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“It’s almost the witching hour,’ said Martha, and a bitter smile touched her lips. ‘Perhaps that’s what the Prophet should have named this wretched year. It’s more fitting, don’t you think? The Year of the Witching.”

Release Date: July 21st, 2020

Genre(s): Historical fiction, fantasy, adult fiction

Pages: 368

Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️.25

Synopsis

This book follows Immanuelle Moore, raised by her grandparents in a town where the prophet’s word of law, and her very existence being born out of wedlock is blasphemy. In a turn of events she discovers the truth about her mother and therefore herself, and how her destiny could change Bethel once and for all. 

Review

The Year of the Witching is a book I’ve been looking forward to reading for quite some time now. I’m a fan of dark fantasy, and that combined with the messages surrounding race, religion, and gender made this all the more appealing. This book definitely did both quite well, combined with an atmosphere that had me immersed from the first page. In the beginning, the only thing that made me put the book down was tiredness because I found this work to be so engaging from the start. The imagery is incredible combined with the story and narrative. 

There’s so much to be said for the themes in this book, but what I will say for now is that there are so many parallels to be drawn to today’s world. Much of the conflict presented in this book involves the practices of the religion the characters worship, and through the explorations of their practices it seemed like there are so many organizations in our world today (many of which secular as well) that adopt similar realms of thought. Not only this, but these narratives also bring on oppression for certain groups – and in the case of this book, for women and women of color especially. There’s a lot of messages to break down within this book’s story and for that alone I can easily say that this book carries so much depth.

However, the reason why this book is in the middle for me (while I still really really enjoyed it) is because of the way that the world itself was executed, as well as the pacing. I found myself wanting more from certain elements of this book, especially having to do with Immanuelle’s mother’s story. And while this is covered in some depth, the setup in the beginning gave me the assumption that this would more heavily covered than it was. Additionally, I thought that things sped up to a point after the climax that things were wrapped up a little too quickly given the slow buildup of this book overall. 

Regardless, I enjoyed The Year of the Witching and I’d like to revisit this book in the future. I think that the story and narrative/themes for this book were a lot, especially for a historical fantasy novel. But for the most part, I liked the exploration of these elements and how they were tied into the story as a whole.