Skip to main content

A Witchy Review

 

A historical record of witchcraft and it's survival over the centuries!

Louisa Morgan's, A Secret History of Witches, is a five-part novel circled around the

Orchiére female line--mothers and daughters who partake in the craft.

The novel begins in 1821, where the matriarch of the Orchiére line seals her familial line's fate

by using her powers in order to ensure their survival against those who persecuted their kind. 

A vision emerges for her family to travel to a farm at a new location and begin anew, putting

aside what  they've come to know in order to survive in a world where standing out means

burning at the stake.

The story line travels through five different generations of Orchiére women, mothers passed

knowledge down to their daughters, in some ways more constructive than others. The

relationships between both mothers and daughters were interesting to read due to the fact that

the typical relationship between a mother and daughter could be strained. However, adding a

historical obligation to witchcraft throws an entirely different riff into the mix.

An ancient scrying crystal accompanied by a family grimoire is essential to the women's line

and are crucial elements in order for their line to continue. Learning the process and faith put

into these two devices is another strain on the mother and daughter relationship that is

depicted throughout the five sections of the novel.

Morgan has a fluid writing style, paying particular attention to the details of each setting in

every chapter. As the story takes place over 200 years, between 5 generations of the Orchiére

line, Morgan does a fantastic job in relaying the changes between settings, time periods, and

lifestyles for readers. Romance is imminent within the novel, for most parts anyway,

as adding to the line means procreating for the women. Despite trust being an influential

factor in relationships, trust is something slim for Orchiére women when men come into play.

Secrets and discreet actions are vital for the Orchiére women to survive, as some tragedies

were implemented due to women deciding that love just might be enough. Although in true

form, judgement wreaks havoc on those who think love will conquer all.

I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in witchcraft or historical fiction. For those who

like to travel down the rabbit-hole of witchcraft's survival, I'd start with this novel and make

your way to Morgan's second novel, The Witch's Kind, and even her third novel

published this year, The Age of Witches.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An All Too Familiar House

          Not the usual suspense-thriller synopsis I've become accustomed to when reading Lisa Jewell's novels, however, I was entranced by this novel from the get-co. The House We Grew Up In centers around a mother and her four children over the span of a decade. The mother, Lorelei, has an extensive hobby of collecting items that harbor a memory of time spent with her loved ones. Each and every memory-- meaning each and every item she just happens to come across. Lorelei is in fact a hoarder and it does not get better with time. It gets worse. In addition to Lorelei's intense and overbearing lifestyle, her children forego their relationship with their mother and each other in order to gain a sense of normalcy within their individual lives. One of Lorelei's children committed suicide at a ripe age of sixteen and her other three were simultaneously impacted by the act tremendously. Her other son took to finding a thrilling lifestyle in all the wrong places...
Post a Comment
Read more

Four-Walled Nightmare

I will always and forever say this - Lisa Jewell is the QUEEN of the suspense/thriller genre. I'm sure most who read her would agree with me in comparing her and/or referencing her written ability in crafting a phenomenal read to that of the infamous Agatha Christie in her time. Jewell's 2019 debut novel centers around a young woman by the name of Libby Jones, a competent individual with a safe, bright future ahead. Until, she receives a letter shortly after her 25th birthday informing her of a family inheritance worth a fairly decent price and then some . Jones is introduced to readers as the main character to follow, but other characters soon take stage in a plot-twisting novel where family ties don't always hold true with faith, love, and blood. Jewell has this astonishing ability to craft the perfect chapter, whether it be mere attention to detail, length of pages or strategic craftsmanship of paragraph and dialogue portions leaving the reader wanting more - causing th...
Post a Comment
Read more

All Around the Ferris Wheel

  Megan Miranda's novel, "All The Missing Girls", was a thriller/suspense novel I was happy to inhale from my TBR pile - literally (two days of reading straight through). The storyline follows Nicolette Farrell's life, from ten years prior to drastically moving out of her hometown and present day. I believe anyone can relate when Nic's character spends time reminiscing about how things were during high school vs how much things can change when becoming adults. But, what happens when something you did ten years ago starts to repeat itself - almost too much? It makes you wonder, are we really any different than how we used to be? Or have we just gotten better at masking it? Miranda does an awesome job, in my opinion, by introducing this story in backwards timeline sectioning. Nic's return is broken up into two/three weeks worth of a story (with longer portions towards the end of the novel) but Miranda works backwards in showing the jump between past and present...
Post a Comment
Read more