I felt like this was a better version of The Lost Apothecary but it still did not really wow me. All three of the main women were interesting enough and I did not dread the switching perspectives/timelines yet I could not really get into this. I love the symbolism and am always down for a feminist story, but it felt like every traumatic experience a woman could endure was sprinkled in for at least one of the women. Funnily enough, I chose this as my BOTM pick before finding out that NetGalley was going to send me the audio ARC! I decided to follow along with the book as I listened to the audiobook and found the narration well done. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and Emilia Hart for an advance copy of this book for review.

I am so thrown by how beautiful this book is. This is Emilia Hart's debut novel so I had never read anything by her and though the cover and synopsis captivated me I was hoping for it to just be good. I think I genuinely surprised myself when, about half way though, I was crying and just had the realization 'oh. this is a 5 star'. and I stand by that! So Weyward by Emilia Hart is my first 5 star read in 2022. I'm very stingy with my 5 stars so I cannot stress how much it really earned it.

Weyward follows 3 different women in 3 different timelines all of the same bloodline. Without getting into spoiler territory you see the origin of this magical family, the time that made them what they are and where they are now. I was worried that the timelines would get confusing but the voices of the women and the setting makes it so easy to swap back to that timeline though I will say each chapter made you want to stay in that time- even though you love the others just as much. The magic in this book is also very subtle. Sometimes reading a fantasy can seem overwhelming if you have to learn entire systems or new worlds but this was just our world but with a magical asterisk next to nature.

I want to be able to read this book for the first time again already and I just finished it.

As this was an audiobook I also want to mention that the producers did an amazing job with this. Though each woman is narrated by a different person they sound similar but just with a different accent which adds a nice touch.

I do love audiobooks, and was thrilled receive a copy of Weyward by Emilia Hart narrated by Aysha Kala, Helen Keeley and Nell Barlow. Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for providing a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review. Wow, I loved this story. With International Women’s Day tomorrow, I was left feeling how much this story celebrates the strength and resilience of women. The audiobook narrators helped the characters spring off of the page and I was instantly sucked into this tale. Weyward Cottage in Cumbria is the home of three women across three different times, all connected each voiced by their own narrator. Kate in modern times, inheriting the cottage from her Great-Aunt; Violet, becoming the cottage’s custodian after fate leads her to it’s door; and Altha, rumoured to be a witch. A story told in turns, each woman’s fate at the hands of men. This story highlighted for me, the ways in which the persecution of witches across history was a thinly veiled means of controlling powerful women. The feeling of oppression was oozing throughout this book. An incredible tale that binds the three stories together waiting for these formidable women to unravel their own destiny. The connections between mothers and daughters, and the bravery of these women to forge their own paths, and wonderful storytelling makes Weyward a story I won’t soon forget. I can’t wait to read more by this author.

Weyward by Emilia Hart

Happy pub day to one of my new favorites!!!

Holy moly was this book amazing! I loved it! I told my husband that I am convinced I was convicted of being a witch in a past. Any time I read a scene in any book where they are accused, I get this visceral reaction of intense anger throughout my entire body. It’s still so insane to me what happened to so many women and men during these times.

Altha, Violet and Kate are three women who lived similar lives in ways, even though they lived in vastly different times.

There was one theme/situation that each woman found themselves a part of that broke my heart. It showed that whether you lived in the 1600’s or current times, some things unfortunately have not changed, and women have to fight back.

This book made me feel so many emotions and connect with the characters deeply. I wanted to jump into the book and help them repeatedly. It always hits harder when the stories feel so real because you know it’s happened to women around the world.

Read this book if you love stories with witches, strong female characters, redemption, darker themes.

Thank you so much to @stmartinspress for the arc and fabulous box containing this necklace, candle and potpourri 💚

TW: rape, abortion, domestic violence, death

Weyward is compelling and heart wrenching. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Hart does a beautiful job of sharing the emotions of the three main characters as they go through their journey. The story is told from three points of view of women in different time periods. Men’s cruelty is showcased in each of their stories and these women are incredibly strong and resilient.

The story moved at a fast pace and I felt the different points of view really enhanced the story telling. The three narrators did an excellent job in portraying their character and were very engaging. Trigger warning: this book does contain sexual assault and domestic violence.

Thank you NetGalley and MacMillan audio for the advance audiobook copy. The thoughts expressed are my own.

I am a Weyward and wild inside.
This book is SO GOOD! SSSSOOO GOOD!!!

Stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart's Weyward is an enthralling novel about female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world. At times difficult to read because of what the women endured, but also empowering. I love the strength of the women as they battle against violence, prejudice, and discrimination: a wonderfully written book and an expertly orated audiobook.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Emilia Hart for providing me with a complimentary digital ARC audiobook for Weyward on March 7, 2023. The honest opinions expressed in this review are my own.

🪶What an incredible job Hart has done in her debut novel, telling the story about the powerful bond three women from the same family share, spanning five centuries! They are the Weyward women and they are in harmony with nature and its wild spirit. If you enjoy stories about women being empowered by their own strength, this is a witch’s tale for you.

🐞We meet Kate in 2019, who is fleeing her abusive husband and has headed to a country cottage she has inherited from a great aunt, Violet, she barely knew. Your heart breaks for her at the isolation she has been forced to live in and the horrendous violence she has been the victim of at the hands of her husband. Her story is very reminiscent of “Sleeping With the Enemy” and has some very terrifying elements. The longer she stays at the cottage, the more she begins to uncover about her aunt’s life, which helps her understand things about herself and the power she never knew she had.

💐We meet Kate’s Great-Aunt Violet as a young girl, living at home during WWII with her controlling father who never lets her leave their estate. Until one day, when everything changes and she is banished to a cottage. She soon discovers the cottage belonged to her mother’s family. Having been told her mother died in childbirth, Violet begins to uncover truths in the cottage that tell the real story of her mother and the connection they share with the beautiful bugs and birds Violet has always adored.

🪹Then there’s Altha, their relative we meet in 1619, who is on trial for witchcraft. She is also very young and alone in the world. Like Kate and Violet, she lives a life of isolation. Having been accused of causing a local farmer’s death, she fears she will soon be a victim of the noose.

🌳Hart’s writing draws you in to each one of the Weyward women’s lives. Each of their stories are told with great detail and I found myself wrapped up in discovering the secrets of all three women. Even better was the way all three women were connected. I loved how just when you thought you knew the whole story, Hart had a few more surprises at the end ❤️

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Emilia Hart for providing me with a complimentary digital ARC audiobook for Weyward coming out March 7, 2023. The honest opinions expressed in this review are my own.

It’s 1619 and Altha is going to be on trial for the murder of a local farmer who was trampled to death by his herd. As a young girl, Altha’s mother taught her family’s magic. It’s not spell casting, but rather a deep knowledge of the natural world. However, strange women have always been called dangerous, and as the evidence for witchcraft is set against Altha, she knows it will take all of her powers to prove her innocence and gain her freedom.

In 1942, World War II has no end in sight. Violet is trapped in her family's grand, crumbling estate. She is stifled by societal convention and longs for the great education her brother receives. She also longs for her mother, long passed away, who was said to have gone mad before her death. The only part Violet has of her are a locket bearing the initial W and the word weyward scratched into the baseboard of her bedroom.

In 2019, Kate flees London for the rundown Weyward Cottage. She inherited it from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its overgrown ivy and garden, the cottage is a safe haven from the abusive partner who tortured Kate. She begins to suspect that her great aunt had a secret. A secret that lurks in the dark corners of the cottage, hidden ever since the time of witches in the 17th century.

These three stories of three different women are weaved together, spanning five centuries. Weyward is a novel of female hope, resilience and power in the world.

Overall, I really enjoyed listening to this book! I thought the three women and their stories were unique but connected in a way that was clear. I love stories about witches whether they’re real witches or not. The magic shown throughout the book was interesting and I think that type of magic still exists in our world today. I think it’s possible to feel connected to one’s heritage and ancestors. This book was little slow at the beginning but I think it picked up soon after. I definitely love books about women and their struggles. While I understand this is a deeply feminist story, I would’ve liked to see more men portrayed. It did seem like there weren’t a lot of great men. The message seemed to be that men were all evil abusers. I would’ve enjoyed to see examples of more well-rounded, better men.

I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys family stories about magic featuring strong women!

1619: Altha is on trial for murder. A man in her village was stampeded by his herd and because of her connection to nature and generational rumors of witchcraft, Altha is locked in a cell awaiting a verdict that determines whether she lives to see age 22.
1942: Violet is banished from her family’s estate at age 16, to a cottage once belonging to her mother. Prior to this she knew very little of her deceased mother, only that people spoke in hushed tones about her mental state and people were concerned that Violet was too much like her.
2019: Kate flees London and her abusive relationship for a cottage left to her by her late Aunt. Rebuilding her life at 29 seems nearly impossible but as she uncovers family secrets, she learns that her legacy is to take ownership of her power and her life.

