I am genuinely grateful for every ARC that I get to read and although I wasn't really into this book I still don't want to give it a negative review.
The author is a very talented and beautiful writer, the way she tells her stories is breathtaking and you can tell she puts alot of time and effort into fleshing out her characters. The story is very character driven, and I'm more of a plot driving kinda girl. These books are just a little too slow for me, but if you love getting to know a character inside out then this author is for you. This is not a bad book, I just think I am the wrong audience.

I adored The Ten Thousand Doors of January so I was beyond thrilled to get an e-ARC of this to review and it did not disappoint. In fact it went and exceeded all my expectations, became the best book I've read this year and if I could grant it more than 5 stars I would do that.

This is the story of three sisters. Three women. Three witches. Juniper, Agnes and Beatrice are women at a time when to be a woman is to be diminished, made smaller, forced to fit into a box that suits the men in power in society. Women's suffrage is on the horizon, but these women, Juniper in particular at first, refuse to be small and polite. They refuse to ask nicely for the vote, folding themselves into palatable shapes to achieve even a tiny measure of equality. They want power, they want agency, they want the world to see and acknowledge who they truly are. And be afraid.

Rage and fury run throughout this book, it made me want to light a match and burn the whole system down. It's a story of sisters and betrayal, hurt and love, sacrifice and power. It's beautifully written and lyrically compelling, and the characters take root in your heart and stay there. But it's also a burning raging feminist manifesto, urging women not to think small, not to twist and turn and jump through the hoops men set on the way to equality. It celebrates female power, the power of the maiden, the power of the mother and the power of the crone. It highlights the disparity between what women are "supposed to be" and what women truly are: powerful and angry and strong and brave and cunning and loving and a million other messy difficult brilliant things.

It's a furious beautiful tour de force and I think it must be impossible to read it and feel nothing. I loved it.

Thank you thank you thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you Little, Brown Book Group UK and NetGalley for providing me an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. My review is my own and not influenced by others.

Not long ago I read The Ten Thousand Doors of January, so I was curious about this new book written by the same author Alix E. Harrow.
Harraw has a unique writing style which I think many people will like. However it just didn’t work for me. This is the reason why I couldn’t get into the story.

I'm a huge fan of Alix E Harrow! I think Alix's writing style is so unique, and really beautiful. I couldn't wait to read this so was so pleased to receive the review copy. I devoured the book in just a couple of sittings, just couldn't put this one down. The story is really atmospheric, and the lyrical prose makes it. Some books just take you into another world, and this one does so very successfully. Perfect reading for scary lockdown times! Really enjoyed it and would recommend to fans of The Ten Thousands Doors of January.

DNF - About 25%

Firstly, thank you for the opportunity to read and review this book. I was a big fan of the author’s previous novel and will definitely try any future works, however, I had a few problems with this book that really made reading it unenjoyable.

Firstly, the world building started out really well - I love the mystery interwoven with snippets of lore, I loved that the sisters had fallen out and we didn’t know why. It was a great introduction, and then around chapter four, we had this massive, confusing info dump. Sure, we need to know about lore etc, but having pages of stuff that makes barely any odds to the story, that tells us nothing about the POV character or what she thinks/feels about the information, is clunky. It pulled me right out of the story, confused and annoyed.

Secondly, I thought the characters were interesting and their interactions were some of the best bits of what I read. The middle sister, in particular, was very well written and I found she was the only of the three I understood in terms of motivation. The youngest one is the “angry kid sister” and the oldest one is “bookish wet rag sister”. Furthermore, youngest sister’s decision to join the suffrage movement made no sense to me.

Finally, and this was what killed it, one of the characters actually said “witching and women’s rights” are one and the same. It’s like, I know. Everyone knows - that’s the allegory for the book. That’s the SELLING point of this book. Drawing a big fat ‘X’ on it only insults the reader’s intelligence. And for me, it was the final nail in the coffin.

I am sure there are many people who will love this story, and there is certainly merit in both the author’s skill as a writer and in the issues she addresses with her narrative. Sadly, though, this one wasn’t for me.

Best of luck with publication day.

Thank you again to Little, Brown Book Group UK and Netgalley for an e-ARC of this book.

This is one of my many “unpopular opinion” reviews, This book will go under the category “it was me, not you”.

Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy this one and I couldn’t connect with the story. What was clear to me, from the beginning, is that The Once and Future Witches is a completely different beast from Harrow’s previous work – The Ten Thousand Doors of January - which I really enjoyed.

While in this novel, Harrow maintains her lyrical and unique writing style. She turns to way darker topics, such as domestic violence, sexism and stories of women fighting for their freedom and equality. I felt it had less fluidity and sometimes I struggled to keep paying attention to the plot. The first three chapters are a great introduction to the story and characters, each one of them written from each sister’s perspective. After the three sisters reunite, there is a continuous jump of POVs and sometimes it just gets chaotic, leaving out details about side characters and for some reason I struggled to follow.

I really enjoyed something slightly different to my normal read, a good old witch, magic and the unknown, brilliant read.

This isn't my usual type of book but boy was it good,
Set in the late 1800's - The Once and Future Witches tells the tale of three sisters who all leave their home in mysterious circumstances - their reasons begin to unravel slowly throughout the story - the tale also intertwines with the suffragette movement in America.
As the title states - the sisters are witches - each with varying levels of power - and their power comes to light when a mysterious tower appears in the town square.
Without divulging too much of the plot, the story covers new and old Salem and it also unravels certain fairy tales.

It was very well written, with lots of rich characters and settings - instantly transporting you to another plane.

A great novel from Alix E Harrow - I look forward to reading more.

