Quick Take: Cozy up this fall with my Fall Reading Guide, featuring 10 exciting new releases to keep you entertained as the leaves change, including the first-ever authorized novel to return to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House world.
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About: Explore my August Wrap Up featuring 25 books with a 4.03-star average rating. Discover a long-awaited romance favourite and my mystery/thriller journey!
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About: Checkout my summer book haul of 26 exciting books, including a few perfect fall transition reads. I’m not just summarizing plots but digging into why I bought each book.
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Series: Standalone
Release Date: February 2, 2023
2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she begins to suspect that her great aunt had a secret. One that lurks in the bones of the cottage, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.
1619: Altha is awaiting trial for the murder of a local farmer who was stampeded to death by his herd. As a girl, Altha’s mother taught her their magic, a kind not rooted in spell casting but in a deep knowledge of the natural world. But unusual women have always been deemed dangerous, and as the evidence for witchcraft is set out against Altha, she knows it will take all of her powers to maintain her freedom.
1942: As World War II rages, Violet is trapped in her family’s grand, crumbling estate. Straitjacketed by societal convention, she longs for the robust education her brother receives––and for her mother, long deceased, who was rumored to have gone mad before her death. The only traces Violet has of her are a locket bearing the initial W and the word weyward scratched into the baseboard of her bedroom.
Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart’s Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.
Format: Hardcover
Rating: 5-stars
Weyward was a five-star prediction when I selected it as my Book of the Month pick back in April. It has everything I gravitate toward in historical fiction: feminism, a character-driven plot and magical realism. The novel follows three women from the same family in three different timelines spanning 2019, 1619 and 1942. Connecting the women are their struggles with male violence, sexism and the power that ties them together: their magical relationship with nature.
The first perspective follows Altha in 1619, who’s standing trial for witchcraft. This narrative invokes the most classic feminist imagery: the witch trials that lashed out at independent women who existed outside the patriarchal archetypes of wife and mother. I loved how this storyline centred a complicated friendship between Altha and her ex-best friend, the wife of the man Altha is accused of killing. The author subtly explores the nuances of womanhood during this time and lightly touches upon a potential sapphic relationship between the two friends.
Violet’s story in 1942 and Kate’s story in 2019 are more closely connected, and both explore intimate partner violence. I enjoyed how Kate’s story appeared to end the trauma cycle that started with Violet. The contrast between these two storylines puts into stark perspective how the decades have given women more agency through increased rights and education. However, despite these differences, Violet and Kate both struggle with the same problem. I loved the emphasis on healing fractured family relationships in these timelines (Violet and her brother and Kate and her mother).
I thought the use of magic in Weyward felt very realistic – it lent itself more towards magical realism than the paranormal. There was a common theme of how women are socialized to punish themselves – to make themselves smaller – because a powerful woman (represented by the protagonists’ access to magic) is seen as a threat. Altha, Violet and Kate each have a moment where they realize they had suppressed or ignored or feared their powers because they had been socialized to believe that powerful women were dangerous to everyone, including themselves. But, really, their power only threatens patriarchy.
The writing in Weyward felt very whimsical, capturing the magical relationship the protagonists had with nature. I’ve always loved character-driven books, especially in the historical fiction and literary fiction genres, as it allows the reader to better connect with the characters.
However, my only critique of the book was that the discourse felt highly internalized, by which I mean the secondary characters didn’t feel developed. There was a distinct lack of depth between the protagonists and their supporting cast, which made the stakes of losing their relationships not as impactful.
Considering the author navigates three timelines, spanning 500 years in just over 300 pages, I’m blown away by Weywards‘s impactful and nuanced feminist messaging. While the book isn’t easy to read, I became completely absorbed in the witchy and whimsical atmosphere. I’m blown away that this is the author’s debut novel! In her sophomore book, I’m hoping for more developed supporting characters and a diverse cast.
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Quick Take: Eleven books to read this winter, including four new holiday romances I’ve hauled and some old favourites featuring a few grumpy Heroes.
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Series: Standalone
Release Date: January 30, 2020
But she was wrong. On her twenty-eighth birthday, Freddie died in a car accident.
So now it’s just Lydia, and all she wants to do is hide indoors and sob until her eyes fall out. But Lydia knows that Freddie would want her to try to live fully, happily, even without him. So, enlisting the help of his best friend, Jonah, and her sister, Elle, she takes her first tentative steps into the world, open to life–and perhaps even love–again.
But then something inexplicable happens that gives her another chance at her old life with Freddie. A life where none of the tragic events of the past few months have happened.
Lydia is pulled again and again across the doorway of her past, living two lives, impossibly, at once. But there’s an emotional toll to returning to a world where Freddie, alive, still owns her heart. Because there’s someone in her new life, her real life, who wants her to stay.
Written with Josie Silver’s trademark warmth and wit, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is a powerful and thrilling love story about the what-ifs that arise at life’s crossroads, and what happens when one woman is given a miraculous chance to answer them.
Format: Hardcover
Rating: 4.5/5 stars
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Series: Standalone
Release Date: January 15, 2019
Mei, an outsider in the cliquish hierarchy of dorm life, finds herself thrust together with an eccentric, idealistic classmate. Two visiting professors try to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. A father succumbs to the illness, leaving his daughters to fend for themselves. And at the hospital, a new life grows within a college girl, unbeknownst to her—even as she sleeps. A psychiatrist, summoned from Los Angeles, attempts to make sense of the illness as it spreads through the town. Those infected are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, more than has ever been recorded. They are dreaming heightened dreams—but of what?
Format: Hardcover
Rating: 4/5 stars
(more…)Series: Standalone
Release Date: April 30th, 2013
When eighteen-year-old Becky Randle’s mother dies, she’s summoned from her Missouri trailer park to meet Tom Kelly, the world’s top designer. He makes her an impossible offer: He’ll create three dresses to transform Becky from a nothing special girl into the most beautiful woman who ever lived.
Becky thinks Tom is a lunatic, or that he’s producing a hidden camera show called World’s Most Gullible Poor People. But she accepts, and she’s remade as Rebecca. When Becky looks in the mirror, she sees herself – an awkward mess of split ends and cankles. But when anyone else looks at Becky, they see pure five-alarm hotness.
Soon Rebecca is on the cover of Vogue, the new Hollywood darling, and dating celebrities. Then Becky meets Prince Gregory, heir to the British throne, and everything starts to crumble. Because Rebecca aside, Becky loves him. But to love her back, Gregory would have to look past the blinding Rebecca to see the real girl inside. And Becky knows there’s not enough magic in the world.
A screamingly defiant, hugely naughty, and impossibly fun free fall past the cat walks, the red carpets, and even the halls of Buckingham Palace, Gorgeous does the impossible: It makes you see yourself clearly for the first time.
Rating: 4.5/5 stars
(more…)Series: Searching For*
Release Date: November 26th, 2013
Kate has given up on love – at least for herself. She is both blessed and cursed with the ability to sense a romantic connection between two people – a gift that her family passed down for generations. When Kate launches her own matchmaking company, Kinnection, with her two best friends in a cozy New York town, she has to put aside her own romantic disasters to make her business a success.
But when a furious man stalks into her office and accuses her business of being a scam, Kate is given the ultimate challenge to prove herself. Slade puts himself in her hands and asks Kate to find him love. Enraged at his arrogance but stubbornly eager to prove herself, Kate agrees, dedicating herself to the journey of finding him love … only to find herself falling for him along the way.
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
*Each novel in the series is Standalone
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