Hopefully my Mojo is properly back and I can work through my stack of library books that are still here.  Seven books with the first to be started today.  I can't find or seem to add the 7th book which is Shelter by Dave Hutchinson but I'm ot sure it matters as I am the worlds slowest reader and even on a good month I'd struggle with more than 4 or 5 books anyway.  Looking forward to these!

* Edit, thank you BrokenTune for adding Shelter by Dave Hutchinson!*

 This book started as a 4-star book, then dropped to a 2-star book and finally by the end is an “it was fine” 3-star. The writing of this book was lovely. I found myself entranced by the prose and would look up to find that several hours had passed. Just last night I was so enthralled with the plot and the writing that I stayed awake reading until 2 a.m. It’s not surprising that the book only took me 3 days to finish.

I love books about witches, probably because I am one. I love books that explore the role of witchcraft in history and how women have historically used this knowledge to empower themselves. The characters were rich and I enjoyed them all.

The basic premise is that Harriet and Francis are descended from a witch named Bridget Bishop. Bridget was executed in the 1600’s for witchcraft. Harriet’s side of the family tree has adopted the gentler side of the craft, using it mainly for herbalism and assisting locals with their various ailments and ills. Francis’ side of the family tree had adopted the “bad” side of the craft, manipulating and magically forcing others to do their bidding in order to gain power for themselves. Annis is a young girl from the family tree who is just coming into her powers and for whom Francis has nefarious plans. Harriet endeavors to stop this plot and it culminates in a clash between the two witches with Annis as the prize.

This book was a slow burn with not a lot of action to it, and I was fine with that. The information being presented was largely interesting and once we did get the showdown between Harriet and Francis it was really refreshing and exciting. That portion is what kept me up most of the night.

***Spoiler alert:*** From this point on there will be spoilers.

The biggest problems I had with the book are the ending and that this book didn’t know what it wanted to be.

Is it the story of Annis? A girl ahead of her time, bucking the norm, and determined to make her own way with her newfound powers. Is it the story of a 200 year old battle between two sides of a family to ultimately decide if they are bad witches or good witches? Is it a story of the temptations of good and evil and the blurry gray area in between? Unfortunately it could have been all of these things, but ended up being none of them. None of these things are explored in any depth and I was really disappointed by that.

The ending was very plain. James and Annis decide that they didn’t just have feelings for each other because of magic, they actually do love each other and want to get married. How boring. How predictable. And then we are subjected to a very long lecture about how James might seem like a good man, but we should keep his manikin around just in case he decides to start behaving like an ass later. Because he’s a man after all, so you just never know and a woman can’t be too careful. Why can a novel not show us strong women without equaling telling us about how all men are asses? Even ones who aren’t asses but they might decide to be later because….well they’re a man. I am weary of it. It is possible to tell a story about strong, empowered women without demeaning men. I promise it is.

There was also an unintended moral problem in the story. We are told early on that good witches use their powers to help, bad witches use their powers to compel. Bad witches will always succumb to darkness and be lost to a lust for power. But on at least 3 occasions the “good” witches use their magic to persuade people to give them things. A horse, money, and then more money. All for their own benefit. So while those people may not have been harmed, the man was reimbursed for the horse and the money was plentiful and wouldn’t be missed, does that make it okay? What is the difference between magically persuading someone to give you something and just outright forcing them to give you something? Unfortunately, I don’t think the author intended for this issue to be presented and so we never get the answer to that question. In the end, even evil magic can be tucked away in a corner for safekeeping…just in case, and one will still be a good witch.

This is a well-researched and engagingly written group biography of four sisters, daughters of a duke and great-granddaughters of King Charles II of England and one of his mistresses. Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox all wrote to each other (and third parties) constantly, leaving a trove of correspondence that the author used as material for this book. Tillyard brings the four of them – and the people and places around them – to life with vivid descriptions, and seems to have a strong handle on the personalities and psychologies of each of the sisters. She also includes a lot of background information on their world where it enhances the story: from everyday details about the dozens of departments involved in the running of an aristocratic household, to background on the Irish Rebellion of 1798, in which Emily’s son Edward Fitzgerald was a leader.

It is a well-told story and makes for much quicker reading that Tillyard’s A Royal Affair, splitting its attention between human feelings and relationships on the one hand, and history on the other. While none of the sisters seem to have contributed much to history in their own right or really stepped out of the roles of wives/mothers/lovers, they did have pretty interesting love lives: one eloped and was temporarily estranged from the family; one began an affair with her children’s tutor and later married him across class lines after her first husband’s death; one was George III’s crush, before hastily getting into an unhappy marriage followed by a public divorce. In her preface, Tillyard emphasizes the intimacy of the sisters’ letters, allowing modern readers to connect with them even across a great gap in time, and this is certainly true.

The subtitle is a little misleading as to the time period, though. About 80% of the book focuses on the period from the 1740s through 1770s; in my edition, it’s not until page 397 out of 426 that we hit the 19th century. A couple of other better publishing decisions might have been made, in that the chapters are way too long and might have been broken up for easier reading, and there’s no family tree, which becomes especially confusing when talking about Emily’s life with her 22 children. Even a list of everyone’s kids with birth and death dates would have been extremely helpful.

I’m also never happy to see a nonfiction author who doesn’t cite the sources of specific facts. I understand that this is original research and the author does list her sources generally in the back, including mostly archival sources. Still.

In the end, I enjoyed reading this book and found it quite interesting, but never found myself with much to say about it. Maybe it’s because it’s largely a domestic history, not too different from stories that could be told about many other families; its four subjects were ultra-wealthy and privileged, but in the end we are reading their story rather than someone else’s simply because they happened to leave more writings behind. Maybe it’s because Tillyard did such a good job bringing her subjects’ personalities to life that, while I enjoyed reading about the sisters’ complex personalities and admired each of them at various points, I ultimately didn’t like them very much; they all come across as rather self-satisfied and entitled in the end. So I didn’t love the book, but I did like it, and it has a lot to recommend it whether your interest is anthropological or escapist.

Until the recent Little Women movie, I have to admit I was rather unaware of the book. I knew it existed, but as one of the many classics I vaguely recognize the title of. I was completely unaware that this little book, which had been lingering on my shelves for some time, contained fragments of Little Women.

I had bought Sisters, first because I have two sisters myself and second because I wanted to try out this Vintage Mini series to see if they were as nice as the Little Black Classics (although they are about five times as expensive). Having seen the movie and making the connection, I wanted to read it.

It is a short read, selecting certain scenes of particular sisterhood between the sisters. The writing was nice, but the passages were rather short. I would however, like to read the full book sometimes. I am however, not really convinced of the Vintage Mini concept, and think I will just keep it at this one.

I can't really say anything that hasn't been said already. I do have a confession- this is the first time I've read Little Women. Sure, I've seen multiple adaptations. Greta Gerwig's version that recently came out made me realize I had never read the book. When Romance-opoly called for a YA book considered a classic I knew I had to read this one. I thought it was interesting reading what scenes didn't make it to the various adaptations. It's interesting to see what each version chooses to highlight from the source material. Recommended.
I read this Romance-opoly Beau Boulevard moon track