the witches of New York

click for the meta

title: the witches of new yok
author: ami mckay
published: alfred a knopf canada
genre: historical fiction, paranormal, magic

Synopsis (from the Storygraph)

The year is 1880. Two hundred years after the trials in Salem, Adelaide Thom (‘Moth’ from The Virgin Cure) has left her life in the sideshow to open a tea shop with another young woman who feels it’s finally safe enough to describe herself as a witch: a former medical student and “gardien de sorts” (keeper of spells), Eleanor St. Clair. Together they cater to Manhattan’s high society ladies, specializing in cures, palmistry and potions–and in guarding the secrets of their clients. 

(There’s more… but you should probably read it to get the juicier details)

my thoughts

The witches of New York was so deliciously binge-worthy. A story set in the 1870s, it starts in Egypt where Cleopatra’s Needle (or the Obelisk) is being ferried to the USA, but it’s also about a girl from a small country town outside of New York is being drawn to the big city by a near magical pull that was affirmed when an ad in a local paper of a shop seeking a shop girl. 

Eleanor St. Clair and Adelaine Thom are humble shop keepers in the city. Eleanor and Adelaine became busy partners when they were both building a new life for themselves and found a kinship in their abilities at reading and helping people in their own respective ways. Their abilities drew in regular customers from all social classes requiring mental and physical reprieve from their ailments.

The girl enters their lives and unintentionally turns them on their heads. Eleanor teaches her to hardness an unknown ability and Adelaine does the same, and the three women who thought they would lead a very simple life together building the coven they needed from one another becomes so much more.

Krys of the past always had trouble reading books written by Canadian authors; I can’t even explain why. But over the last few years, I’ve been opening my reading options to include Canadian authors and I’ve found some amazing ones – Ami McKay is now included in my list of Canadian go-to; up there with Alan Bradley and Camilla Gibb and Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

All in all, I really liked The Witch of New York. There development of the characters was endearing and their interactions never sounded like it came from 1 mind.

Have you read The Witches of New York? What did you think of it? Comment your thoughts below!