I received a reviewer copy of The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings from the publisher Amistad from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

What It’s About: Josephine Thomas's mother disappeared and there are tons of theories for why she disappeared. Fourteen years later Josephine not only lives in the shadow of what happened to her mother, but also in the society where she lives. A society that believes women (especially Black women) are likely to be witches and need to be protected from this fate by marrying men. Now, 28 and unmarried, Jo is seeing her independence come to an end.

What I Loved: The writing is beautiful and dystopian world that is built is so intriguing. I loved seeing this dystopian world where women are believed to be witches unless they are married and dream of being mothers. Women loving women is a sign. Women being with other women is a sign. It's high stakes with gorgeous prose. I love the female friendship at the heart of this book. I got emotional as the book went on.

What I didn’t like so much: I didn't realize how much of this would be magical realism, which is something that doesn't always work for me. This kind of took away some of my enjoyment of the plot.

Who Should Read It: People who love a dystopian novel with feminist leanings.

Summary: A dystopia centered on a daughter who lives in the shadow of her mother.

dnf @ 20%

Unfortunately, I really couldn’t get into this one. I enjoyed Lakewood by Megan Giddings, but something about this particular premise isn’t working for me. It feels a tad too in your face and the pacing is a bit slow.

The Women Could Fly, written by Megan Giddings, takes place in an alternate reality where unmarried women are treated with suspicion and monitored for indications of witchcraft. At age 28, single women must register with the Bureau of Witchcraft and be tested. Those unmarried at age 30 lose their jobs and other liberties. Married women, whose freedoms are determined by their husbands, don’t fare much better.

Giddings depicts a vivid and terrifyingly oppressive world for women, where accusations of witchcraft lead to torture and even execution. Burning witches at the stake is legally sanctioned and carried out by government officials. The author’s choice to set the story in our modern world significantly increases the discomfort level.

The mashup of puritan ideas with the 21st century should evoke dissonance. But with the recent overturn of Roe v. Wade, these fictional laws subjugating women don’t feel far from our current reality.

The main conflict occurs when Josephine, age 28, has to choose between a life of freedom, isolated on an island of witches, and the life she’s worked to build for herself. Do the comforts of friends, family, and a job she loves outweigh the risks of a return to the larger society?

On the island, women (and a few men) can explore magic without risk. As a communal society, the residents are free to experiment and create without the need to monetize their work. The island world Giddings creates is equally inviting and disturbing. But while the island’s magic is intriguing, I felt this section of the book was not as strong as those set in the much more restricted society.

The author explores themes of freedom from multiple angles, including the freedom to love. If women are pressured to marry before the age of 30, are they able to find true love? Any relationship risks being hindered by resentment, even with the most generous and caring spouse. Josephine wonders if it’s love she feels or the comfort of safety?

Thank you to Amistad Books and NetGalley for access to the eARC.

The Women Could Fly is a creative, engaging social critique, wrapped in a modern-day fantasy. It’s the perfect read for anyone frustrated by the recent restrictions on women’s health and autonomy.

A stand-out work of literary science fiction, it is chilling in its portrayal of a society where witches are real and every woman is in danger of being accused of being one. The world is impeccably built and eerily familiar. The mother daughter relationship between Tiana and Jo is particularly moving.

Review here: https://www.feministbookclub.com/book-review-the-women-could-fly/

I was super excited to read this until I did. After the first 7 chapters I was not only bored with the story but becoming impatient with her just getting to the point of what this was all about. So much was said yet a lot of it seemed irrelevant and it really could‘ve been left out in my opinion. Once I made it to Chapter 10 I was at a complete disconnect with the story. Josephine just seemed so random and all over the place.

The flashbacks threw me for a loop every time. There were points where I had to ask myself what is she rambling about. Sometimes flashbacks can really take away from a story if you’re throwing in timeline jumps that aren’t needed. I was honestly disappointed that the book turned out to be nothing of what I expected.

