The Year of the Witching was one of the most anticipated Paranormal Young Adult books of 2020. And, I have to say it didn't disappoint at all! It's one of these books packed with action and short delicious intervals that make us turn page after page without registering the time passing by.
The story takes place in a fictional world quite similar to the 17th century Salem, where piety was the most important thing and anyone who dared to live differently from God's Word was directly labeled as a sinner/ evil and he/ she ended up in the pyre! Witchcraft and witch-hunting were the main concepts behind the plotline.
I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the book and Immanuelle's, our main character's trip towards her "emancipation" in all the different senses. We see her grow from a girl to woman as she literally gets her period after the first couple of pages, and it's actually quite symbolic as it doesn't only function as the trigger for the beginning of her adventure, but also it signifies the "blood sacrifice" that every woman has to go through monthly. It shows what it means to be a woman.
The text has quite the feminist voice, as the main villain of the story is the Prophet, the representative of the Father (the God basically) on earth, who of course is a male. The Prophet is portrayed as the savior, the protector and you know all the classic patriarchal stereotypes. While the Evil is presented by the Mother who is actually the Mother of Darkness, sin, etc. The female is again in the center of sin and corruption, she is mainly oversexualized and is seen either as an expendable reproduction vessel or as a corruption agent, a whore.
The story basically revolves around this girl and her wish to "save" her community from both the Prophet and the Mother, who interestingly are in a sense equally evil and harmful for those around them, each for their own account. The Prophet although he was supposed to be this Saint figure, is in fact highly corrupted, evil, and calculative. He is seen led by his basic instincts like his sex drive and greed for power. Basically, he's a hypocrite and the MC is trying really hard throughout the book to reveal to everyone his true nature. The Mother, on the other hand, is indeed dark and evil in nature, but we see that she's partially driven by vengeance for all the women and men who were unfairly killed by the Prophet and his predecessors just because they were different and dared to live differently.
Witchcraft here represents more of an alternative way of life away from what is supposed to be the RIGHT one, the way written in the Holy Scriptures. Magical is everyone who refuses to abide and live by the rules, in a sense the unconformists.
As I mentioned above, the book is packed with action but it does have this slight romantic vibe, as well. The main love interest was Ezra, quite the nice fellow who also happens to be the Prophet's son (what an irony!), and who from the beginning sees how unique and unconventional Immanuelle is and instead of avoiding her or prosecuting her, as he was meant to be the next Prophet, he actually forges a friendship with her. Their time together and their similar way of thinking brought them close enough for a small romance to bloom. Ezra was a character obviously much more open-minded than the rest of the characters and this made him directly quite important.
Of course, Ezra's character came with his own emotional baggage, deriving mainly from his dysfunctional family, quite like Immanuelle. Ezra grew up with a father that everyone in his community loved and idolized while he was dealing at home with a different man; and Immanuelle grew up with stories about her mother which had caused her, her own psychological traumas and complexes. Her family raised her in a way to avoid becoming like her mother and this concept "I am not my mother or like my mother" was quite repeated during her conversations with her family and community, this automatic self-defense.
In the book, we really see how difficult your life was if you were a woman or you dared to behave outside the norms.
I really enjoyed the book and I actually finished it in a day, yet I feel that something was amiss. I am not quite sure but there was some kind of element missing that made me not consider it as perfect as I initially had thought. I feel that it had to do more with the pacing of the story and the way the scenes were weaved together, rather than the story itself.
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