Evie is in love with Adam Ant but not so in love with a life where she feels out of tune with everything and everyone. Evie thinks she’s a witch but it turns out that she has a diagnosis of Aspergers Syndrome which nobody, including herself knows what to do with. Offered an out by an inheritance she decides to move to the country and embrace her witchiness.

This book is a kind of Lolly Willowes for the Eighties. It’s a coming of age novel that is shot through with domestic tensions and an exploration of neurodiversity.

I thought I would be the perfect target audience (autistic and pagan), but I could not get into this book in the slightest. Why I appreciate it's in diary format, it read like a stream of consciousness. It jumped from topic to topic, back and forth from the present to a memory in the past, then another memory, back to the previous memory, then back to present etc. It was giving me reading whiplash.

In terms of Evie's Asperger's, it felt like the author read through a list of stereotypical Asperger's traits and made sure to slap them in quite early, allowing our MC to get the diagnosis within the first 50 pages, and dust their hands of it. We read that they have special interests but don't read if the SI gives them joy, comfort, a sense of control? They get overwhelmed by noisy environments but not how it manifests. Do that they shut down/melt down, need to stim, etc? It just feels like ticking boxes but no in depth understanding. Had to DNF after 100 pages.

[This review is based on NetGalley ARC provided in exchange for an honest, unbiased opinion]

I'm sorry to say that I did not get on with this book. I liked the synopsis but from the beginning it was too slow and I couldn't connect with the characters on multiple levels.

It couldn't be that I'm just not the target audience for this book, but thank you to Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to try it!

This had all the things I generally like in a lighter read, witchy vibes and good character development. Evie reminded me a lot of Eleanor Orliphant and I enjoyed reading this character very much. I did however find this book a little bit too long and I did get slightly bored in the middle. That said, it was still an enjoyable book.

Hmm, this book was not for me. I wouldn’t say that reflects on the book itself—moreso that it was my mistake for taking a chance here, because I could not resist that cover(!) but yeah. This is sadly not for me. I didn’t click with the plot or the characters, and the storyline felt extremely dragged out and redundant to me. Sorry! Please still get this if the synopsis seems like your cup of tea, and not to rely solely on my opinion.