This book was SO FREAKING GOOD. Seriously, what an amazing group of badass women. I won’t lie, parts of it were really difficult. It is heart wrenching that five centuries of Weyward women had to endure such abuse and neglect. But their strength and power, my goodness, was so incredibly impressive. Am I talking about it like it was real? Yes, because the narrative was so impeccable…which such vivid imagery, I could see this story unfold before my eyes.

A truly beautiful entanglement of magical realism, historical fiction, and women’s fiction. I absolutely recommend.

Wayward is the story of three women set apart by generations all of which live very difficult lives. Each woman’s story portrays the hardships and difficulties faced by a woman during that time. The most horrifying part is that despite the passage of time they really aren’t all that different. It is a feminist tale depicting the strength of women. Perhaps it is made particularly more poignant by today's speech at the UN declaring it will be more than 300 years before gender equality is achieved.

There was a quote in the story (which I’m about to butcher and wish I could find where I had written it down) along the lines of how the word witch only gives more power to those that say it than those that it accuses.

If you aren’t much of a fantasy fan, don’t let the cover dissuade you from reading this. The inclusion of the raven gives hardcore fantasy vibes but it is really a small part of the story. 

I gravitate towards feminist tales with strong female protagonists and I couldn’t have been more pleased that this lived up to every one of my expectations.

Thank you to MacMillan Audio for providing an advanced listening copy in exchange for an honest review.

What is it to be a (uterus having) woman?

This story follows three women through time, all of them related. Kate lives in the modern era, desperate to escape her abusive partner. Violet lives in the 20th century, with a cold father who keeps their deceased mother a mystery from his children. The 3rd women is Altha, she’s a local healer who is on trial for witchcraft after a man was found trampled by cows. These women are separated by time but not by blood, and all of them face the worst possible realities that their respective society can provide.

This book is touted as a female empowering/female resilience type story, but all it really does is put female characters into graphic situations (note: there are <b>many trigger warnings</b> for this book including but not limited to graphic rape, abuse, abortion, deadly injury, persecution, and humiliation/forced nakedness. Then the woman characters deal with that trauma all alone -ahem, not alone, they have their ancestors’ spirits with them- and only one of them ends up with someone by their side in the end…

There are a lot of female characters in this book, and out of all of them, only a single one wasn’t brutalized, raped, or otherwise ostracized by a male character. The ending, which was written as though it was empowering, instead felt incredibly sad. Is it really the legacy of the line of these magical women to be tormented by the world of men, forever? Is it really the legacy of the men who encounter them to be, at best, a “kind man, but still, a man,”? Does our world really need books like these, where the primary force of “female empowerment” is a connection to nature that only occurs in magical realism? I sure hope not.

Stories centered around witches/witch trials are one of my favorites, and this is the first one I have read in some time that I really loved. I always love a multiple timeline/POV that ends up wrapping together. The present day, was my least favorite narrative in all honesty, but I did enjoy that this wasn’t a “young witch coming into her powers, turning to her ancestors” storyline, instead placing that as the middle time period. It left the present day narrative free to focus on the way the past set her up to have the power to draw herself which felt unique. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced audiobook.

This is an amazing multi-generation witch discovery/revenge story! I loved it
You follow 3 women as they discover their powers, their connection with nature, and free themselves of the terrible men they are stuck with.

Thank you @Netgalley, @StMartinsPress, and @MacMillan.Audio for the #gifted ALC of WEYWARD!

Three women. Five centuries. One secret.

In 2019, Kate flees an abusive relationship to Weyward Cottage in a remote Cumbrian village. She’s inherited from her great-aunt Violet who she only met once as a child. While settling into Weyward Cottage, Kate stumbles across old letters and an account of her ancestor Altha who was tried as a witch in 1619. As Kate looks more into her family’s history, she discovers a secret about the women in her family and their deep connection with nature.

First, the audio of this book is fantastic. There is a narrator for each woman’s POV, Kate, Violet, and Altha so it was easy to keep track of whose story I was listening to. I found each of their voices compelling and always regretted having to pause my listening each day.

While I enjoyed all of the stories, my favorite POV was Violet’s. She was brilliant and yet so heartbreakingly sheltered by her cruel father. A common theme in the book was the abuse and cruelty of men towards women, and how men often go unpunished for their evil deeds, aka different centuries, same old patriarchal bullshit.

Altha, Violet, and Kate each eventually find power in their relationship with the natural world. And it is a stunning transformation for each of them. I loved watching them each break free of the confines of their respective societies.

If books about witchy women and nature are you jam, then don’t miss out on this one! It gave me major PRACTICAL MAGIC and SPELLS FOR FORGETTING vibes! It’s definitely going on my list of favorite audiobooks of the year!

WEYWARD comes out March 7!