It isn’t fair to any of the other books being published in 2020 that they have to compete with this book. ‘The Once and Future Witches’ is one of my favourite books of all time. Reading it is like being immersed of a bath of magic and witchcraft, hopes and dreams, power and joy. Alix E Harrow wields words like a master sculptor creating their piece de resistance. There’s nothing I can say to adequately sum up how incredible the experience of reading this is, other than it ignites your soul with the fire of all those who have been wronged for wanting to be more than they are.

Once upon a time, there were three sisters. Beatrice Belladonna Eastwood was the eldest sister, the Crone, banished from her home only to find a new one in the New Salem College Library. Agnes Amarantha Eastwood was the middle sister, the brave one, the Mother, holding a punishing job in the mill where she could avoid having to care about anyone else. James Juniper Eastwood was the youngest, the Maiden, a firecracker of a girl who burned with the injustice of the world and wouldn’t rest until it burnt down and a new one arose in its place. These three sisters were lost – to each other, to their purpose, to themselves – but they would find each other again, and the world would tremble with the power of the three united.

Bella was the character I empathised with the most – the planner, the reader, most at home amongst her books and research. Given a problem she went to the library and worked. Bella loved her sisters fiercely but also tempered them, soothing Juniper’s more bloodthirsty elements and prodding Agnes into action when she faltered. Bella would never be the spokesperson, the radical thinker, the ideas generator – but she would always be there giving the ideas roots and branches, turning them from abstract dreams into tangible, inevitable reality. No plan would get anywhere without a Bella.

Agnes was the beating heart of the trio – at first cautious, careful, burned one too many times, but later the fierce, clawed figure of a mother protecting her cubs. Juniper saw Agnes as a coward, but really Agnes was the brave one – the one not afraid to say no when everyone else insisted she say yes. I understood Agnes less than the others, but then I’m not a mother – I don’t know what it’s like to hold another life in your hand that you value so much more than your own.

Juniper was all thorny branches and tangled thickets and bloody, scraped knees. Juniper was what happened to a dog kicked one too many times that suddenly scented weakness in its owner. Juniper didn’t know words like restraint, or forgiveness, or subtlety – she answered every question with a fist and a curse hissed under her breath. She was not the swooning Maiden of your fairytales. I loved Juniper – loved how fierce she was, how determined, how she never apologised or thought but simply rushed in with no thought of the consequences. The world would be a very different place with a few more Juniper’s in it.

The plot is excellent, twisting like smoke, but the three sisters are by far the most important part. This book is moulded on the strength of their characters and the sheer beauty of Alix E Harrow’s writing. The fact that the plot is so clever is merely the cherry on top (and the little references and similarities to The Ten Thousand Doors of January an extra little garnish).

Read this book. Listen to the story of the three sisters and let them speak to your soul. Maybe these words will be the ones you need to spark the will and the way, and change your life for the better.

Though the story itself is certainly enthralling & well thought out, the writing style was not for me, which is a shame as I often like lyrical prose works, which this certainly is. That is not to say I did not enjoy the book; it was okay and there were parts I thought were particularly well done like the characterisation of the sisters. Overall, it did not live up to my expectations; I had got the impression it was a different sort of book to what it was. It's by no means a bad book and clearly a lot of careful craft has gone into' its construction and I suspect fans of Alix's previous work will no doubt enjoy this book, it just was not my cup of tea.

This is a grandiose book. Wonderfully written, full of issues that matter without ever being preachy, great, complex characters and a story that packs a punch. Alix E. Harrow managed to snag a Hugo nomination for her debut <em><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43521657-the-ten-thousand-doors-of-january?ac=1&amp;from_search=true&amp;qid=68Rs1YyHlH&amp;rank=1">The Ten Thousand Doors of January</a></em>, which came out last year, and already won one for her short story "A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies" (which you can read <a href="https://www.apex-magazine.com/a-witchs-guide-to-escape-a-practical-compendium-of-portal-fantasies/">here</a>) last year. So it comes as no surprise that her sophomore novel manages to immerse the reader in the world of the Eastwood sisters and their quest to return witching to the modern era.
All three of the sisters are unique and captivating characters that the reader will fall for. They all have their strengths and, importantly, their weaknesses and flaws, none of them anywhere near infallible. But more than anything, they are interesting. To me, that is more important than any other quality. I wanted to know more about what makes these women tick and spur them into action. James Juniper, riotous rebellion leader. Agnes Amarath, fierce mother and protector. Beatrice Belladonna, sapphic librarian and guardian of knowledge. Each of them made me fall for her in turn. The secondary cast is no less enchanting. And the villain of the story, Gideon Hill, is so damn creepy because he is so believable. He is the kind of man every woman, even now, has encountered in her life, who has made life difficult for those who don't just accept him as their superior leader. But then you find out that there might be more to him than meets the eye...
The story of <em>The Once and Future Witches</em> focuses on the return of magic to the world in a period historically associated with the quest for suffrage. It shows women banding together in secret to overcome obstacles and create a world more open and tolerant. It is ultimately a story of hope in the face of adversity, something which is crucial at this particular moment in time. And it is so well written. It is full of stories within a story, crafting together a world of magic evolving over the centuries, culminating in a coherent and complex system that makes sense. There are rules, there are traditions, and there is a history to it all. It is wonderful. As you can see, <em>The Once and Future Witches</em> is an absolute treat, and is one of my new favourite books of all time.

I tried several times with this book,and I just couldn't get into it.
I tried several more times,as I'd so enjoyed Harrows previous book,but still I just wasn't enjoying it.
I'm marking it up to wrong person/wrong book/wrong time