Free copy provided in exchange for honest review by Net Galley

I... don't know where I stand with this one. I don't think the book really knows what it is doing here either.

So lets start with the characters. We have a city doctor who gets manipulated into coming to this small frontier town. He's such an annoying prick I stopped reading pretty much anytime he started getting wound up about his humours. We have an over zealous priest. We have the rabid panther. And we have the Winter sisters... who are witches but not witches but maybe one of them is really a witch???

The book has no breaks to tell you where a different character's perspective comes in and seems to switch perspective at unnatural times.

The characters are either inconsistent or consistently odd.

The plot is... annoying.

We never really get answers about who or what Effie is and what is going on there

The romances are all convoluted, contrived and unsatisfying.

There were enough elements I enjoyed (the feminist angle of the women being the competent healers branded as witches and the doctor spewing pseudo science is not trusted by most townfolk) but it honestly felt like a waste of my time.

And don't even get me started on the whole rabies plot. It was very clumsily handled and mostly just an annoyance when it was mentioned. Basically character driven plot would be happen and then the book practically shouts BUT WAIT THERES RABIES! RABIES I TELL YOU! oh ok book, are we going to do anything with that information? no? the doctor is just going to get high again? cool.

Do not recommend

I so wanted to like this, but it ended up just being a chore to read.
The premise was interesting but I wish we were able to spend more time hearing about the sisters instead of the doctor, as I found his character so dull. The lack of paragraphs and clear definition of where the POV changes made this quite difficult to read; it was all quite confusing to start with! At times I felt like the author had tried to shove too many ideas or points in, and it all just got too much or dense - so I would definitely have preferred fewer events and more character background for the sisters.
The cover is gorgeous though, and I did enjoy reading about the herbal/natural remedies that would've been in common practice back then!

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC of this book. I absolutely loved this story. The author has a beautiful way with words. Interesting story line and kept my attention. Definitely will recommend to others

This book was received from the Author, in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own

A wonderful intriguing colorful portrait of the frontier town of Lawrenceville, Georgia.
Rich descriptive atmospheric details that transports you immensely into this era and place.

The Winter Sister's is a fascinating historical fiction novel with elements of mystery and magical realism.  Life in a frontier town was brought to life through Aubrey's eyes as he experienced the remoteness, danger and community of Lawrenceville. 

This book takes place in Lawrenceville in 1822. A young doctor, Avery Waycross, is employed by the town because they need one to qualify to be the county seat. When Waycross arrives he finds the town is in turmoil over the "witches" who practice medicine. Waycross, who was ready to leave the backwards town found himself embroiled in the conflict.

The Winter Sister's themselves were the most intriguing part of the story.  I really do wish the story was told through their point of view, especially since the writing begins with the Sisters being bound together in a ceremony by their mother. The sisters come to life in rich characterization, with distinct personalities and habits. 
One thing I really enjoyed was the mystery of Effie still remains did she truly have a power to heal, or did everyone just want to believe in a little magic?


The Winter Sisters are a must read for those who love folklore and wonderful magical realism

Dr. Aubrey Waycross has been called to the small frontier town of Lawrenceville, Georgia in 1822. He readily goes into the unknown, since the mayor has hinted at hydrophobia, or rabies being present in the town.  However, when Aubrey arrives he finds almost no one in need of medical attention.  All of the Lawrenceville residents would much rather take their problems to the Winter Sisters, Rebecca, Sarah and Effie.   Aubrey attempts to out the sisters as quacks, but he finds that Rebecca's herbal cures solve issues far better than his bloodletting, Sarah's tests and games that she gives patients make them forget about their problems and Effie seems to cure people by simply being in their presence.  Not even her sisters seem to know how Effie works her medicine.  Aubrey decides to band with the Sisters and the town will need all four healers when a residents does contract rabies.
The Winter Sister's is a fascinating historical fiction novel with elements of mystery and magical realism.  Life in a frontier town was brought to life through Aubrey's eyes as he experienced the remoteness, danger and community of Lawrenceville.  The Winter Sister's themselves were the most intriguing part of the story.  I really do wish the story was told through their point of view, especially since the writing begins with the Sisters being bound together in a ceremony by their mother.  Aubrey's character took a lot of time to warm up to as he continuously placed himself above the others in town and tried to prove his methods were the best.  I also just couldn't find any personality in him.  Although he eventually ended up saying and doing the right things, they always seemed robotic.  All three sisters, however were written very well with distinct personalities and habits.  The mystery of Effie still remains did she truly have a power to heal, or did everyone just want to believe in a little magic?
This book was received for free in return for an honest review.

