The Witching Hour by Deborah Carr

Living in Jersey during the Nazi occupation, Briar Le Gros and her mother, Diana, are hiding a dangerous secret. Witchery runs in their blood.

One night, as the coven gather, a storm crashes down and, late for curfew, Briar must shelter in the ruins of an old prison. With a flash of lightning she’s brought face to face with Xavier Giroye, a surprising stranger … from 1643.

Briar and Diana must send Xavier back to his own time but when the spell goes wrong, Briar is transported to the past with him. Together, they go from Nazi suspicion to evading the notorious witchfinder! The clock is ticking to reset the balance and get Briar back to the present. But the choice is bittersweet; returning home means leaving Xavier, the one person she’ll ever love…

First time read for me by this author , and what a read ! I was gripped from the very first chapter .

Wartime genre . Tick.
Dual timeline. Tick.
Set in Jersey . Big tick .
Had a witch storyline . Even bigger tick.

Everything I could wish for in a fabulous read .
Perfect.

The Witching Hour is a departure from Deborah Carr's other novels set on the Isle of Jersey during the German Occupation. Instead of the story focusing on the struggles and dangers faced by the islanders under Nazi rule, we're introduced to a group of witches whose ancestors have lived on Jersey for hundreds of years. This dual-timeline novel covers two of the most dangerous periods in the island's history: the Occupation during World War II and the witch hunts of the 1600s. Deborah Carr's writing is flawless, switching between timelines and characters so effortlessly that I had to double-check to determine the year. This is not fanciful magical realism to make you feel warm and cozy. This is the real deal, witchcraft as it has been for millennia, with knowledge passed down from mothers and grandmothers. The story took off like a rocket in the prologue and kept my heart racing until the final page. I loved the mother-daughter bond between Diana and Briar, as well as the sisterhood of the Jersey witches. The romance between Briar and Xavier was perfect. And, I hated the witchfinder, Roger Dankworth, with every fiber of my being. Kudos to the author for having the courage to branch out into a different genre. The Witching Hour is spectacular, and I hope there's more to come.

I have read other books by this author and enjoyed them immensely so when I read the blurb for this one, i was intrigued as it seemed different from the other books written by the author, the only simarilty being that they're set mainly in Jersey, it was a bittersweet sweet tale of love, betrayal and fear set across a dual timeline and it most certainly kept my attention to the very last page. I'm not sure if the author plans to write another book with Briar and Xavier, I do hope so as I feel their story isn't finished