I didn’t stop at Chapter 10 though I jumped to Chapter 30 because I wanted to at least know how things ended. So, now here I am reading about her friend Angie who’s about to get married. Fast forward a bit now Josephine is in jail because she’s a witch LOOOOOOL. I was done at that point story over no need to even go back and see what lead up to everything.

My first assumption when I began reading was in the end she’d come out as a witch or something along that line.

Overall this was very slow paced and could have given more. None of the characters are memorable except for Preston who she refers to as “Party City” which is literally the only reason I remember him.

This one was definitely a no for me but I won’t say it wouldn’t be a yes for you!!!!! My rating is 2.5 for this which is solely based off what I read. Thanks to the author and netgalley for my advanced readers copy.

Last October, I briefly thought that I was interested in witchy books. And… I was wrong. So, when I started reading The Women Could Fly and realized that it’s about a world in which witches exist (and the witch trials never stopped), my heart sank a little.

Silly me, though, because while this may be a world where magic is possible, Giddings presents witches as allegory here, deftly exploring the intersectionality of oppression and the nuances of identity.

In near-future America, magic is seen as a particularly feminine concern, and the patriarchy, as the patriarchy is wont to do, has figured out ways to limit women’s autonomy in response. Women not married by the age of 30 are required to register with the government and are closely scrutinized for signs that they may be witches. Jo is 28, and her identities as Black (bi-racial), queer (bisexual), and her ambivalence about marriage make her a target for suspicion. This is compounded by the fact that Jo’s mother vanished when she was 14, and while speculation abounds about what happened to her, there are rumors that she herself was a witch. Now considered legally dead, a clause in her will forces Jo to come to terms with memories, realities, and pieces of her identity.

I don’t want to mislead you, the witch parts of this are not ambiguous- magic IS real in this world, but this book is so much more about social commentary. It’s about human rights, bodily autonomy, and oppression. It’s about making difficult decisions when no choice allows you to be both actualized and safe. And it’s not that far off from the horrorscape of modern American culture, particularly in the exploration of racism, homophobia, misogyny, and religious extremism.

I devoured this book and I LOVED it.

This book won't be for everyone. If you can’t tolerate magical realism, or have particularly conservative views, you’re not going to love this (I’d argue you should still read it.) If you’re looking for a more intersectional alternative to The Handmaid’s Tale, love Jordan Peele movies, or have a TikTok feed that’s currently serving you both early halloween and post-roe activism content, this is the one.

I read this as a hybrid of audio (ALC thanks to libro.fm) and reading physically (DRC thanks to Amistad via Netgalley) and enjoyed both experiences. Angel Pean's narration is excellent and I ultimately switched to reading physically because I wanted to more easily mark passages I wanted to reflect on.

This is unlike any book I have ever read. A dystopian view of a man’s world where women need to register at the age of 28 if they are not married. The husband will become their “keeper” and thus the world will be a safer place, since women may be witches. An unmarried woman can be easily accused of witchcraft and have to be monitored by the government. I admit that I felt a little lost while reading this book and because of this I rate it at 3 stars. Otherwise, this is an interesting science fiction read, very well suited for a science fiction/fantasy reader. Thank you to NetGalley and Armistad for a DRC in exchange for an unbiased review.

I'm a huge fan of Giddings' LAKEWOOD and was excited to see what she would do outside of the horror realm. THE WOMEN COULD FLY is pitch perfect, reminiscent of Atwood at her best but with a far richer exploration of race and sexuality. The plot itself is compelling, and the characters are absolutely irresistible. I'll be handselling this one all autumn!

thank you to netgalley for an ARC of this book.

this book is relevant and current but not in a way that will get stale.

hearing about a true crime tv show exploiting a grieving family is a conversation i feel so many people are having now, about the ethics around it. the mention of it here felt genuine and timely.

the talk about grief and how people approach those grieving also felt nuanced and just… blunt. in a good way.

i was nervous this book would feel heavy or be hard to ingest but it actually was so easy to dive into and was such a quick read.

it was the most relatable book i’ve ever read that includes witches. “we’re people too. nowhere with people can ever be perfect.” so much about the society in this book is relevant to American society today, but written in a way that feels like catharsis, not a nagging reminder of our reality.

i definitely plan to purchase this book for my home as it’s one i really cherish.