I would have enjoyed this book a lot more if it only had the sisters and the Protestant Pastor Boatwright. Or maybe have the doctor not play a big part in the story. I did enjoy the setting of Georgia in the early 1800's and the three sisters; Rebecca, Susan and Effie. I just would have preferred to have the stories focus on The Winter Sisters.

I enjoyed the folklore and local beliefs that belonged to this community. I liked the sisters but did not care for Waycross. He was a little too egotistical for me. In all, it was an enjoyable read.
Many thanks to QW Publishing and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Winter Sisters is a story about a man trained in very basic medicine in the 1800's. He goes to Lawrenceville. GA to what he thinks is to cure rabies and confronts an old timey medicine man with a miracle cure upon arriving.
There is the minister who wants to drive the Winter sisters out of the area because he believes they are evil.
The Winter sisters live some distance in the woods who are called witches because they heal with herbs and natural elements. The minister drove them out of town
The doctor gradually shifts his views in the course of the story that is entertaining to read.
There is also a black panther woven into happenings.

The Winter Sisters is a interesting book that has a great premise. It has some slow parts,but I enjoyed the characters. I liked the historical aspect and descriptions.

I enjoyed the story line with the witches and it is a easy, short read. The story line about the doctor did not hold my interest. The fantasy element of this book was wel thought out andere fun.

1811 in the mountains of northern Georgia, three sisters stand upon a bare mountain plateau. These women are the Winter sisters. They are using wax to try to determine their futures.

Ten years later, the Winter sisters are no longer living in the village. The new Preacher has succeeded in turning some of the townspeople against them, successfully running them out of town.

The Winter sisters are sometimes called healers and sometimes called witches, it depends on the person who is speaking, and also who might be listening.

The sisters might be young, but they know herbal remedies for most ailments and have ministered to the residents of their small frontier town for years.

When the town recruits a doctor from the city, he arrives ready to educate these backwater hicks as to how science and the latest techniques of medicine will cure all their ills.

However, when he arrives and keeps hearing about the Winter sisters and their supposed cures, he sets out to discredit them.

What happens next surprises the doctor, the Winter sisters and everyone reading this book. I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that you are unable to predict what will happen at any given moment in this story. It kept me guessing, which is rare.

THE WINTER SISTERS is a fabulous book with terrific characters and a story that will stay with you long after the final page.

The descriptions both of people's lives and of the sceney and setting are so vivid that readers can picture tem so clearly it is almost as if you create a movie in your head as to how everything looks.

I rate this book as 5 OUT OF 5 STARS ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

***Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this book. ***

I received a free electronic copy on August 26, 2019, of this ARC from Netgalley, Tim Westover, and QW Publishers. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this historical novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my personal, honest opinion of this work. The Winter Sisters is an especially compelling tale. There is a little history, a little SiFi, a little medical lore, a lot of herbal, native American, and even Creole approaches to healing, one persistent medicine man, a bit of drug abuse, a little romance, and a really good mystery between the pages of this very BIG novel.

Three orphaned sisters nearing or touching adulthood - Rebecca, Sarah, and Effie Winters -find themselves ostracized in their hometown in 1822. Their mother was a renowned herbalist and more, who taught her daughters all she knew. The daughters do the best they can, trying to help others with their skills, maintaining their gardens and herbal beds and replenishing their supplies of needed wild herbs from the woods as they reach maturity despite the rumors of a giant black leopard and the presence of rabies. Each of the girls seems to have a different, special calling. Together they are very good at what they do. Due to hydrophobia spreading from an unknown source into the local community dogs, everyone else is afraid to travel through the woods even to closely outlying farms, so the girls gathered up supplies and moved temporarily to the only empty cabin in Lawrenceville so the community didn't have to brave the woods to attain medical help. Unfortunately, their continued persistence, seen as fearlessness, in gathering the roots, seeds, mosses, etc from those dangerous woods is yet another mark against them in the eyes of the community.

