"All women are born with a bit of Bruja in them for protection"

That's pretty much the heart of the book. This is a story about women, and how every woman is the women around her. Your mother and sister and daughters are you and the parts of you that are missing.

3.5 ⭐

I really really wanted to love this book. There was beautiful prose in it, and I know the original Spanish would have been mucho mas bonita. However, I don't know if something was lost in translation, but man this was awkward to listen to. The narrator is fine, she is consistent throughout, it's the writing that doesn't sound natural.

It's a novel, but the structure listens like an interview, which I guess it is, but at first I had a hard time following POV. I eventually realized it just changed every chapter, but it wasn't clear to me why I was hearing Zoe's story for awhile. The Feliciana portions were by far my favorite, but she had such a habit of saying the same things over and over it just felt unnatural.

I loved the idea behind this book, I did learn things and have been inspired to look into curandera books and practices. The structure was just off, it was so repetitive that I have to assume it's something lost in translation. It almost like some rambling and forgetting they had already told you already.

I really liked the translator's note at the beginning, and would have hated if the Nahuatl and Spanish names for things would have been anglicized.

I hate to say it, but I was drawn in by the cover and title, but the title "Witches" is a horrible representation of what this book is. I suppose it's to make it more attractive to English audiences, and since it did draw me in that way I guess it did what the market wants. I would been even more likely to pick up a book that said 'Curandera' but I am Mexican and know what that is, it just feels like a disservice to the story to throw 'Witches' on the cover.

Thank you NetGalley and Highbridge Audio for giving me the opportunity to listen to this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

I listened to this audiobook at work in one day and I absorbed almost nothing. And it's not because I was so busy I couldn't concentrate. It was a very quiet Friday and my office mate was out so I had very little human interaction. But this book was so boring, it could not keep my attention at all. I didn't realize there were two different POVs and time periods for quite some time. So I was very confused for awhile. This book just did nothing for me.

What I want to mention first is how much I enjoyed the commentary from the narrator prior to the book starting. I really liked how she explained why she told the story in a certain way and why she didn't change some of the translations to better fit English and to keep it true to its original language and culture. I'd never heard that done before in an audiobook but it was a wonderful additional.

Unfortunately that was my favorite part of the book and it really didn't have anything to do with the plot of the book or had no effect on driving the plot of the book. I really wanted to like it based on the description and the cover art but for me it just wasn't enjoyable. It read more like a memoir with short stories about different things experienced in their lives that made them who they are. There was no real plot. Based on the synopsis I thought I'd read about Feliciano finding out who murdered Paloma and the journey that ensued. I thought it would all be tied together about how Zoe and Feliciana's lives "twist around each other" as mentioned in the description but that didn't really seem to come to fruition. It didn't read like a fictional book about a journey of two women and how their lives intertwine, more like two separate memoirs of two separate women and how their lives intersect briefly. It didn't take me on the ride I was expecting.

Thanks to NetGalley and Quercus Books for the ARC.

A journalist's mission to write about the murder of a trans woman becomes a journey to facing her trauma and the violence that many women face whether passive or aggressive. Paloma is a curandera, a healer who uses nature and her ancestral connection to heal those who come to her. When she is murdered, Zoe, an investigative journalist travels to San Felipe to record her story.

Through Feliciana, Zoe not only learns of the power of the curanderos/as, the patriarchal notions of inheritance, Paloma's support, love, and ultimate choice in choosing her own path, but also shares her family history and the stories of her mother and sister.

What Lozano has done here is to show the parallels between women's lives and the shared experiences across time and place, whether it be facing discrimination and violence for being trans or queer, being assaulted in safe spaces, or choosing one's identity over one's purpose, women are equally vulnerable and powerful. And sharing our stories only helps in amplifying that power.

This is a beautifully written book about two women living parallel lives in very different realities. Zoe is a young journalist from Mexico City from Mexico City who it would appear lives a very different life to Feliciana, a curandera (healer) from rural Oaxaca. These two women are tied together through the murder of Paloma, what most western cultures would call a trans woman but in Zapotec cultures are called muxe, a third gender. This murder is not a major plotline but rather a thread between these two lives as this book is more character driven than plot driven.

Zoe and Feliciana, although living differently, have many commonalities in their lives and the lives of their loved ones - like gender issues, sexual abuse/assault, and abortion.

Lozano shows excellent utilization of several different literary devices throughout this book. She uses different styles of writing for both main characters with Feliciana’s reading more as stream of consciousness due to her inability to read and write and Zoe’s more formal. She also uses repetition of key phrases in a very poetic way to convey emotion.

I also appreciated that this translation was thoughtful in determining which words should be in English and what does not make sense to translate. The translators note at the beginning showed the thought and care put into the translation process.

All in all I really enjoyed reading this book and would recommend to readers across many genres. This review is based on an ARC provided to me through #NetGalley, but is based solely on my honest opinion and is not a paid or sponsored review.

I felt the passion for this story through the authors words. It was interesting. I like that the story was loosely inspired by the most famous healer in Mexico.

I am aware that this story was translated and loved the explanation at the beginning. There was an abundance of repetition that had my head spinning. I have read anything quite like this style.

It is what it is and I’m sure there is a reason for itv that in don’t understand but for me personally it was distracting.

Thanks for the ARC of Witches!

This book was good, but not great in my opinion! I deeply wish I was able to read this book in the original language because I feel like part of my disconnect was due to the translation choices and the joltiness that sometimes arose as a result. The two storylines were difficult to distinguish between in the audiobook, so I don't think the narration was for me.

✨ Review ✨ Witches by Brenda Lozano; Narrated by Kyla García

This book, translated from Spanish, resounds with echoes of past and present. Told from two perspectives: 1) Feliciana, a curandera who performs healing ceremonies with mushrooms called veladas, and 2) Zoe, a journalist exploring Feliciana's past alongside her own. As the two stories intersect and parallel and crash together, we learn more about what it means to be a woman in very different places in Mexico.

Feliciana's story also prominently features Paloma, who used to be a healer named Gaspar, who taught Feliciana about healing and the Language and the Book. Feliciana's story appear as an oral interview, stories she is telling to Zoe, and the orality of this in the audio book is absolutely stunning. It repeats and circles and uses language beautifully, but I can see where some might be irritated by this (especially perhaps in the written form).

I was blown away by the commentary on gender and work, on modernity and the ways it can bring harm to traditional rituals, on storytelling and healing, on past and present, on language and love. There is so much richness to behold in this novel. Especially for lovers of literary fiction, this book was incredible.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: literary fiction with mystery vibes
Location: Mexico
Pub Date: August 16, but print versions are out now.

Read this if you like:
⭕️ mushrooms, healing ceremonies, and curanderismo
⭕️ rural Mexican settings and characters
⭕️ macabre and supernatural vibes
⭕️ reflections on language and spirituality

Thanks to HighBridge Audio and #netgalley for an advanced audio copy of this book!