I have always been fascinated with the witch trials and have mostly read about the Salem Witch Trials so it was interesting to read what it was like in Scotland. I learned a lot and was really intrigued with the story. It was a little slow at times, but overall a great book to add to your fall reading list!

"I'll stay on here 'til master gets better, but . .. best you keep clear. You go about your business and I'll go about mine until all this trouble's gone by. And if anyone comes asking, I'll not speak against you. But I'll not speak for you, neither." He was enraged, not quite shouting. Her eyelids fluttered in his blast. "Go your ways, Martha. And I'll ask you to leave me to mine." - Imagine someone saying this to you. It’s worse than cursing at someone, or physically attacking them. This is to tell them you don’t matter so much that I have nothing good or bad to say about you.

Martha was considered the town’s mother, healer, herbalist, and helper. But also they called her “dumb”. When things started to go bad in the town (babies were dying, ships were sinking, sickness was spreading) and Master Makepeace made his appearance, the townsfolk could only think one reason: witches were in town. Their Jack of all trades Martha could help them find the witches…

No story of witch trials are pleasant, but this one included a birth in gaols with only baby surviving and abuse of a woman with lower IQ. Language was following even though it was meant to be told from nonverbal woman’s perspective.

A very interesting read! I have always had an interest in the time period where women were accused of being witches for the silliest reasons! This book really gave a good picture of just that! Why weren't men accused of anything when the poorly treated women with much disrespect???

The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer
Pub date: September 5, 2023

Ah, I loved this book so much. There’s something about the events of this time that both fascinate and repulse me. I love to read about the day-to-day life of this time; it appeals to me and is one of things I love most about historical fiction. The addition of the East Anglian witch hunt gives a haunting look at the murders that occurred puts a tarnish on the time and reflects the fault in human nature for what it was. The ignorance and fear that could be evoked in the simplest of things – a birth mark, a misspoken word, or a bitter vendetta – each leading to something horrific, that of being labeled a witch. A death sentence in these times.

Martha Hallybread is a healer, specializing in midwifery. She is also mute and values her role as servant for the man she raised and his new wife. She is often called upon to assist in births but the folks in her village are a superstitious lot and it doesn’t take much to turn their minds. When a witch-finder comes to their village, Martha is forced to take on a role that will betray other women she cares about. Loyalty, friendship, love – it’s all here and how it plays out is a harrowing, heart-wrenching story.

Martha’s story, while wholly unique, is one that I imagine many women of this time faced in one way or another. Turning neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend, this story really shows the chaos and soul-crushing reality of this time.

There’s so much more to this story and I urge any fan of historical fiction to give this a read or listen!

I can’t recommend this one enough!

I liked the overall story on this one. However, I did feel like it was a very slow read, and it took me a little while to get into the language. I really loved the characters. They each had very distinguishable traits - strengths and weaknesses as they went through very trying times. It's so unfair what women had to go through then, and still have to go through even in our present day.

I would recommend this book, but probably more on the low side of recommendations.

CONTENT WARNING: violence, blood, death of a child, grief, mention of abuse, mention of molestation, parental abandonment, torture, mention of death of a parent, ableism

Have you ever read a book and been blown away by how incredibly it was written, and then realized afterwards that it is a debut and been even more impressed? That is exactly what happened to me with this book. Autumn is the perfect time to start reading darker themed books, and especially those pertaining to witches, so this was the right time for this one.

This is a slower-paced, character-driven story, very unlike my usual favorites, but there was something about this book that just pulled me in and wouldn’t let go. Martha has been unable to speak since she was a child, and she thinks of it as a worm that blocks her words from coming out. Instead, she has worked out a rudimentary type of sign language that allows her to communicate with the people she interacts with, but she struggles to express herself adequately when it comes to deeper concepts.

It’s easy to empathize with Martha, especially since we get a front seat view to her innermost thoughts. She finds joy in caring for Kit, her employer, who she has raised since she was a baby, and kind of views as her own family. Working as a midwife and healer, she interacts with basically everyone in the village. There’s a sense of foreshadowing throughout the story, probably because I already know how witch trials went. But Martha and her friend deliver a baby with a cleft palate, which was a fatal deformity at that time, and she humanely kills the baby to stop it from suffering. But shortly after this, the witch finder arrives looking for trouble, and won’t stop looking until he finds it.

Initially, Martha is pressed into service as an inspector, forced to search the accused women for identifying “witch’s marks.” However, when the friend who helped her deliver the baby that died is charged with witchcraft and Martha isn’t, she struggles with an inner turmoil over her own role in the incident and why she wasn’t implicated. Despite her desire to confess her own guilt, she is unable to express herself adequately and is forced to help condemn people she knows are innocent.

