Reviews

The writing style and plot was too childish for my liking. I thought it would be a bit darker than the average YA novel but it was still as cheesy as the rest.

alyssaxo's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

dumaurier's review against another edition

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1.75

you can’t say your book is fantasy and then just place it in a pseudo historical setting so you rely on historical stereotypes without doing any actual research. also, in the audiobook, one of the wives has an unexplained british accent, and the black characters have southern accents? you’re kidding me right? lazy story, lazy characters. your book is not feminist simply because you have a female mc. skip

kit_kat006's review against another edition

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I struggle a lot with the writing style. As English is my second language I struggle with the use of old English and I could not get into it. I felt like I did not understand much what was happening.

charliemaryann's review against another edition

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5.0

4.5

The Year of the Witching has all the disgrace of The Handmaid’s tale along with the witching slaughter of the Salem witch trials. I’ll be honest, it took me so long to read this book with starting it months ago and picking it back up. Now that we’ve entered spooky season, it was the perfect time to go back into this world of injustice and slaughter.

I LOVED THIS. This book is perfect for people who are just starting out with the horror genre because it’s not scary but is intense. I will say that I wanted it to be a lot more darker. Other then that, I fell in love with Ezra.

mariahistryingtoread's review against another edition

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2.0

TRIGGER WARNING
//
this book includes mild gore, child neglect, discussion of child sexual abuse, reference to rape, and implications of physical abuse; in this review I do talk about the rape, however, it is only under the spoiler tag
//

I was massively let down by this book. It began strong only to devolve into an aimless, anticlimactic disappointment.

The book is divided unevenly into four parts reflective of a series of plagues delivered unto the village. I disliked this as the time spent on each plague was arbitrary. It was primarily motivated by the author artificially pushing Immanuelle into the next phase of the book rather than allowing it to play out organically. For example, the blood plague lasts the longest and it ends conveniently when it's time to create an obstacle for Ezra x Immanuelle. Obviously, some strings have to be pulled to make a romance work. I don't typically mind too much because I'm aware that a majority of books within certain genres will involve romance. I just hate when it's so obvious - worse than that I hate when it derails the story to make it work.

There are numerous times in which a situation is proceeding in a way that is clearly antithetical to how a character with any kind of common sense would act or contradicts the previously established framework by which the story is supposed to function.

When the first plague begins Immanuelle believes it is her fault. Despite the fact that at this point she's had one and a half conversations with Ezra and an immense fear she'll be labeled a witch she asks Ezra for a favor. Alright, I understand that she's taking a risk in order to fix a mistake she believes she's made. That part is fine. What's not fine is that her excuse is just 'I believe that I can stop the plague'. And Ezra just rolls with this? It doesn’t work on several different levels. First off, he is not suspicious in the least. Immanuelle is supposed to be viewed as the physical embodiment of sin in the community. I don't care if Ezra is progressive he's still a victim of social conditioning that should make him think twice. I don't need him to accuse her of anything, but he barely inquires into why she thinks she can do anything at all. It's a decision that seems to have been made only to bolster Ezra’s reputation in the eyes of the reader i.e. ‘look at sweet, wonderful Ezra, so willing to trust Immanuelle no questions asked uwu’. I felt this did his character a disservice because Immanuelle and Ezra did not have enough of a rapport to justify such blind loyalty even if it was for a favor. The same outcome could have been achieved if Ezra had been allowed to be more inquisitive. It's actually better for him if he was because it adds depth. Without any reservations, he was unrealistically supportive too soon.

Following this train of thought, the favor Ezra does for her has no relevance to the plot once done. Immanuel basically knows what the problem is going in and after the favor all we know is information that we knew before she went. The little bit she does learn is pointless because it’s confirmed later on in a more organic fashion. So there was no purpose to the interlude. I'm trying not to spoil it, but I doubt this will impact your enjoyment if you do still decide to read it after this review.

A character is basically sent to prison for crossing the Prophet. This makes its way through the village because people gossip. It is of no benefit to the story for Immanuelle to physically witness the character being sent to their doom as it isn't a particularly special moment, the character going to prison is beyond minor, and Immanuelle bore witness to the incident that led to the arrest. She has literally seen this event from every possible angle already; this one little part does not matter so much that we need to waste fifty pages on it. It’d be different if it was intended to be a secret that the character went to prison. It’s not though. Everyone knows the character went. The only purpose of this whole favor excursion is to manufacture bonding time for Ezra x Immanuelle. And this is somewhat personal preference at, but I’d much rather have logical plot progression over romance.

Moving on, outside of the Prophet there is woefully little attention paid to the depth of injustice in Bethel. All of the characters other than Immanuelle and arguably, Ezra are highly under developed. It was not uncommon to go long amounts of time with Immanuel not even mentioning the people she lived with. Coupled with the surface level world building, it made it exceedingly difficult to sympathize with Immanuelle’s desire to save Bethel or its people. I didn’t see what was actually worth saving.

