Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book.

The title is misleading and should have been called "Biddy Early" as opposed to "Witchcraft."

This book is working on two levels: the first is a mini biography of Biddy Early and the second is a rundown of witchcraft (more specifically, Irish witchcraft with some Wiccan thrown in). There are parts where the two levels coincide and it works, but for a majority of the time, it doesn't. Instead, the writing feels disjointed and there's no flow to it.

At the end of the book, it looks like it was okay for young Lindsay (a literal self-insert for the author) to give her aunt a potion because it healed her. Nothing at all that it was actually assault.

Thanks to netgalley & publisher for this arc!

I have always been fascinated and drawn to witches and the paranormal so of course was drawn to read this gorgeously covered book! Loved the authors writing style and voice and highlighting of these amazing badass women through time who were farrrr ahead of their times! Biddy especially wow what a badass queen!

Thank you to Netgalley, Lindsay Squire and Leaping Hare Press for the opportunity to read this book!⭐

As soon as I saw the title, “Witchcraft: A Graphic History: Stories of wise women, healers and magic” , I knew I had to read this one: the promise of witches, witchcraft and women was enough to make me pause what I was doing to immediately start reading.

I’ve always been fascinated by this world, I’ve done some research, read books and essays, learnt how to read tarots: so of course, I thought this graphic novel was going to be perfect for me! And what better timing than the spooky month to get into it?!

The illustrations are definitely my favourite thing about this book: they’re beautiful and so detailed, they definitely catch one’s eye! The informative pages, the ones including information and brief descriptions of some elements (magical creatures, witches and their needed objects, …) are gorgeous, I kept staring at them with heart-shaped eyes.

By the title, I thought it was going to be a book describing not only witchcraft but the story of many women practising it; instead, it mainly focuses on one woman, Biddy Early. It has, however, some pages with a brief description of other witches, but they’re just superficially mentioned. Therefore, I think it would have been better to describe the book itself as A story of a wise woman, not plural.
But putting this one thing aside, the title also implies stories of magic: once again, all we have is a few pages with short paragraphs about magical elements and creatures.

The main story follows Biddy Early and her apprentice, a young-made up-version of the author, but it doesn’t have much beside that. It doesn’t go in depth describing Biddy’s character, nor the troubles she faces with the church and trials, or her magic, her relationship with it and nature. At the beginning I was so happy to get to know Biddy, as I never heard about her; but by the end of the graphic novel, I knew nothing else beside the fact that she was a witch living in Ireland.

Personally, I would have loved for this book to focus more on this one character, or maybe to be a collection of short stories having other women as protagonists. Either way, what I felt was missing was a storyline that could make me empathise with the characters. Maybe it was too short (120 pages), maybe the main story was not deep enough for me to really get caught up.
I’m definitely grateful to the author for making me discover a mostly-unknown name, and as someone passionate about all of this world, I’ll definitely do more research on her!

Overall, I do recommend it as a light read, with beautiful illustrations!

This book is a truly beautiful story, woven with history and facts about witches. Biddy's life isn't one I had heard about before, but it's utterly moving and powerful for all witches. I also love the inclusion of Lindsay's character. This was such a fun way to learn more about the history behind witchcraft, and the women who sacrificed so much. I've been learning and practising witchcraft for four years now and this short graphic novel made me incredibly proud to do so. Definitely a must-read for any beginners or anyone interested in the history of witchcraft!

This was such a delightful story! I love the mixture of fiction and nonfiction elements, and how informative it was about darker parts of women’s history while still remaining lighthearted. The artwork is absolutely enchanting, and I would recommend this as a light, quick, and informative read on the history of witchcraft and Biddy Early.

Thank you so much for the eARC!

The artwork in this history of Biddy Early and witchcraft in general is incredible. Squire is a whimsical artist with an eye for color! It is also clearly well researched and packed with a lot of great information. Unfortunately, I found the writing to be rather clunky and it kept taking me out of the story and made it difficult to stay connected to the story. That said I think many will enjoy it for what it is!

Whilst I was intrigued to read a graphic novel about a key figure in the history of witches and witchcraft, I did not end up enjoying this read.

My main positives are the gorgeous colour scheme and the arrangements of the text on the page. I had also never heard of Biddy Early so the information I learnt through the novel was definitely appreciated.