Ultimately, I loved watching Martha’s story unfold and seeing how she resolves her conflict. The way that she interacts with others was incredibly intriguing, especially since she herself has a disability, yet it isn’t viewed negatively while others are viewed as the devil’s work. Seeing how she adapted to her disability, as well as the people in her village adapted to her needs, was wonderful, since it basically equated to an entire village learning basic sign language concepts to be able to understand what she is saying to them, while they can communicate to her verbally. And I found it especially timely to see how quickly and easily hysteria spreads—whether it’s witches or COVID or politics or anything else. But either way, this is a book that is meticulously researched, wonderfully written, and the kind I couldn’t stop thinking about, even after I finished reading it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

Just okay,
The book is well researched but a bit plodding and boring, when it wasn’t full of a bit too much gore.
I also had a hard time with the fact that the main character was mute but this didn’t seem to impact communication all that much.

I was so excited to read this one. I love anything about the Salem witch trials and was looking forward to that for this fall. However it felt repetitive and pretty boring. I also didn’t understand or feel it made sense how the main character is mute, nobody knows sign language yet everyone can understand her exactly for the most part with basic hand gestures. Especially when in her head as to what she’s trying to say is more descriptive and longer.

It just left me bored and unfortunately not a book I loved.

I suppose it's not surprising that a book predicated on witch trials in seventeenth century England was dark and a bit gory, but for some reason I was a bit taken aback by it — perhaps that's because history has stripped these narratives of their innate horror, which Meyer certainly does not. It also was a good reminder of how truly tough conditions were at the time (especially for women), even for the comparatively wealthy: no medicine, little science, not much education. I thought the decision to write this book from the third-person perspective of a servant in a household of people accused of witchcraft was really smart. The anguished thoughts this woman has that walk the line between what has been considered "witchcraft" and what has been considered "Christian religion" were a very interesting thought exercise in what the difference between the two actually might be. At its best, this book was reminiscent of "The Scarlet Letter" and "Hamnet;" at its worst, it was a bit plodding (and that was only 2 or 3 brief times). Definitely recommend.

Rounded up to 3. Robustly researched and well written, but a difficult book for me to want to finish.

As one might expect, the subject matter is heavy and at times, enraging. The narrative is gritty, and I didn't like the numerous references to someone's bodily functions being part of the story line. For much of the story, I was unimpressed by the main character's actions or moral compass. Additionally, because she is mute, much of the narrative takes place within Martha's mind. I had difficulty reconciling that, on the one hand, she struggled to communicate with others (with the exception of Kit, with whom she had developed a system of communication when he was young) but, on the other hand, whenever she interacted with others in the village, they somehow were all able to understand her--more or less.

The story progresses from one bad scenario to the next worse one, with no breaks. Even the flashbacks are heavy and hard. This creates reader fatigue for me. I needed some breaks, insights, character growth, etc. to be intermingled. amidst all the hard. Also, the "HEA" felt to me to be a jarring and abrupt shift in the plot and was difficult for me to find believable.

Thanks to #NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC ebook.

The Witching Tide is a spellbinding historical novel that tells the story of Martha Hallybread, a silent midwife in a small village in East Anglia during the 17th century. When a witchfinder arrives in the village, Martha is forced to hide her secret: she is a witch herself. As the witch hunt intensifies, Martha must use all of her skills and cunning to protect herself and the people she loves.

The Witching Tide is a beautifully written and immersive novel that brings the 17th century vividly to life. Margaret Meyer does an excellent job of capturing the fear and paranoia that gripped the people of East Anglia during the witch trials. The characters are well-developed and believable, and the plot is suspenseful and engaging.

The Witching Tide is a powerful and timely novel that explores the themes of fear, prejudice, and the power of the human spirit. It is a must-read for fans of historical fiction, women's fiction, and suspense novels.

Here are some of the things that I liked about the book:

The writing is beautiful and evocative. Margaret Meyer has a gift for creating a sense of place and time.
The characters are well-developed and relatable. I felt for Martha and her plight, and I was rooting for her throughout the novel.
The plot is suspenseful and engaging. I couldn't put the book down!
The novel explores important themes of fear, prejudice, and the power of the human spirit.
Overall, I highly recommend The Witching Tide to anyone who enjoys historical fiction, women's fiction, or suspense novels. It is a beautifully written and powerful novel that will stay with you long after you finish reading it.

Slow start story wise but the atmosphere made up for it! There’s such a tension looming in the air and I loved it. Perfect kick off to spooky season.

I thought this was well written and wish I loved it as I’d hoped. I do recommend it and I’m glad it exists but I grew up near Salem so I just found it kind of a familiar story in many ways. I also have been in a reading slump so I’m probably in a bad mood but it didn’t blow me away, which I was hoping for. That said, it’s very good and I will recommend it.

First off, thank you NetGalley for the ARC. I'm afraid I wasn't a big fan of this book. I was very interested based on the premise but overall found the pace to be slow and confusing.

Martha is a midwife and servant just trying to live a quiet life in her seaside town. Those plans are upturned the day the Witchfinder arrives, accusing dozens of women in the town of being part of a coven. Martha, caught between her certainty that these women are innocent and fear of her own semi-mystical connections, has to decide what she can do to survive this--and hopefully save some others on the way.

This book was just okay for me! It's a solid historical novel set in the 1600s about the witch trials. It's a little slow and the supernatural elements were sort of vague and sometimes confusing, but Martha was a compelling character and I wanted to know what happened to her. I just wish there had been more action!