The local preacher burned them out and ran the sisters back to the Hope Hollow family farm following a fire in the community. Lead and fed by Pastor Boatwright, rumors of witchcraft and spirits and monsters convinced the citizens of Lawrenceville that the fire at the local mill may have been the doings of the Winter girls, and despite the community dependence on the sisters for medical help and Rebecca's engagement to the mill owners' son - and the only casualty of the mill fire - they want the girls gone. Of course, leopards are never going to be found in Georgia - but witches and shades could call it home and witches have familiars. Everybody knows somebody who has seen the rabid leopard. It must be real.

Lawrenceville Mayor Richardson hires sight unseen a young new Hippocratic doctor certified by the Georgia Medical Society to come fill the gap left by the expelled sisters. In 1822 most prescribed medical cures were handled by bleeding, blistering, amputation, and/or enemas, and despite his youth and level of diagnostic inexperience, Dr. Aubrey Waycross felt adequate to handle the job, and because as a boy he lost his beloved older sister to rabies, he was compelled to take this job in an isolated community suffering from this always-fatal disease. Perhaps with his new skills, he can discover a cure. He surely does understand the symptoms of rabies.

Having now no vacancies in the town of Lawrenceville, the office and housing provided by the community for young, pennyless Dr. Westover are in the barn of the local boarding house. He spends most days with just the company of the community pigs, as the locals are afraid of him and totally sold on the Winter girls' cures for all that ails them. They would rather do without than trust this purveyor of modern medicine. Aubrey eventually persuades the Winter sisters to move back to town and help him with his practice, combining his Hippocratic teachings with their herbal lore. The boarding house has a room they will grudgingly let them have, and he is willing to share his office with the girls though it is already overfull with his bits and pieces, books, and resident pigs. Maybe, between them all, they can find a way to survive rabies. Unfortunately, they have patients to try to cure. But with even that goal attained will the community learn to accept the Winter Sisters? Or Dr. Westover? And what is going to burn down next?

aIf you enjoy a book that looks at questions surrounding life and death and love, not only romantic but also familial, The Winter Sisters is definitely worth the read. Science and superstition come together in a way that will change one small town and its inhabitants forever.

This is the story of Dr. Waycross, a young man trained in the latest advances in medicine of the day, who takes position in a small town in frontier Georgia in 1822. He's lured by the prospect of patience who need a real doctor, a possible outbreak of hydrophobia, and the need for someone to convince the superstitious townspeople that bleeding and blistering are better medicine than the herbs and spells of the local healers; Waycross soon finds himself entangled with these healers, the title Winter sisters, as they need each other to minister to the townspeople's ills and to change the courses of their own lives. But are the Winter sisters simply home-taught healers, or are they something more?

The book does an excellent job of describing the Georgia of 1822; from the geography to the ins and out of frontier living, we get a clear sense of place and time that helps us frame the events in the story in a way that brings everything vividly to life in our minds. Told mostly from the perspectives of Dr. Waycross and Sarah, the middle sister, we get a clear picture of the thoughts of both opposing factions. The characters are clearly drawn, and we feel as if we understand both them and their reactions and decisions throughout the book.

If you are squeamish or prefer not to read about some of the more archaic medical practices of two centuries ago, you may want to skip this one. There are some descriptions that, although not terribly graphic, did make me cringe. However, I learned plenty of interesting tidbits about medical history that were knew to me. It made me thankful to live in more modern times.

Bottom line: This was a great historical novel that examined life on the frontier from the perspective of those whose work was to keep the people healthy during times of lots of superstitions and diseases without cures. It examines the lines between traditional medicine and other alternatives, and
at its core, it highlights the beliefs and emotions of the human heart.

I would have enjoyed this much more if it was solely from the perspective of the Winter sisters. I didn't care for Dr. Waycross much at all, although it was nice to see his evolution from a by-the-books scientific doctor into someone a bit more believing in the fantastical and the tried-and-true healing arts. Medicine was...truly horrific then, wasn't it? There was way too much detailed description of blood-letting and amputations here for my taste. Thank god I didn't live back then. All hail vaccines AND witch hazel.