However, the story itself fell flat for me. The choice to insert the author herself into the story as a young apprentice, while interesting in concept, did not actually aid the storyline. The dialogue between the two felt unnatural and awkward at times – I would have preferred to follow Biddy’s story without the interruption of questions. I also felt that the chapters did not blend smoothly together but jump to different moments and topics. Near the end of the novel, tensions start to rise yet when the last chapter starts all this seems to have been put to bed without the readers’ knowledge.

Ultimately, I think that Biddy’s tale could have been told in a simpler way in order to understand the full picture of her life and have greater historical accuracy.

e-ARC received from NetGalley – thank you!

This graphic novel came out earlier this month, and its about a girl, Lindsay, (young author self-insert) who befriends Biddy Early- one of the most famous witches in the history of Ireland.

Lindsay has a spark of magic in her and with some persistence, becomes Biddy’s apprentice. Through Lindsay’s curiosity, we learn about the different types of witches and the magic that they historically practiced, and especially the importance of their relationship with nature. Even as Lindsay learns nature and magic from Biddy, the community is stirring, disturbed by the presence of the witch in their midst despite the fact that she mostly stays out of town unless she’s helping treat an illness or something.

The graphic novel feels more like a quick crash course in the history or witches. The art is beautiful throughout, but especially the author takes time to explain different types of witchcraft and the cross over with mythology. The author also briefly mentions many witch hunts across history.

Despite the suspicion and prejudice starting to affect Biddy’s life in the story, we don’t really get to see how things get resolved. We see the villagers’ hypocrisy and the way that the church is spreading discontent in the community, but the end of the graphic novel just skips ahead a couple years to when everything is better. It seems as though the author was drawing heavily from historical record, and the details on how she eluded conviction might be a bit sparse.

Overall, this was a really interesting graphic novel. I don’t know a whole lot about historical witches, so it was nice to learn more about them and their important but turbulent roles in their communities

This was not what I expected and I didn’t enjoy it. It is a fictionalised story of biddy early and how she meets young Lindsay and trains her in the ways of witchcraft. It therefore alternates between a graphic novel story, of which I felt the plot was very weak, and basically illustrated fact sheets about witches, witchcraft and even strays into other Irish folklore. The fact sheets were interesting but not very detailed and I think this strength comes from the other works by this author as she has published many non fiction books about witchcraft. The story didn’t hold up for me, the dialogue between biddy and Lindsay didn’t feel genuine, it felt more like a tool for the author to impart information to the reader, and not in a very natural way. I didn’t feel it was well done at all and I found myself skimming it as I got closer to the end

This graphic novel was an informative read that blended beautiful illustrations with snippets of information about the history of witchcraft.

The strength of this book lay in the information pages interspersed within the main story. They provided a great introduction to the topic. I did feel that the overarching plotline could have been a bit punchier. There were also some formatting issues with text alignment. However, I would definitely recommend this book to people interested in learning more about the history of witchcraft.

Thank you to Quarto Publishing Group –Leaping Hare for providing this book for review via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

This was super interesting and I enjoyed it a lot. Obviously a very heavy topic, but being told via beautiful art and the formatting really helped make it more digestible.

Witchcraft:A Graphic History. It felt like a mix of fiction and nonfiction. It's a story of a 19th century witch biddy. The illustrations are beautiful, the story itself is a simple one and touching the themes of feminism, self love and self-discovery.
But I felt like it was so short and ended too quickly. Also I would have wanted a little more detailed story.

The book jumped in different time period without any links and the end was abrupt and too sudden. Overall the illustrations are beautiful and pleasing. But I guess author could have work little hard on the storyline.

Rating: 3.5 stars the book is good but if only a little work done on the story side it would have been a 4.5 star read.

This graphic novel was stunning and it drew me into the story! The story line was interesting and very informative. The additional information along the story was educational and absorbing. Overall I really enjoyed this book and I would recommend it.
Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review

*Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!*

I have to say, I kind of got whiplash from this graphic novel. My first impression of it was that it would be a general broad-stroke view of the history of witchcraft (probably with some elements of what witchcraft looks like today). After reading the description, I realized that it was actually about the history of a specific witch. However, after getting into it, it turned out that it was actually both, which was a little bit disorienting.