Megan Giddings creates a world that is so close to our own with just a small twist. She did it with Lakewood, and has done it again with The Women Could Fly. In this world, witches now exist, and they are often BIPOC based on "nature.

This book will be decisive, in fact, many will find it polarizing and not be able to 'see themselves' in it. Good. I feel like Megan Giddings isn't writing for everyone. I don't think she's writing for the basic white woman. I think she IS writing for BIPOC and for women with a mind for knowledge. For women with an open heart and a hunger for experience. For those willing to learn about other views and other lives. For witches and warlocks.....

It's a more modern Handmaid's Tale with a LGBTQIA+ angle. Megan Giddings is a massive talent and highly underrated. I truly feel that this is a book that people will be coming back to year after year.

This book was recommended on the Hysteria podcast and I am so glad to have found it! Jo’s story is not the typical witch doing magic, oh how fun are spells, kind of story. In this dystopia, witches, if discovered, are burned and all women are closely monitored for signs of witchcraft. There are many metaphors for our current society contained within the story telling, such as treatment of women, POC and the LGBTQ community. The writing style is very unique. Sometimes you aren’t sure if you’re in dream, a memory, or the present. The fables were also a nice thread throughout. Overall, this book felt very timely with respect to where the US is as a country right now while still providing the entertainment and escapism that I needed.

This is a book with difficult themes. And I think they are handled well; clearly addressing misogyny and racism is the point but it is still challenging to read.

Jo, the main character, lives in a dystopian time where witches exist but to be convicted of witchcraft means death by being burned at the stake. Witches are secret, powerful, women, particularly BIPOC women. Other things to note: men are told it is their responsibility to keep women in line and women are encouraged to find out secrets/spy on one another. Oh, and if you aren't married by 30, the government wants to know why. (The idea is that you will be more susceptible to the Devil and to witchcraft without a cishet husband to keep you in line).

Jo is 28 and has to regularly check in with the Bureau of Witchcraft as she's getting much too close to 30. She has a friends with benefits relationship and everyone is dropping hints that she should be finding a husband. Jo feels the pressure and is struggling when her presumed dead mother's most recent will is found, which leaves Jo with a lot of money. To claim Jo needs to go to a small island in Lake Superior, on a specific date, with a specific doll. She cannot miss it, or she has to wait seven more years for a chance.

Her mother was different, suspected of being a witch; ironic since her mother thought witches were a hoax!

Giddings writing style is great.

However, there are odd inconsistencies and plot holes as the story goes. The pacing is off, with heavy use of flashbacks and I wished I had more answers for some of the world building and less answers for other things. Ultimately, this is an innovative story that does dystopia well.

If you like witch stories, dystopia, or fantasy, I think you will like this. 3.5 stars

Imagine a dystopian world in the neat future where witches are real and being accused of witchcraft can get you burned at the stake. Although cis hetero white men are unlikely to be witches according to the government. The saying is black women are drawn to black magic and BIPOC women are accused of witchcraft at an alarming rate. The government monitors wo!en closely and even has detention centers for accused witches. All women are expected to marry by the age of 30 or lose all autonomy such as the ability to work or have a bank account. Then they have to register with the government and be tracked for the rest of their lives.
Josephine is turning 28 and has to begin her paperwork with the government. She is no stranger to being tested for signs of witchcraft. Her mother, a black women disappeared over a decade ago, leaving Jo to be handled by the givernment and her white father. Women who disappear are suspected of being witches. Jo had s difficult time coming to terms with closure when there has been no sign of her mother for years. When they finally declare her mother legally dead, her will has an odd final request for Jo.
Although the writing in this book could be choppy at times as literary novels can be, but I enjoy the imagery it provoked. Sometimes I had difficulty understanding what was going on in certain scenes. But I was able to make sense of it all after reading paragraphs over again.
The social commentary in this book has been compared to The Handmaid's Tale repeatedly but I feel this is superior. It focuses on the intersectionality issues black women and other minorities face in the white patriarchal society. The world building and detailed descriptions were amazing. I love getting a good visual in my head. The magical aspects were great and not too over the top. I really enjoyed this story and can see this book having a sequel if not a series of this dystopian witchy world. If you are a feminist or just a woman this book is a must read.