If you like historical novels or have an interest in witch trials, pick this one up!

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the review.

“...And women like hunting witches, too/
Doing your dirtiest work for you…”

From the first page until the last, this book is a deep well of sorrow and mourning. It’s an elegy turned into a novel, a lament for all women lost to witch hunts (especially the specific one this novel is centered around). These pages are flooded with slow, creeping sadness; an ever-hovering sense of inevitability telling us readers things will only get worse. Things will only get uglier. Things will only get sicker.

We know how the witch hunts went. We know why they happened. We know how they spread. As much as we’d like to wholly point our fingers at the men in these stories, books like these remind us that we also need to check ourselves and remember we pointed our fingers at one another as well, ready to sacrifice even our sisters if it meant saving our own skins.

I applaud Margaret Meyer for choosing to write a main protagonist whose disability serves as both a physical and metaphorical plot device. Martha’s mutism (caused by a childhood illness) takes away her physical ability to speak up for herself or for any other woman and leaves her vulnerable to both ignorant and willful misinterpretation to those who would only see what they wish to see. In tandem, her mutism also metaphorically symbolizes the ways in which all women were not listened to, how their pleas for mercy fell on deaf ears, how no matter what they said their words were turned against them, and how in the end they fell silent on the noose. This aspect of the novel was both the saddest and most touching part, because no matter what Martha did, she knew there was precious little she could do to help when she had no voice. And that only made her feel guiltier.

Meyer composed a deeply moving novel that may be set against witch trials, but the themes of misogyny, internalized misogyny, male privilege, religious zealotry, bigotry, ableism, and more are all interwoven in an even, seamless pattern that starts off as simply ominous until all common sense, human compassion, or even a sense of human decency has been bled out of Martha’s village of Cleftwater. Then, and only then, when the village has hit its lowest low, can the tide begin to change. By this time, Cleftwater is left with a collective trauma.

Even though this book is full of despair and shows the deep, dark ugliness that can lie inside the human heart, it’s so impeccably crafted and beautifully written that I couldn’t stop reading it. I was glued to the page because I needed to see how these women would survive. I needed to know who would make it and how. I needed to see if any of them would make it, frankly. I needed to see if there would be vengeance. I needed to see what would be left at the end of the madness. I was engaged, I was invested, and I felt like I needed to witness this.

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

File Under: 5 Star Review/Folk Horror/Historical Fiction/Literary Fiction/Women’s Fiction

It takes place in East Anglia in 1645 where Martha Hallybread and other women in the Cleftwater community are accused by Silas Makepeace, a new comer and witchfinder. Martha has lost her voice as a girl but she does everything in her power to stand against this act of injustice and save herself and the other women, from the gallows. In an act of desperation she awakens a powerful wax doll that belonged to her mother, for protection, without knowing that the protection of some can mean the condemnation of others. At one point, the women are forced to put aside mutual suspicion, to join forces to survive.

The characters, especially Martha, are very relatable, and the writing is so clever that you feel suspicious and disturbed,. It's a very propulsive and impactful story, very appropriate for the upcoming witchy season!

"This women's life of ours. Why must we suffer so? Cursed for being women,"

I've read several books on the plight of women condemned as being witches, but this one really angried up my blood. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't with idiots who believed that any mark on a woman's body could be used to "suckle an imp."

The way they treated these women - even a pregnant woman in labor - makes me hope that there is a Hell and that every inhumane monster who ever accused anyone of witchcraft is there, eternally burning.

A good immersive read, though be warned - this one put me through the wringer, and I was pissed off the whole time I was reading it.

Set in the 17th century during the Witch Trials, Martha the village midwife and healer.

In this 17th century seaside fishing village, Martha is the village midwife and healer. She has delivered many babies and helped countless others with their ailments. But danger is on the horizon in the form of a witch hunter, Silas Makepeace. Martha is mute and soon finds herself a silent witness to this witch hunt. Her master offers her to Mr Makepeace to assist in the search for "devils mark" on the women that have been accused of witchcraft. But Martha has a secret herself. Her mother left some trinkets to her when she left her as a child. With the witch hunt so close to home, Martha has begun to carry a wax doll of her mother's to keep her safe. Martha soon finds herself in the jail herself, being held as a potential witch. Will her mother's doll prove to be helpful, or will Martha hang at the gallows like her friends and neighbors?

3.5 stars. I enjoyed this book, but it wasn't a page-turner. I haven't read much about the Witch Trials but did enjoy that this was a historical fiction based in that time period. The setting of the book gives The Scarlet Letter vibes for sure. I found the book a little difficult to get into at first because the prose is very much what it would have been in that time period, which worked, just took a little to get used to. I also liked that there was good resolution in the end, even when there were times I wasn't sure if I was going to like the ending.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a good but uncomfortable read. Great writing but the topic itself was just so harrowing. Martha’s story is so sad and the detail with which it’s delivered makes the book hit harder. I felt so bad for these poor women. Even the ending was depressing.