Lilibet Bombshell's Reviews > Weyward

This novel, written with great care and love by Emilia Hart, is most obviously about women and their connection to the earth and to nature. To what being kept away from it does to us and what being steeped in it does for us. That’s the way it’s always been.

It is also, under the surface, a treatise on how men fundamentally can’t (and therefore don’t or won’t) understand that connection women have to the earth and consistently covet them and snatch them up like magpies and then cage them and guard them sometimes to the point of violence. Men are the hunters. Women are the hunted. The more innate power a woman carries, the more men will be drawn to her. That’s the way it’s always been.

Weyward takes these two ideas, both of which are true if you dig down to our evolutionary roots, and soaks them in magical realism, lovely prose, vivid imagery, terrific world building, and careful character construction to weave together three timelines featuring women of the Weyward family line and how these two themes affect(ed) their lives, relationships, travails, and how the rest of their lives panned out. Each story is filled with earnest and heartfelt emotion.

While at times a touch too on the nose or melodramatic, this novel is one I’d definitely recommend picking up for a lyrical and moving read.

I was provided a copy of this book by NetGalley and the author. All views, thoughts, and opinions expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: Historical Fiction/Literary Fiction/Magical Realism/Women’s Fiction/5 Star Reads