I fear I may be a hater.

I wanted to like this book. At the start I did like this book. I didn't think it was going to be a stand-out favorite of the year or anything but at one point I described it as The Scarlet Letter meets a vaguely girl-power fairytale and even said "and I'm not mad about it," but I think by the end of the book maybe I am mad about it. Maybe my dislike of it is completely unfounded, I will fully admit I struggled not to zone out at times so maybe I missed some stuff. Maybe the people who love this book are right and I am wrong but either way here are my somewhat disorganized thoughts:

CHARACTERS • The main characters started out interesting but didn't hold my attention/investment or gain a whole lot of depth over time. Towards the end I was more interested in how various Puritan townspeople reacted to magic and witchcraft than I was in learning about Samson's backstory. Some of the characters just felt really flat to me. I genuinely think there was more complexity of motivation and overall depth given to kind side character Sarah Carter than like 90% of the other characters in this book perhaps including our protagonist.

INDIGENOUS REPRESENTATION • In my opinion, (as a white US citizen who is not an expert) the ways indigenous folklore and history were included in this story felt nominally inclusive but not all that meaningfully so. Actual human Pequot characters played a role in this story, but they didn't feel as actualized or significant to me as they should for a book that leans so heavily on the region's indigenous mythology as part of it's worldbuilding.

• Certain aspects of this book really came across to me as leaning into the Magical Native American Trope.

• In theory, the blending of various Celtic, British, Indigenous American, etc folklore and witchcraft elements as part of the novel's sort of thesis that all of these gods and God and magic are essentially different names for the same thing is cool ideology, but I'm not sure it was handled well in execution.

• I would be interested in reading (and plan to seek out) reviews written by people with more personal connection to and/or knowledge of Pequot culture and mythology/spiritual beliefs to see if they feel this aspect of Slewfoot was well-researched or handled respectfully because, again, maybe I'm wrong but it felt kind of racist to me.

PLOT AND PACING • This really might be a matter of personal preference, but the pacing of this story was wonky to me. It seemed like things were sort of building at a steady and honestly slow-ish pace for most of it and then roughly the last quarter of the novel was like super jam-packed with dramatic action and big reveals. I think I tend not to like books where it feels like too much all happens right at the end and I would place this in that category.

• I won't go into detail on this because spoilers and because this is already long, but I feel like there were some plot holes and/or dropped threads and/or things that just never felt fully developed.

OTHER PETTY GRIEVANCES • This part may contain minor SPOILERS!!! You have been warned.

• If Abitha's magic comes from her maternal line why did we not spend more time on that in the worldbuilding? The book was long enough to have elaborated on a number of things that it didn't and I think this ancestral matrilineal magic and the healing etc she learned from her mother was worth exploring further. To me the lack of detail here made it feel like a sort of "of course women are magical witches! we don't have to explain" rather than a real system of magic, which feels like it leans into the misogynistic beliefs underlying a lot of Puritan beliefs around witchcraft rather than subverting or challenging them in any substantive way?

• The role of Abitha's husband Edward felt messy. I'm trying to avoid real actual spoilers... let's just say he seems important at the start and does come up a few times later in the story, but it was unclear to me what the narrative purpose of his character was supposed to be in those later appearances.

• Cartoonishly evil Wallace. This actually does read as a reference to The Scarlet Letter to me, but it still bugged me that we get mentions of him being close with and looking out for his brother without much clarity on when/how that changed.

• I'm sorry but Creek, Forest, and Sky pissed me off. They were giving weird little scheming henchman in like a fantasy Disney movie from my childhood and it just did not fit the vibe the rest of this book seemed like it was going for at all. This is also why I docked points on audiobook narration, otherwise I thought the audiobook narrator did well but the very sort of small, child-like voices given to these characters did not help the issues I was having with them. Anytime a scene had a lot of these three in it I was irrationally irritated and struggled to pay attention.

• Again, trying to avoid major spoilers so I won't give much detail, but there's a revenge element to this book that reminds me a lot of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. A fairly well-regarded movie that I famously hated and thought was a pointless, misogynistic, egotistical power-fantasy. There are significant differences between this story and that one, but the similarities are not helping Slewfoot get on my good side.

• Also I've seen this book on so many book lists, it has so many elements that I would typically like, and I've heard so many good things that I kind of felt catfished by it? Like if I hadn't had high expectations going in I still would've had the issues with it that I do, but I think they would've bothered me a bit less because I wouldn't feel so disappointed right now.

Edit: fixed sooooooo many typos and also lowered some star ratings by half a star because I'm leaning in to being a hater