"How could you keep loving someone who was supposed to monitor and report on you if you ever showed a sign of being something different?"

This book starts strong and ends even stronger; it held me the whole way through. Needing answers, finding more questions; curiosities stacking. I enjoyed it immensely.

In this dystopian society where witch-burnings still happen, and being Black makes you at “higher risk” this book spoke to me on multiple levels.

The main character Josephine, a mixed race Black woman celebrating her 28th birthday with the knowledge that since she is unmarried she will need to register with the Bureau of Witchcraft and if she remains unmarried at 30–will no longer be permitted to work.

Surrounded by the various people (both men and women) in her life that either know it’s wrong but go-along to get-along or genuinely see no issue with the status quo—Josephine is bold and unapologetic in her existence as a queer Black woman.

It’s a thought provoking fictional story that would recommend to anyone.

This is the second book that I have read by Megan Giddings, and I'll just start by saying that she has just a distinct writing style. It's a style reminiscent to watching a Jordan Peele movie, where much of the time you have no idea what is really happening until at a moment's notice it all clicks and makes sense. It vascillates between moving slowly and quickly throughout the entire book. It's not a style that everybody will love, but I find that I do.

Also, I love that her books are set in Michigan - since I grew up and spent most of my life there.

I enjoyed this book, it was full of rich social commentary while also being entertaining. I felt the gravity of it all as the book came to a conclusion. Everything in the book's world comes down to the same as in reality - control.

Thank you to Harper Collins and Netgalley for the chance to read this book before it's publish date.

What an amazing foundation for a book! Women are witches and certain rules and procedures have been put in place to govern them. Josephine is under suspicion because she is Black, her mother mysteriously disappeared, and she is 28 and unmarried. I was enjoying my mental comparison between the world in the book and our actual modern world where women's and LGBT+ rights are being restricted and minorities are demonized. I wanted to find some smart commentary. But instead, the book wanders off into how Jo is feeling regarding her mother's disappearance and it gets away from the part that interested me. The story deviated off into more of a look at Jo's relationship with her absent mother. I never felt like the story came back to deal with the original problems presented, or maybe the problems I wanted resolved?

Wow, so this is incredibly timely! Women having no agency over her own choices? Check. Black women bearing the brunt extra? Double check. In The Women Can Fly, we are introduced to Josephine, who is living in a world all too similar to our own. Perhaps this world starting out being more strict than ours when it started, but by the time of its publication, we're drifting terrifyingly into the very world that Jo is living in. Minus accusing women of being witches, probably. But like, don't give these guys any ideas, yeah?

Any woman who is unmarried by thirty is on a government watchlist, as she's now under scrutiny for being a witch. So... forget having independence, ladies. Either a man controls your life, or The Man controls your life. Good times. As you can imagine, Jo finds this to be a load of crap. Of course, Jo is already under extra surveillance because her mother left their family when Jo was a teen (therefore leading authorities to assume Mom is a witch), because she is unmarried with no real prospects, because she is bisexual, and because she is Black. The cards are stacked against her, basically. But as you can imagine, she isn't particularly keen to give up her job and her life, but neither does she want to be forced into marriage.

