The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
It’s 1983 and there’s no such thing as witches. But there used to be in the wild days before the burnings and witch hunts. Now it’s nothing more than nursery rhymes. If modern women want any sort of power, they must find it at the ballot box. But when the Eastwood sisters - Juniper, Agnes, and Bella - join the suffragists in New Salem, they fall into the forgotten words and ways that could quickly turn the women's movement into the witches’ movement. But there are dark shadows haunting the city and there are many who still do not “suffer a witch to live” let alone vote, so the sisters will need to dive deeper into the world of magic to find a way to help all women gain their power back.
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This book is a burrower. It burrows into you deeper and deeper with every page until it’s over and you can’t believe you just finished a 500-page book in two days even though it feels like you've known the characters your whole life. There were so many elements to this story, it was like I had read an entire series in one book. But it didn’t feel busy, it felt important. Each Eastwood sister had an important story to tell, obstacles to overcome, and lessons to learn and condensing that into 200 pages would have been impossible. It was a marvellous book about family, love, and the never-ending fight for equal rights. It’s probably one of the best books I’ve ever read and it definitely made my top 5 reads of 2020.
The story starts with the youngest sister, Juniper, arriving in New Salem and finding her other two long-lost sisters. All three of them have painful pasts that they’re keeping a secret but when one of them accidentally calls back the “old ways” and the city begins an uproar over the return of witches, they have no choice but to face those pasts and find a way to make a better future. Told from the point of view of all three sisters it was an enlightening read into the different pain and heartache each person goes through and how it shapes you into the person you then become. It also had some good lessons on acceptance, knowing that you can’t change the past but you can learn to forgive and move forward. As long as you stay true to yourself, that’s all that matters.
The characterization in this book was phenomenal. There were so many amazing women and men introduced throughout this story, each one held an important role and every single one of them were so dynamic and real. Juniper was my favourite character, she was so carefree and blunt and reckless. She had a wicked sense of humour, most of Juniper’s dialogue had me laughing out loud. I liked how she was portrayed as so rough and tough from the country but she was also extremely kind and a bit naive and so willing and ready to be accepted and loved. She was hardcore, and she was feminine and it’s nice to see characters that can be both not just one or the other. Because all of us are a little both and it makes her so much more relatable. Her wild and protective love for her family was the basis of her transformation and it tore me to shreds because I related to her so well, I’d make the same decisions as her, in a heartbeat. Bella, the oldest sister, was fantastic. The fact that she’s a book nerd and a librarian had me relating to her right off the bat. She’s studious and careful but able to take risks when the need arises. Her past was heartbreaking but her story was lovely and her romance was the epicentre of her transformation into a more fearless person. Agnes, the middle sister, was the wild card in this book for me. So many decisions she made were frustrating and I couldn’t stand her selfishness. But her transformation was the most amazing of all and I absolutely LOVED how well the author changed her character in a realistic way, through personal growth and love. I could read that one chapter over and over because it was so beautiful. The supporting characters also brought so much to the novel, two of which were love interests. Quinn and August were perfect counterparts to two of the Eastwood sisters. One, daring and ambitious to bring the shy sister out of her shell, the other reckless and open-hearted to break down the cold wall of the other. I loved all of them and I’d read a million spin-offs about each one if I could.
Feminism was obviously a sole focus of the book. The story takes place in 1893 during the women’s suffrage movement. There’s an election taking place and one of the favourites to win is a holy-roller with an agenda and a mad hate for powerful women. Time’s running out for women to be able to make a change and so the main plot of the story is that in their desperation, they turn to the old ways. Old magics that used to be commonplace among women, the thing that made them Queen’s and Warriors but that was taken away during the burnings and now is kept secret. Hidden in fairytales and nursery rhymes these old familial secrets come to light to help women find their voices and overcome the patriarchy. The sisterhood formed in the book was inspiring. No matter where they came from, if they had the common goal of wanting freedom, they united and supported one another till the very end. People from all walks of life whether they were rich or poor, whether they were gay or straight, whether they were women fighting for a cause or men fighting to support that cause, whether they were black or white or brown, they stood together as a united front against all the injustices and the hate. This book did what the real-life feminist movement failed to do, it counted every woman as equal and it didn’t see the fight as won until ALL women had the same rights, the rights that every single one of them deserved. It wasn’t just a fight for white, straight women, it was a fight for all women.
In being a true feminist novel, there was great representation in it. The main characters learn magics from everyone in their sisterhood to pool together their knowledge and bring back witching. It’s not just the white women’s ways that are the only ways, they realize that the spells they’ve learned and the grimoires they’ve studied only told a part of the story, a sliver of it, and that each ethnicity has their own ways and words. The only thing that’s the same between their magics, is the will to do it. As we go along in the book we discover our main characters suffrage group isn’t the only one, that there are others that have been around for hundreds of years, fighting in the dark, from every race around the globe. Not only is there diversity in race, but in sexuality and gender identity as well. In this book, if a woman identified as a woman, she was fully accepted as just that by her sisters, if a woman favoured the same gender, none of her sisters looked down on her. They all supported one another as equals and I loved that there was none of that “oh but it was prejudiced at the time so the characters had no choice but to be bigots” bullshit. This book was written in the 21st century and all throughout history there were good people who accepted human beings for who they were and didn’t drag them just because they were different so I'm glad this book didn't fall into that old cliche using the time period as an excuse for supporting hate. I think it was nice to see every kind of representation in this book. That way every girl or woman reading it can see herself as one of these amazing witches.
It was an amazing book and I definitely want to re-read it next year and get a fresh view on things that didn’t become clear till the end. The characters were the best part and I flagged my favourite passages and chapters so I can flip back through them whenever I'm in need in of inspiration. It was a book I think could be enjoyable for everyone, but especially with those that have the fire to fight for what’s right and what's fair, this book gave me hope. 5 stars all around. Amazing!
I’ll leave you with a quote I really liked that I think encompassed the whole theme of the book pretty well:
“A girl is such an easy thing to break: weak and fragile, all alone, all yours. But they aren’t girls anymore, and they don’t belong to anyone. And they aren’t alone."