There were a couple of things that I don't think worked for this graphic novel. For one, the history of Biddy Early feels incomplete. If the description is telling the reader that the graphic novel is supposed to be about her, then I would expect it to have a more complete account of her life. But the narrative completely skips her trial, which seems pretty important in the context of the time.

The second thing that put me off of this novel was the fact that the secondary main character is very literally a self-insert of the author - a young girl who wants to learn witchcraft from a famous and powerful witch. From one angle, I can see why this was done. Squire wanted to blur the lines between old and new witchcraft and show how we are always learning from the past. But I think that could have been done in a different way that didn't pull away so much from the historical narrative. Half the time, I felt like I was reading a self-insert fanfiction in art form.

The last thing I wanted to mention was that the drastic switches between historical narrative and the broad strokes of witchcraft were so jarring that I lost interest about halfway through. After a certain point, it felt like Biddy Early's story was a vehicle for telling us about the details of practicing witchcraft, which minimized her life and story.

I know this all makes it sound like I hated the book. I liked it fine, but I felt like two graphic novel ideas that got smushed together and ended up not meshing the way the author hoped they would. Although the art style is beautiful, captivating, and magical, the disjointed feeling of the narrative; and the flip-flopping between historical narrative and nonfiction reference were just too much.

This graphic novel perfectly blends fiction with the history of an Irish witch living in the 1700s. We follow Lindsay who convinces Biddy Early to teach her witchcraft. Through her we lärm the fundamental building blocks for becoming a witch and living attuned to nature.
It’s a visually stunning and lovingly written story about the beauty and dangers of pursuing the craft. I loved how it interwove the story of these two women with information and history about witchcraft. It’s the perfect book for anyone looking for an entry into the world of witches.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an advanced copy.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review. Lately, I've been in a mood for graphic novels, so when I saw a graphic novel exploring the theme of witchcraft and witch trials, I was really excited.
We follow the main lead, Biddy Early, one of the first known witches of Ireland who has been fictionalized in this book to explore witchcraft as a subject. We get to know about different kinds of witches, their tools, their beliefs, their past and the fate they all met in witch hunts and trials, but I later found out that they call Biddy as a herbalist and bean-feasa. While I do not have much knowledge about witchcraft in general or the Irish culture, I'm a little doubtful as to what I should make out of that information. Apart from that the book was super informative with lots of historical facts packed into it. The illustrations were so gorgeous and eye catching.
I was a bit disappointed to see that we did not delve deeper into the part where the priest turns the villagers against Biddy or the trial of Biddy. I would have loved to know more on that part.

a fictionalized story of one of Ireland's famous "witch" herbalists, Biddy Early. the plot was very mild, showing Biddy's life with her young apprentice, Lindsay, and the struggle she faced in the society as a witch. the major portion of the book contains witchy trivias that are narrated directly by the author, not explained by Biddy. i love the illustration style that's pretty and have a classic look. but the overall contents were just okay.

Nice story about a historical person, but what I take away with me the most are the absolutely beautiful illustrations.

Also a good introduction to history and aspects of witchcraft.

So many men have been terrified of women and their natural strength and power for millennia.

Imagine just being yourself - you enjoy helping others from the bounty Mother Earth provides, with tinctures and remedies. You have opinions, and express them. Someone whispers to someone else and then men come. Imposing, stern men who accuse you of witchcraft, because you live your life as freely as possible. They take you from your family, your home, from everything. Then you’re put on trial…

Witchcraft: A Graphic History has captivating art that showcases the historical figure of Bridget Eileen ‘Biddy’ Early in this fictionalized account of her life and experiences of the time.

Keep in mind however, that despite the overall aesthetic appeal of this, much of the information presented is not historically accurate. If you’re going to share this, or read it, be sure to have some factual information accessible.



Thank you to Leaping Hare Press and NetGalley for the temporary PDF

The true beauty of this graphic novel is definitely the art. The drawings were absolutely beautiful and I loved the artists style. Definitely had some formatting issues unfortunately with text boxes and although I love the premise of the story and the story as a whole, some of it felt a tad disjointed. Like it was trying to cover too much through the media. Super interesting and fun way though and overall enjoyed it