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5365499363
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CpVKSo_rSfA/

A huge thank you to @stmartinspress and @EmiliaHartBooks for the beautiful #gifted copy of “Weyward”.

My thanks also to @macmillan.audio and @netgalley for the opportunity to listen to the audiobook narrated brilliantly by Aysha Kala, Helen Keeley, and Nell Barlow.

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“Weyward” is a historical novel about three women: Kate, Violet, and Althea. They are connected across centuries by a ramshackle house in Cumbria, North West England. It is called Weyward Cottage and contains a powerful legacy.

The novel is told from the points of view of the three protagonists. Emilia Hart’s writing is assured, creative and enchanting.

Hart describes writing “Weyward” in 2020 during the early stages of the pandemic while she was living in Cumbria, where the novel is set.

She was inspired by the beauty and majesty of the Cumbrian landscape: sweeping fields, sparkling streams, and mysterious woods. She was also inspired by the history of the 1612 Pendle witch trials that took place in nearby Lancaster.

It was during lockdown, while she was learning about the history of the Pendle witch trials, that there were disturbing media reports about the increasing rates of domestic violence against women. She advises that she was struck by the sense of misogyny echoing through time. She wanted to write a novel to explore and interrogate this, which would also celebrate female resilience and power in the face of that misogyny.

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“Weyward” by Emilia Hart is available for pre-order and will be out on 7 March 2023.

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To read the summary please check the comments section.

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I received an advanced listening copy of Weyward by Emilia Hart through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review and, here it is.
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☆☆☆☆
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This story is told from three different points of view in three different timelines. We follow three women of the same lineage as they navigate each of their lives during their respective eras all while concealing their magic.
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I love the inner strength of these women as they battle against violence, prejudice, and discrimination. I appreciate the depth of the characters and the layers of this story.
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I was not prepared for all of the triggers in this story and they definitely caught me off-guard. For those looking to read it, please be aware that there is (but not limited to) pregnancy loss, miscarriage, abortion, stillbirth, rape, and abuse.
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This is Emilia Hart's debut novel and I look forward to reading more of her stories in the future!
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Thanks to Macmillan Audio, NetGalley, and author Emilia Hart for this ALC to honestly review. Weyward will be available on March 7th!

This one was not for me. The story seemed interesting but the writing style just did not pull me in. Anytime I started getting pulled into the story, it switched to a different timeline and I was pulled out. I did not find the voices distinct enough to be able to keep track of these perspective jumps.

Weyward A Novel Audiobook by Emilia Hart

Listening Time: 10 hours, 51 minutes
Narrators: Aysha Kala, Helen Keeley, Nell Barlow
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Release Date: March 7, 2023

Fiction, Women’s Fiction, Domestic Violence, Generational

It’s 2019 and Kate escapes her London home for Weyward Cottage left to her from her Aunt Violet. She is hiding from her husband since he has total control over her life. In 1942, Violet wants to pursue an education. Her mother died when her brother was a baby. After a distant cousin comes to visit and charms their father, Violet and her brother are disowned except for Weyward Cottage which belonged to their mother. In 1619, Altha is a Weyward and was tried as a witch when a neighbor farmer was stampeded by his cattle. Since she was known as a healer and provided herbal treatments, some people believed that she bewitched the cows to run over the man.

The book has a pace that builds as the story progresses. The characters were developed, and it was mostly written in third person point of view. Altha’s parts are written in first person point of view. I loved this book. The characters feel real and as a reader, I suffered along with them. As someone with experience with domestic violence, I recognized that it does not have to be physical. It is always a power over another person. All three women are strong, and I rallied around them throughout the story.

The three narrators bring life to each character. As you listen you become one with the story as each woman suffers along her journey. If you like generational stories with a touch of drama here and there, you will enjoy this book.

Maybe it's because I just lost my dog of 12 years and am in a funk, but this was too depressing for me out the gate. Each of the three women are so sad and the narration especially with the more modern character was just really grating with the same tonation. I am going to switch over to the text to see if I can enjoy it more that way, but I also think this writing style, choices and tone may not be for me or just very specifically not right now when I am quite sad enough. I love magical realism and female centered stories so I was really anticipating this read but I think it may just be too dark for me.

"Weyward" by Emilia Hart - Historical fiction following 3 women decades and millennium apart, with a touch of magical realism and witchcraft. The jumpy timeline made it a bit hard to follow, especially because all 3 women had very similar experiences. It does not speak well of men, either in the modern era, WWII era, or in the time of witch trials. This got a bit creepy - not because of the crows/blackbirds, but because of the bugs. I wanted to love this atmospheric novel, but I can only give it 3 stars.