Book Review: A Witch in Time

Sayers, Constance. A Witch in Time. Redhook/Orbit, Hatchet Book Group, NY: 2020.

I mostly like the author’s writing style. She could use the word “that” much less — something I maybe only noticed because I recently went through one of my manuscripts and deleted my unnecessary use of the word “that.”

The one other problem I had with the writing was that while Juliet was only sixteen and a (married) man in his thirties didn’t hesitate to have sex with her in 1895, the reader doesn’t really see what’s going through Juliet’s head and heart. If you’re going to show a (yuck) relationship like that — a teen and a married man — you’d better make the emotions convincing, for it to be believable.

Certainly, this book reminded me how little I relate to heterosexuality, but… the relationship between Juliet and Auguste Marchand strikes me as cringey. She’s sixteen and having an affair with a thirty-something artist. Something I came across in this age of #metoo is the word “grooming” to describe a relationship with such a drastic imbalance of power: a young woman who ends up in a relationship with a much older man in her workplace.

This book also reminds me of Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches series, in which the author doesn’t seem to have a problem with pedophilia — also cringey.