There was a lot of telling instead of showing. We are told at the beginning that Immanuelle, and her family as an extension of her, have been ostracized from larger Bethel society. We have no evidence of mistreatment after the first chapter or so. No one goes out of their way to treat her that poorly. Immanuelle’s mother disappeared in the woods for months before she was born; woods that are known to be the domain of the Witches. Yet, when the plagues begin she nor anyone in her family is treated differently. How does that make any sense? At the first sign of trouble the first person or people who will be blamed are those who don’t fit in. But, not a single person for months despite the plagues worsening ever says a word of nastiness to Immanuelle. No shifty glances, mistrustful stares, malicious rumors, misplaced fear. How is it that no one even thinks for a second that Immanuelle, whose very existence is viewed as a tangible manifestation of all that’s wrong in their world, has anything to do with the blights? Especially considering the optics of a child whose mother was known to have cavorted in witch laden woods. It is inexplicable that such a judgmental, insular community would not turn on her at the first whiff of trouble.

This comes down to the world being shallow. I could not truly get an idea of what everyday life is like in Bethel. I know it’s basically a repressive, fanatical cult. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t things to do for fun. Swimming isn’t allowed for girls, but surely there are other things Immanuelle could do? What do people do for jobs? At what age are boys and girls considered adults? Are jobs only based on what your family does or can you break out? Are they assigned? We know books aren’t valued, but what about other artisan works? Is art still allowed? We’re told and shown in a lot of small ways that women are being mistreated wholesale. Except, in hindsight, there isn’t a lot of detail. Now don’t get me wrong, I do believe the injustices are happening. However, in the confines of a book I don't think it should be a hardship to provide in-textual proof as the story naturally unfolds.

For a book about the undervaluation of women in society, it gives little to no agency to these same women over their own stories. Everything is filtered through Immanuelle’s limited perspective and her lack of interaction with other women (really any other characters honestly) was disappointing given how one of the themes was female solidarity.

I would have loved to get deeper insight into how being under the Prophet’s thumb differed from the ‘normal’ struggles of the other women. Leah, Immanuelle’s best friend who marries the Prophet early on, would have been a perfect way to explore the machinations of the inner circle. Or maybe Ezra’s mother who had an ‘exalted’ position as the first wife. How did her life change with the addition of each subsequent wife? Was the Prophet always a bad man? Or was he corrupted by his power over time? Did any of his wives love him in spite of his predilections? How did the rearing of children go under a man like that? Where were the other children actually? We know Ezra is the first son but what about his half siblings? And believe me, there was a lot of time where nothing was really happening that could have been spent talking to these women about their experiences. I actually think the story, overall, would have been better if Immanuel married the Prophet as we would have had been able to delve deeper into the sinister culture of Bethel.

Also, are we expected to assume all men are like the Prophet? Or at least agree with his misuse of power? Ezra doesn’t, but is he really the only one? I know the men are benefitting the most from the set-up in Bethel, but are they punished in their own way for not sticking to the status quo? If so, how? How does their punishment differ from that of the women? I agree with the central thesis that women are the silent backbone of society, however, this book largely glosses over how stringent adherence to antiquated patriarchal customs is detrimental to men as well.

Immanuelle hardly ever went anywhere. When she did she never interacted with anyone except Ezra or very briefly, Leah. I understand that people hating her means they won’t want to talk to her, but they don’t even pointedly ignore her. And it’s entirely because the people don’t exist to ignore her.

I thought the narrative would have been stronger and more unsettling if it wasn't so obvious that the witches were real. The fear that it was real had an edge of eeriness to it that the confirmation didn’t. That was a symptom of a larger problem I alluded to earlier. We were always given too much detail so none of the revelations felt surprising. This resulted in a lot of repetition and predictability. I was confused as to why it took so long for Immanuelle to do anything or figure anything out when she had so much of the puzzle right in front of her. Half the time she was doing useless tasks to pad the book or create tension with Ezra. I cannot stress how little she interacted with even her own family. And I’m probably overselling Ezra’s appearances because while I do keep referencing him he wasn’t that large a part either; it’s more that comparatively he stood out.

The ending was rushed. Spoiler for the ending as well as a big plot point earlier in the book ->

Spoiler

A giant witch fight that Immanuelle wins using witch powers she didn’t have to earn. She just had to do one spell and she was able to tap into the power. I would have preferred her actually learning over time as that would have been more admirable. Then, everyone just decides to go against the Prophet because ‘she saved them’ even though all of these people were ready to burn her at the stake five minutes before. I do not believe decades of inborn hatred and prejudice can be ripped out of people like that, but what do I know? Also she doesn’t kill the Prophet - a sixty or seventy odd man who raped her friend repeatedly from the age of 13 until her death in CHILDBIRTH at age 16 - because ‘we don’t need to stoop to his level’. If it wasn’t a two star read at that point already, it would have been.

This is because of the segmentation of the plagues that I talked about before. The way the story was fractured meant that the ending did not have enough room to breathe.

Anyways, I gave this two stars because of the atmosphere, mostly. Alexis Henderson did a good job in creating an unsettling environment via some of the cult dynamics and a feeling of dread followed me every page as we got more into how corrupt the Prophet was. I found the cult fascinating and if the book had chosen to really dig into that instead of glossing over the majority of it I would have enjoyed this much more. Regardless, the initial set-up of a young Black woman breaking free of internalized misogynoir was present enough underneath all the other messiness I felt somewhat satisfied by the end. I wish it was more like the promise of the first chapter rather than what I got, but it wasn’t a bad book.

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