Scorn the witch. Fear the witch. Burn the witch.
History is filled with stories of women accused of witchcraft, of fearsome girls with arcane knowledge. Toil & Trouble features sixteen stories of girls embracing their power, reclaiming their destinies and using their magic to create, to curse, to cure—and to kill.
A young witch uses social media to connect with her astrology clients—and with a NASA-loving girl as cute as she is skeptical. A priestess of death investigates a ritualized murder. A bruja who cures lovesickness might need the remedy herself when she falls in love with an altar boy. A theater production is turned upside down by a visiting churel. In Reconstruction-era Texas, a water witch uses her magic to survive the soldiers who have invaded her desert oasis. And in the near future, a group of girls accused of witchcraft must find their collective power in order to destroy their captors.
This collection reveals a universal truth: there's nothing more powerful than a teenage girl who believes in herself.
My Review:
This was a really fantastic anthology to read! The power of girls is a powerful thing indeed. Most of these stories had a positive ending, though others were a little ambiguous. These were stories about girls in love, girls helping others, girls disappointed and put down, but mostly, girls finding and using their power.
Of the stories, my favourites were The Heart in Her Hands, Death in the Sawtooths, The Legend of Stone Mary, Daughters of Baba Yaga, and Why They Watch Us Burn. The worlds were interesting, the characters were, and I rooted for our narrators!
Some of these books were strange. Like The Moonapple Menagerie, it mostly made sense, but there was some weird jumping around that confused me a bit. The One Who Stayed was kinda hard to read, because we know what's going to happen, and it sucks and there wasn't anything that could be done to stop it. But there was something to do after the fact, which was encouraging!
One thing about this anthology that I'm glad about, is that there was a story taken out. Which normally, no, I would want more stories. But there were sexual assault allegations against the author of the story, so I'm glad that they took her story out of this collection.
Loved reading this anthology, it was a great collection of stories!
Authors: Brandy Colbert, Zoraida Córdova, Andrea Cremer, Kate Hart, Emery Lord, Elizabeth May, Anna-Marie McLemore, Tehlor Kay Mejia, Nova Ren Suma, Jessica Spotswood, Tess Sharpe, Lindsay Smith, Robin Talley, Shveta Thakrar, Brenna Yovanoff
Read: February 3rd, 2019
Source: Library/NetGalley
Reason Why: It has a bunch of authors that I enjoy reading their writing!
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Published: August 28th 2018
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| 5/5 Hearts |
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| 5/5 Books |
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| 5/5 Stars |
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