The ending was truly bizarre and would have made more sense if we had any prior insight into Effie's head before then. Instead she's held as this enigmatic figure, a riddle instead of a person, and I honestly felt no emotion upon hearing her final fate.

I did enjoy some of the atmosphere and vibes of this book. Very seasonally appropriate.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book. Just a note to you guys -- the ebook here was impossible to decipher between POV shifts. Really hindered the reading experience.

I really wanted to get into this book, however it was kind of a slog from the beginning. I really hate leaving negative reviews- but the plot would just not move forward. This was a DNF for me. And I'm sorry for that. Thank you, Netgalley for letting me read it.

I wanted to love this book, it has all the makings for something that I would love, however it fell short for me in that the language was stuffy, which lead to it being hard to get into the story and feel for the characters too.

The story itself is great, it just felt like work, trying to enjoy the story.

That being said, this will be popular with other readers. Just not me today.

~ I was given a copy of this title in exchange for an honest review, I'm not associated with the author or publisher in any way and the views expressed are completely unbiased and entirely my own. ~

'The Winter Sisters' by Tim Westover tells the story of city physician Dr. Waycross, who arrives in a town in the mountains of Georgia with the intention of enlightening it's superstitious locals with his modern medicine. There amongst the various townsfolk he encounters The Winter Sisters - local witchy, herb women extraordinaires, who the locals would rather rely on for healing instead, despite simultaneously ostracizing them from the small community out of superstition *ahem*
Personally, Dr Waycross thinks that they're quacks, albeit well intentioned ones, and resolves to put them to rights, however, he ends up learning a thing or two himself.

The enchanting story of Waycross and The Winter Sisters is told from two different perspectives - sometimes books with multiple perspectives can split the engery and focus of the story but for me it works perfectly here. The Doctor, as a character is somewhat uptight and rigid in his way of thinking, being a man of science, so the inclusion of The Winter Sisters POV adds their much needed energy to the story - otherwise I don't think it would've been quite as enjoyable.

It's also interesting to note that while the Doctors POV is written in the first hand, the Sisters is written in the third, which I think was a really great choice. The Doctors POV gives a sense of his reaction to the Sisters and, particularly in the beginning, I enjoyed his interactions with them, where he finds himself perpetually on the back foot and out of his depth in the face of their distinct kind of intelligence. The man with all the answers suddenly finds himself perplexed. I think the fact that the Sisters POV is written in the third hand retains this feeling of mystery for reader as well, which could potentially have been lost otherwise.

The only reason I've rated 4* rather than 5* is because the middle section of the story sort of meandered a bit and I also don't think I understood the ending really.
Regardless, I thouroughly enjoyed this gem of a story, and I already have another title of the authors lined up on my Kindle to read, which I'm very much looking forward to.

~ Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this title ~

So this book ended up being a 2.5-3 star book for me. At the thought of witches and rabies, you had me hooked from the beginning. But! This book fell quite flat for me to be honest. The Winter sisters and Dr. Waycross are to become a partnership to get through the tough times of hydrophobia.

The writing wasn’t really my kind of style that I enjoy reading. Possibly well written given that it was set in the 1800’s but I wasn’t a big fan of it.

The plot also fell flat for me, without getting into too much detail or giving away spoilers. I’d say this book didn’t have a great peak in the story and then it was over, all a bit lack lustre towards the end of the book.

I really wanted to enjoy this book because like I previously said, witches and rabies are definitely things to make a story great. It just wasn’t all that for me.

This one just did not cut it for me. I was drawn in by the description and was excited to dive into it, but unfortunately it fell flat.

I will say that I loved the sisters. I think that if the story had more focus on them, and was from their point of view, I may have enjoyed it more. I also had a problem with the pacing. I felt like it was just a bit too slow for me. It was hard for me to want to keep reading because of this aspect.

I think the idea was good and again, I think if it was executed differently I would have loved it more than I did. Just happened to not live up to the expectations I had of the book.

As I received this book through Net Gallery! Starting out in the book for me was kinda slow,then thing to figure out who's talking but once I figured out the way it was written I was ok. The characters are funny,complicated,and arrogant and some not willing to change,then you have a lot of superstitions among all the people. If you can get through the slow start I think you will like reading about how old wise tales of medicine works with modern medicine at that time where some won't change at all!