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Weyward by Emilia Hart

Magical realism

Weyward

BOTY FINALIST

Each year thousands of members vote for our Book of the Year award—congrats to Weyward!

Debut

We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Emilia Hart, on your first book!

by Emilia Hart

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Quick take

An ode to the natural world and female power, this lush, generation-spanning novel is equal parts daring and inspiring.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Multiple_Viewpoints

    Multiple viewpoints

  • Illustrated icon, Feminist

    Feminist

  • Illustrated icon, Magical

    Magical

  • Illustrated icon, Nature

    Nature

Synopsis

I am a Weyward, and wild inside.

2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she begins to suspect that her great aunt had a secret. One that lurks in the bones of the cottage, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.

1619: Altha is awaiting trial for the murder of a local farmer who was stampeded to death by his herd. As a girl, Altha’s mother taught her their magic, a kind not rooted in spell casting, but in a deep knowledge of the natural world. But unusual women have always been deemed dangerous, and as the evidence for witchcraft is set out against Altha, she knows it will take all of her powers to maintain her freedom.

1942: As World War II rages, Violet is trapped in her family’s grand, crumbling estate. Straitjacketed by societal convention, she longs for the robust education her brother receives—and for her mother, long deceased, who was rumored to have gone mad before her death. The only traces Violet has of her are a locket bearing the initial W and the word weyward scratched into the baseboard of her bedroom.

Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart’s Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.

Content warning

This book contains scenes depicting sexual assault.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Weyward.

Weyward

CHAPTER ONE

KATE

2019

Kate is staring into the mirror when she hears it.

The key, scraping in the lock.

Her fingers shake as she hurries to fix her makeup, dark threads of mascara spidering onto her lower lids.

In the yellow light, she watches her pulse jump at her throat, beneath the necklace he gave her for their last anniversary. The chain is silver and thick, cold against her skin. She doesn’t wear it during the day, when he’s at work.

The front door clicks shut. The slap of his shoes on the floorboards. Wine, gurgling into a glass.

Panic flutters in her, like a bird. She takes a deep breath, touches the ribbon of scar on her left arm. Smiles one last time into the bathroom mirror. She can’t let him see that anything is different. That anything is wrong.

Simon leans against the kitchen counter, wine glass in hand. Her blood pounds at the sight. The long, dark lines of him in his suit, the cut of his cheekbones. His golden hair.

He watches her walk towards him in the dress she knows he likes. Stiff fabric, taut across her hips. Red. The same color as her underwear. Lace with little bows. As if Kate herself is something to be unwrapped, to be torn open.

She looks for clues. His tie is gone, three buttons of his shirt open to reveal fine curls. The whites of his eyes glow pink. He hands her a glass of wine and she catches the alcohol on his breath, sweet and pungent. Perspiration beads her back, under her arms.

The wine is chardonnay, usually her favorite. But now the smell turns her stomach, makes her think of rot. She presses the glass to her lips without taking a sip.

“Hi, babe,” she says in a bright voice, polished just for him. “How was work?”

But the words catch in her throat.

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Why I love it

Go ahead. You know you want to. Judge this book by its cover. It’s probably one of the best of the year.

And living inside the pages of Weyward are characters just as lovely and vivid: Kate in the present day running from an abusive husband, Violet in the early 20th century with an abusive father, and Altha in the 1600s on trial for witchcraft. These three unconventional green witches show us how connected we are as women to the past, to each other, and to nature.

“There was something about us—the Weyward women—that bonded us more tightly with the natural world . . . The animals, the birds, the plants—they let us in, recognising us as one of their own.”

Weyward hits all the right buttons of magical realism done right—that is, magic rooted in the believable. In this case, the world of nature. If you loved Hester and The Lost Apothecary, it vibrates in a similar way, but Emilia Hart’s voice is totally original, both gentle and fierce. She takes you on a journey through history, showing the cyclical struggle women had, and continue to have, with men who think they can control their lives, their decisions, and their bodies.

A bold and bewitching debut, Weyward will have you pining for fictional Weyward Cottage. But the big takeaway is that the power and magic found there is already in you, waiting for you to finally embrace it.

Member ratings (37,948)

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Debut authors
View all
Weyward
Lessons in Chemistry
The Stone Witch of Florence
Honey
All We Were Promised
Shark Heart
The Road of Bones
As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow
Dinner for Vampires
Ink Blood Sister Scribe
Homeseeking
Definitely Better Now
Dirty Diana
A Thousand Times Before
Ariadne
Lunar Love
The Wishing Game
The Collected Regrets of Clover
The Days I Loved You Most
Thistlefoot
The Wives
Adelaide
Here After
Spitting Gold
Did I Ever Tell You?
Middletide
The Teller of Small Fortunes
Northwoods
A Flicker in the Dark
This Spells Love
A Short Walk Through a Wide World
The Storm We Made
Neighbors and Other Stories
The Husbands
More
You, Again
The Love Hypothesis
Red, White & Royal Blue
The Other Valley
Hard by a Great Forest
Maame
The Circus Train
The Mayor of Maxwell Street
The Other Black Girl
The Push
Age of Vice
This Time Next Year
The Lost Apothecary
Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
One Day in December
Paper Names
We Are the Brennans
Black Cake
The Last Russian Doll
Olga Dies Dreaming
She Started It
Bringing Down the Duke
Somebody's Daughter
The Hacienda
Beautiful Country
Dearest
Kaikeyi
River Sing Me Home
Love & Other Disasters
The Fortunes of Jaded Women
Sign Here
The Stranger Upstairs
Damnation Spring
The Maid
The Verifiers
A Little Hope
In Every Mirror She's Black
Taste Makers
Fiona and Jane
Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?
Camp Zero
The Last Story of Mina Lee
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
My Body
Honey Girl
Vladimir
Big Friendship
Black Buck
White Ivy
White Horse
Someday, Maybe
Peach Blossom Spring
Behold the Dreamers
The Mothers
The Animators
Marlena
Sharp Objects
The Girl Who Smiled Beads
Small Country
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
Golden Child
Small Fry
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All That You Leave Behind
Doing Justice
Again, But Better
Free Food for Millionaires
Leaving the Witness
On The Clock
All of Us with Wings
Color Me In
Frankly in Love
The Stars and the Blackness Between Them
The Water Dancer
Full Disclosure
When the Stars Lead to You
My Friend Anna
Trick Mirror
The Girl with the Louding Voice
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
A Burning
The Boy in the Red Dress
Fleishman Is in Trouble
The Beauty in Breaking
The Comeback
The Prophets
Girl A
Arsenic and Adobo
What Comes After
Things We Lost to the Water
The Family
The Keeper of Night
Win Me Something
Four Weekends and a Funeral