Now that we have finished reading Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson and taken the time to let it all *sink in*, we’re going to share our final thoughts on the book as a whole. Our goal is not to review the book, per se, but we will be sharing what we liked and disliked.
Spoiler Free! This post is our general opinions about this book, not a professional review, and contains no spoilers for Year of the Witching.
Final Thoughts:
Jacilyn: This book was the perfect choice for setting the fall mood. Creepy, sinister, witchy…. It fit exactly what we were looking for. The writing is incredibly illustrative, and the imagery used was striking. A lot of relevant issues were explored during the course of the book, including grooming, oppressive religion, racism, and misogyny, just to name a few. I also really enjoyed how magic is integrated into the world, and I’m looking forward to the sequel where we’ll hopefully learn even more about it. I’m recommending this book to everyone, and I definitely plan on pre-ordering the sequel.
Michaela: One of the reasons we chose this book for September was to get us in the spooky fall mood. I think this book nailed that without being cliche with its creepy moments or its magic. The world Henderson created was complex and full of history while also being eerily familiar to our own world. I loved seeing the parallels to our current society, especially in the U.S. I felt like everything that happened with Imannuelle was so relevant to the ongoing conversations and struggles of women, people of color, lower income, and the religiously oppressed.
I thought Henderson wrote unapologetically raw and honest. There are so many lines from this book that spoke complete truths to how Bethel’s society works and how ours works and why it’s wrong. Immanuelle was such a strong character and being able to see her struggle with learning her own history and the realizations of what Bethel actually was, was amazing. Even though this was a fictional Bethel with fictional characters and magic, the monsters were very real. Highly recommend this book. Beautifully written and I can’t wait for the sequel to come out!
What were your thoughts on this book? Did you like the writing as much as we did? Was the story your type of thing? What was your favorite line, real world parallel, or moment? Let us know in the comments below!
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