The Women of Wild Hill: A Witchy Reckoning That Feels Too Real to Be Fiction

Read time: 6 minutes

🎧 Listened in audio 📢 Narrated by January LaVoy ⏱ Duration: 11 hours
Genre: Fantasy, Magical Realism 🏷️ Publisher: HarperCollins / William Morrow
Read as part of Mystery Date at the Whitby Library

Book Blurb:

There are places on earth where nature’s powers gather, and girls raised there inherit strange, sometimes dangerous, gifts. Wild Hill, on the tip of Long Island, is one of those places, home for five generations to the descendants of Sadie Duncan, a Scottish woman who arrived with gifts of her own. After a terrible tragedy, the last of the Duncans scattered. Brigid built a career in California out of her darker gift. Her sister Phoebe settled quietly on a Texas ranch, mixing tonics for the women who seek her out. Phoebe’s daughter Sybil, seemingly powerless and never told the truth about her bloodline, became a chef. Now the three are called back to Wild Hill, summoned by a furious ancestor determined to turn the tide against the path mankind has taken. Together, they may be able to change everything. But first they have to become a family again.

Let’s talk about the book:

Once in a while you come across a book at the right time in your life. The book hits you hard because of all the other things that are going on in your mind. The book offers, albeit fictional, answers to all the questions you have been asking for a long time. By the end of it, you feel seen about your concerns and questions, but also left to wonder why this has to be a “magical realism” book when it should have been the reality in a fair world.

Kirsten Miller has written one such book. Thank you, Whitby Library, for matching me with this one, because I would never have come across it on my own. I don’t want to make this review political, so I won’t share all the questions that had been sitting in my mind that this book somehow soothed. Safe to say, though, this book will resonate with all the women out there, and also the men who are ready to face reality. In subtle ways, Miller has touched on so many topics the world today is struggling to accept, and wiped through them in her own fictional way.

For centuries, the women of Wild Hill have been doing their bit to make the world a better place by eliminating one predator at a time. By the time Brigid, Phoebe, and Sybil come into the era, the count has increased, and the three of them have to step up their game to protect the world. Taking their ancestors’ help, the three women set out on a journey to help set life back into balance.

One thing that bothered me:

One thing that bothered me strongly was the relationship Brigid had with Liam. I thought both of them share a father, so technically they’re step siblings. How are they lovers, then? However, that was based on a misread and Kirsten Miller corrected my assumption. Having corrected that misunderstanding, the book is now renewed on star rating for me.

Narration by January LaVoy is a pleasure for this audiobook. She has a knack for fantasy and it comes through very beautifully in her narration. I enjoyed it cover to cover. This is one book that would sit high on my bookshelf as a recommendation. I wish I could hand it to every single person in this world, whether for sharing the possibility of a beautiful future, or for the fear of retaliation if they are in the wrong.

I pray for an educated, secular, free world for everyone. I hope the world Kirsten Miller is building in fiction becomes a reality someday.

Would I recommend it?

Absolutely, and not just to the women who’ll see themselves in Brigid, Phoebe, and Sybil. This is a book for anyone ready to sit with hard questions about power, protection, and what a fair world could actually look like. My one real hesitation is the Brigid and Liam storyline, given their shared father, and it kept me from calling this a full five-star read. Everything else about it, though, earned its place on my shelf. Recommended, especially if you’re the kind of reader who wants fiction to hold up a mirror.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

If You Loved This, Try These Next

• The Change by Kirsten Miller — If Wild Hill left you wanting more of Miller’s particular brand of witchy justice, this is the book that started it, three women in a small town discovering powers tied directly to reckoning with the men who’ve wronged them.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow — For the reader who wants the “women’s power vs. the patriarchy” theme pushed into an alternate history, this one follows three sisters weaving suffrage and witchcraft together in 1893 New Salem.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• Weyward by Emilia Hart — This one shares Wild Hill’s bones almost exactly: generations of women in one bloodline, each with her own gift, each finding her way back to the land and to each other across time.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman — A gentler cousin to Wild Hill, still about a family of witches, still about sisters who have to choose each other, but with more warmth and less reckoning.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• Circe by Madeline Miller — If what stayed with you was watching a woman turn her power against the people who underestimated or hurt her, Circe is the mythological blueprint for that same story.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

Would You Want This World to Be Real?

I’d love to know: if the world Kirsten Miller imagines in Wild Hill could actually exist, would you want to live in it? Drop your thoughts below.

Book Links

Want to purchase this or any of your favorite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider purchasing using the sites below. These sites work with independent local bookstore owners to fulfill your book orders. #SupportLocal

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