I really enjoyed this! I was a bit worried going into it because it seemed divisive in the book community. I really liked the vibe and the dark coziness throughout the book. ( )

“Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us.”

“The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.”

It was not as good as I expected...too many tropes. Women, abused and trapped in circumstances of men's making- find hidden power through a magical connection to nature.
Altha, 1619 is on trial for witchcraft. Violet, abandoned by her family, finds solace and power in discovering her family legacy. Kate, abused and pregnant learns that she is connected, over centuries, to a powerful matriarchy that can use nature to survive, and exact revenge against abusive men.

"This wildness inside gives us our name. It was men who marked us so, in the time when language was but a shoot curling from the earth. Weyward, they called us, when we would not submit, would not bend to their will. But we learned to wear the name with pride.”


( )

Reason reading: WCf2f
Characters:
Kate in the present day running from an abusive husband,
Violet in the early 20th century with an abusive father.
Altha in the 1600s on trial for witchcraft.

The story is told of a family of women who have ability to understand nature. Kind of like Mother Nature women. They seem to only get involved with really abusive males. So there is a lot of misogyny, issues of pregnancy/abortion. I felt the ending was lacking. Still I give the book a low 4 score. ( )

Not what I normally gravitate to. But so glad I picked it up each woman has their own story and there is some tough topics that are talked about. I had a lot of he did not just say that moments. But overall enjoyed it. ( )

Weyward by Emilia Hart is a 5 Star extraordinary Gothic Suspense novel. It is Emilia Hart's debut adventure into fiction and I just could not put it down! Beautifully written with poetic prose, and with sentences and paragraphs created to evoke feelings of the macabre including mystical, eerie, and often frightening scenes.

1619: 21 year old Atha is imprisoned, starving, and about to be hung for witchcraft if her innocence is not proved. Her mother before her had a talent for curing the sick. But was she healer or witch?

1942: 16 year old Violet is an odd child with her uncanny affinity to insects, birds, and all nature's creatures. Living with her brother and sinister father, she has been kept hidden away from the public since she was born. Her life soon plummets into hell when her cousin rapes her and she is banned to a decrepit cottage where she learns that her dead mother was stark raving mad and it is thought that she too will follow in her mother's footsteps.

2019: Kate is on the run from her abusive husband. Months earlier she had learned that she inherited an old cottage from her Great Aunt Violet who was thought to be a unusual old spinster. She kept this a secret from her husband knowing she was going to need a place to run to, to hide. Arriving to Weyward cottage, Kate discovers many old secrets of her two ancestors Altha and Violet. Both she discovers had traits she her self harbors within her. Strength, a love of nature, and a secret power to overcome those who will seem them harmed. They can heal, they can call upon the crows, they can hear nature calling, they can persevere against all odds against them, they are the Weyward women. ( )