I love this book! It’s original, and beautifully crafted, with moments of sassy humor and heartbreaking tragedy. It’s set in a universe not quite just around the corner from ours – a universe that had its Seneca Falls Conference and 1890s Suffragette Movement, its own Chicago Pullman strike and its own Eugene Debs, but it's also a universe where the Sisters Grimm and Charlene Parreau collect fairy tales for children that may hold the ancient witchways hidden in their nursery stories and pat-a-cake rhymes. It’s a universe in which three sisters (it’s always three, you know) reunite after crimes and betrayals too dark to reveal, driven by righteous anger to try to revive the ancient arts. They are attracted at first to the independent spirit and feeling of sisterhood rising in the Suffragette movement, surely a match made in neither heaven nor hell, but possibly in some little pocket of reality that can be reached only through the rabbit hole.

Harrow is deft and sure-footed as she weaves a tale as compelling as any fairy-tale enchantment, uncovering layer after layer of the sisters’ characters as they move deeper and deeper into the battle to take charge of their own lives and their own destinies. They are helped, eventually, by other women (and A Few Good Men) who live in the New Salem of this universe – a city of rigidly gridded streets and determinedly upright citizens, who are nevertheless haunted by the heritage of their Old Salem, a city burned to ashes to rid itself of the stain of witchcraft. And yet there is something nasty and evil creeping around the edges of all this self-righteous purity, and the nascent coven, which names itself the Sisters of Avalon, quickly attract both its attention and its enmity.

Drawing both on the classic precepts of witchcraft and on the richly symbolic fabric of fairy tales and children’s rhymes, Harrow creates a tapestry both complex and compelling, with characters the reader can’t help rooting for. There are all sorts of surprises lurking in the corners, some great fun (who are those two sisters, Victoria and Tennessee, who show up from time to time?), some deeply hidden under two or three layers of deception, and some that present themselves as obvious to anyone familiar with what is popularly accepted as the lore of The Craft.

This is an ambitious and polished work, and not one that can be whizzed through over a long weekend. The reader will find total immersion here, and an unwillingness to put the book down to return to the mundane world. One might even say it’s almost as if the book were … well, enchanted might not be too strong a term. ( )

Worldbuilding: A
Plot: B-
Writing: C ( )

Honestly, the beginning of this book dragged for me. Not enough to stop me reading but enough that I could easily put it down. I felt a kinship to the characters that kept me coming back. By halfway I was hooked, I watched the story unravel and even as I figured out what was happening I loved it. I laughed, I cried, I felt lost, but most of all empowered.

It’s also got an incredibly diverse cast and I LOVE IT. I gave it 4 stars for the beginning being a bit slow but it’s worth every one of them. ( )

I really liked this even though the writing style was too "lyrical" for me. I skimmed through some especially florid passages because it was the plot that interested me most. The Sisters Eastwood are total underdogs in a battle for women's rights. I knew they were going to triumph, but how?

The villain was excellent -- unexpected but his story totally made sense when it was revealed.

There are a million references to nursery rhymes and fairy tales in this, which is for sure my jam. ( )

I read about a third of this book, and it was interesting and engaging. Despite of that, I did not feel invested. The sisters are taking a long time to start liking each other. Other than that, I simply don't really care about what happens. I feel I should. But I don't care about the characters. ( )