#132 The Year of the Witching

The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson

The Year of the Witching is a story of womanhood, religion, the patrichary, motherhood and revenge. Trigger warnings include physical and sexual violence towards women and traumatic child birth if you are sesitive to either i would suggest skipping over this book although what i will say is that both topic was handled very well by the author, it wasnt dragged out either but if its triggering for you then its probably best to skip over those parts. 

Emmanuel our bi-racial protagonist is born and raised in a small town called Bethel, Bethel is a cult like town which is run by a prophet and most of the women in the town end up marrying the prophet. From birth she is seen as an outsider within the community. Emmanuel's mother was seen as a 'sinful' woman and the community view Emmanuel in the same light. Her family is disgraced due to her mothers past sins (basically she was meant to marry the prophet and ended up having an affair with an outsider instead and getting pregnant. When the prophet found out he killed the outsider and her mother then ended up fleeing into the dark wood. She emerges 8 months later ready to give birth but right before she gives birth she says that the baby is a curse) and as a result Emmanuel dedicates herself to religion and seeks comfort in it. After a few mishaps within the story Emmanuel has always had a calling towards the dark wood and one day finds herself there even though she is told never to enter as it is said that witches were murdered there, when in the dark wood she finds her mothers old journal which unlocks a lot of secrets from the past and our story pretty much takes off from there. 

The book is a marketed as YA but i would say it reads closer to new adult/adult due to the themes involved. I would say my favourite part f this book was how atmospheric it is! I also loved the legends and folklore surrounding the dark wood, it was truly fasinating. The bi-racial rep was done very well in my opinion, Emmanuel's struggle with being an orphan and not knowing her fathers side of the family whilst also not fitting in with her family in Bethel was so interesting to read about and gave her character real depth. This is also a debut novel from Alexis Henderson which surprised me a lot, she writes like a seasoned writer and i am so excited to see what she comes up with next!

#131 Homegoing

 Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi 

This is yet another example of one of those books i wish id read so much sooner. Homegoing is an incredibly hyped book across all of the bookish platforms and id honestly never heard a bad review of it or anyone disliking it. The book is set in the 1700's in Ghana we follow a woman who has 2 daughters from different men, 1 daughter is married to a white slave trader and the other daughter is sold into the slave trade and is sent to the America. In this book we get alternating chapers that follow the generatiosn of both of these women. The start of the book has a family tree type diagram so although it is a tiny bit confusing, you can refer back to see who is who and they do interconnect. We follow roughly 10 generations and as i previously mentioned it starts in the 1700's and we are brought right up to near present day. The chapters are fairly short with the reader getting about 40-50 pages on each character. At the very beginning of the book we get longer chapters and longer with each character and i found it got shorter and shorter towards the end of the book. 

The main theme of this book is obviously the slave trade. I found myself being greatly affected by this story when you sit and reflect that this actually happened and it was so despicible and horrendously traumatising. It was written so beautifully written and so raw, i never once doubted the validity of it and found it hard to believe that it was a work of fiction which really attests to the authors skill and story telling abilities. Writing about the slave trade as a topic is so difficult but i think the author did such a good job of showing the sheer contrast of both generations due to circumstance even though they were apart of the same family. 

I did have a few issues with the book, i thought it was overly rushed in parts and we simply didnt get enough time with each character. When i started the book i didnt actually realise how many characters we would be following so it was a bit of a shock when the author tried to fit so much content into 315 pages. I would have preferred a bit more time to get more invested in each character and their individual story. 14-16 characters with each character covering around 50 years of the story and some chapters were as short as 20 pages. That was probably my only big complaint with this book and the main reason why i gave this book 4 stars instead of 5. To write about such a vast history in such a compact way was in my opinion a tad insensitive but thats just my opinion. I still feel that overall this was an excellent novel and it does deserve the hype. I have recently purchased Yaa Gyasi's newest novel on kindle which im excited to get to!