Clever women are treated badly because powerful men fear them. The women eventually get some revenge and, hopefully, use their brains and power to rise above the oppression they’ve survived.  Weyward was no different. The three different stories were each compelling so I enjoyed my time with this novel. But it felt like I’d already read the stories before. I appreciated the family lineage and the idea of witchy inheritance.  But there isn’t really much else to say about this one. If you enjoy witch stories, by all means, go for it.  However, there are better witch stories out there.

The audiobook was read by three narrators. Aysha Kala reads Altha’s sections, Nell Barlow reads Violet’s, and Helen Keeley reads Kate’s.  They were all good voice actors and did a fine job with this novel.  I’ll say that Barlow is one of those people who sounds like they have hard candy in their cheek while they’re talking so that was annoying. None of the roles required a large vocal repertoire but, overall, I’ll give the cast an A-.