I originally had this at two stars with the thought that it’s more like 2.5, but I slept on it and realised I was being uncharitable. 3 stars is much more fitting, although I realistically couldn’t justify giving this more than that.

I enjoyed reading this book, the story was engaging and the addition of the traveling performance troupe was an interesting piece to add to the story of these women that we don’t actually know much about in the historical record.

The romance was sweet if a bit insta-love, or at least insta-“i feel so comfortable with you let me tell you all of my secrets,” and I liked the developing relationships between the side characters. I cried at the end of this book, and that did actually take me off guard as I didn’t realise I was as invested as I was.

But this book was objectively not well written. It’s not so far as to say it was terrible, and it wasn’t even always bad, but it couldn’t be called skilful or good overall.

There were many moments, especially in the first half, that felt like you were reading a bullet summary of events or scenes that were happening in the background, as if the author was making a note to go back and write those eventually and then just forgot. A lot was extremely ‘tell’ instead of ‘show’ in a way that had me feeling cheated, like there were missing scenes or things that happened that were skipped, especially regarding the developing relationships between characters.

I made a note while reading that Aila met Jack and the rest of the troupe around page 92, and by page 103 he had said “I feel as if I could tell you anything” and she was thinking in her POV that her life was forever changed. In those pages, she begged her mother to attend their performance, attended the play, and was able to get in to join them for dinner the rest of the night. She apparently stayed so long everyone, including her mother, left her and Jack at the table as they were so engrossed in each other. Each of these might have been full scenes and added richness to the characters relationships for us to actually see on the page, but instead we got a paragraph mentioning that they happened, and get told it was meaningful.

This book was also pretty obvious in its insistence that the author has done lots of research on the Scottish Highlands and the people of this time, and you could tell where he had a fun fact he really wanted to share, but couldn’t figure out how to naturally work it in. Of course I much prefer my historical fiction to have real research and details added, so it’s not just modern fiction in dresses with candles, but several times the information wasn’t worked into the story, it just took you out of it for a minute to tell you about it.

We paused to learn about how Highland people didn’t have ovens at home so they made bannocks themselves and bought bread at the market, and how they used to make their own candles but the government put taxes and licensing on chandlers so now they buy them or use rushes dipped in animal fat. There were quite a few instances of “Like most Highland people…” followed by a fun fact, which was almost comical in its awkward obviousness.

At one point even Aila in her own POV wondered why the minister was quizzing her on the details of ale brewing. In universe there’s an argument that he was asking for evidence in his witch trial, but it never really came up again, and was pretty obvious as the reader that Philip Paris just had learned a lot about how they brewed beer for these characters that he made to be brewers, and now he wants you to know too.

The book was mostly a dual POV, with Aila in first person telling the story, and Jack in third where his perspective was needed. The minister randomly had a brief POV as well, which was a bit jarring, and I think one or two of the other side characters did as well at the end, but the minister’s was notable as it was the first of the side characters to have one and it felt really awkward and out of place.

The scene from his perspective seemed to be an attempt to show how someone might have been caught up in the fervour of witches, while humanising him slightly? While the other extra POVs felt like they were adding something, I’m not sure the minister’s really did, as the event it was actually covering was one of the few scenes that could have actually just been described to us afterwards, rather than being written out.

The second half of the book was much better than the first in my opinion, and was easy to read and get swept up in it. Where the side characters were mostly just names doing things in the background before, now they seemed more fleshed out, and we got more scenes of them actually interacting. The story picked up in a way that you can tell Philip Paris had been kind of just biding his time to get to this point, which may explain the weaker writing.

By the end, I was fully invested in the story. The trial was interesting, and the subsequent sentencing and execution was heartbreaking. As the characters went their separate ways in the end, it didn’t feel random or unjustified, and while it was sad or bittersweet it made sense. I appreciate that it wasn’t exactly an easy ending tied up with a bow, nor was it entirely made up of gratuitous violence and misery.

I did find the last little modern day epilogue-esque bit a little jarring, adding some odd magic to an otherwise fairly grounded story, but it was also easy enough to ignore.

Overall, I did enjoy this book despite its faults, but one of the blurbs tried to say it was “beautifully written” and that’s simply not true.