I also really liked the way she used representation. Although, I will say, by the end I was invested in it, so I forgave it a little, even though in my opinion it made no sense in the beginning. It made no sense that August felt so much for her so quickly, imo, and vice versa. The second relationship is the one that moved way too quickly to me. I think the proposal would've made more sense at the end, like maybe Juniper says something about seeing a ring or whatever at the end. It didn't really seem like Cleo's character, and they hadn't known each other long at all. I just thought the proposal was weirdly timed. I didn't think it started too quickly, it obviously made sense for those characters to come together knowing their history, etc. The first relationship, between Cleo and Bella, I actually totally understood when it first started. I thought both romances in the story just progressed weirdly quickly and that didn't make a ton of sense to me. I'll be first to admit that I'm not a romance person, so I can tend to be hard on romances. There was some excellent moments in there about the idea of children's songs and other important things passed on, unnoticed in a man's world. Her writing of women's strengths shined later when she made the connection that the things women are most often thought of as weak for, became the reason for the Sisters' success. That, I think, was the highlight of this novel: the characters that I became deeply attached to.

It all felt so real and I became deeply invested in these characters and their story. There was love, there was forgiveness, there was bitterness. Harrow did an amazing job of writing these characters in a way that their relationship felt extremely real. However, it deeply improved as it went on. So I was disappointed that after January, a book that I think was extremely layered, this book came out punching with very little finesse.

When I think of the great 'statement' pieces of the past, like Slaughter House 5, A Handmaid's Tale, or Brave New World, these books stick with us because there is so much to discuss. I feel like a lot of authors today are TELLING our readers too much, instead of SHOWING them. I have this weird thing about subtly in novels.

So, I had very high expectations for this book, especially with the awesome premise of 'suffragettes but make it witches.' January catapulted into my top 10 books of all time - I was simply enchanted by it. I preordered this after I read The Ten Thousand Doors of January at the beginning of 2020. I will be marking all spoilers behind spoiler tags, so feel free to read this if you haven't read yet. Hey guys! Haven't seen this book discussed yet, sorry if I just missed the post.

The once and future witches romance