The story mostly reads as a (unfortunately mildly) alt-contemporary, with a dose of magical realism. Jo's world is much like our own, save for the witch situation (but seriously, like I said, I bet there is at least a few members of Congress who'd be down for accusing women of witchcraft, yeah?), so Jo's character is even more relatable. It's heartbreaking to see her slowly losing agency over her own life as she inches closer to some ridiculous, arbitrary age limit the government has set for her, and again, it feels so completely relevant to women's history and present.

The story isn't particularly fast paced, and a great deal of it involves Jo navigating her relationships with her best friend, her lover, and her father. I really enjoyed this aspect of the story, as it gave us a great insight into Jo's life. Jo's complex feelings about her mother are another huge focal point, as you can certainly imagine the mixed emotions that she has.

My one qualm with the story is that I would have liked a bit more insight into the world itself, how magic/witches came to the forefront, and how the government ended up making some of these rules (and the ramifications, because there certainly must have been some). I also maybe would have preferred a bit more action at certain points, but again, minor qualm.

Mostly, I found the story to be incredibly captivating, and I was so very angry on Jo's- and all women's- behalf. And frankly, you will see so very many parallels to our world- so many incredibly similar situations, that it will make you mad for us, too. And even madder for the marginalized groups within the female and female-identifying community, because just as in this story, their plight is far more difficult in our world as well.

Bottom Line: A quiet yet moving tale of a young woman who seeks her own agency, despite being told at every turn that she doesn't deserve it.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Imagine the worlds of Octavia Butler and Alix E. Harrow colliding, and you’ll have an idea of what to expect from this book! There is magic, there are witches, there is fellowship and feminism and beauty. But there are also patriarchal laws taking away pretty much every semblance of female autonomy that exists. Add to that a protagonist who is Black and queer, whose mother has been accused of witchcraft, who is about to reach the age of forced matrimony or having to register to be monitored by the Bureau of Witchcraft for the rest of her life. All of these come together for a story that is provocative, thoughtful, and realistic even at its most magical point.

The book reads as speculative magical realism, but it deals with so many intersectionalities and concepts relevant to today’s society. Racism, sexism, gender norms, authoritarian leadership and who holds power, bodily autonomy, sexual orientation, and “othering” are examined, as well as concepts like familial obligation, friendship, trust, and self-concept. Also explored is the complicated relationship between a mother who never wanted this kind of life and the daughter who was left behind to bear the brunt of her mother’s decisions. This is a reflective book rather than an action-packed one; there is tension as characters discover and grow into themselves.

There were a few times where I thought the narration and sequence of events could have flowed a bit more cleanly, but overall I loved this story and the journey of the protagonist.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Amistad for the advanced readers copy!

2.5 stars rounded up. I probably wasn’t the exact best audience for this book. I love a dystopian novel, but I am not a huge fan of fantasy and this was too light on the former and too much of the latter for me. What I loved: the writing, the relevance, and the allusions. Angie and Preston. What I didn’t love: the storytelling. There were many pages with no dialogue that I just flipped through. I didn’t like how it skipped around in time and I didn’t care about the stories her mother told her. I think this could have been a 5 star book with better editing.

I had managed to avoid any general notion of what this book was even about before I started reading. I don't know what I expected this book to be about, but it wasn't this! I am going to be pretty vague in this review, plot-wise, while also trying to give a thorough review.

I was immediately swept into Jo's world, and wow was I horrified. Not only because of the way women are treated, but because of how real it felt. Giddings does a fantastic job of telling a horrifying tale with major speculative elements, while also reminding her readers how harmful similar things in our real world are.

The writing, the characters, and the world-building absolutely drew me in, and I had a hard time putting this book down. While I did love it, the reason I gave it a 4 was because at times I thought the plot moved a bit slow. In the end, I loved the arc the plot took and how the book ended, but I think it could have been a bit tighter through the middle.

Overall, I love what the author has done here and I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in feminist literature with speculative bent.