Reviews with content warning for Transphobia - The Witches of Moonshyne Manor

Reviews tagging 'Transphobia'

The Witches of Moonshyne Manor, by Bianca Marais

10 reviews

bookcasey's review against another edition

adventurous lighthearted mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

There are interesting elements to this book, but it’s very slow to get started, and having so many main characters means that they ended up pretty flat. The treatment of gender-fluidity isn’t great — the author’s note at the end about how “people like [character] need our allyship” probably gives you a good idea how. It’s well-intentioned and the premise is fun, but the characters largely come off as caricatures.

Note: The interjected “recipes” detract from the book and are especially annoying on audiobook. I’d suggest you skip them, and in case anyone needs to hear it: do not use essential oils to make lube!

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wordinessa's review

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funny hopeful lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I went into this one fairly blind, aside from blurbs that this was a combination of Practical Magic and Golden Girls. I was so delightfully surprised at how much I enjoyed this and the diverse cast of characters. Each one of the six sisters is well-defined and lovable, and the mysteries of their past and the manor are unravelled slowly over the course of the book. Penelope, the mayor's daughter who makes it her mission to help the sisters, could've been a very annoying precocious tween, but instead, she's funny, quirky, and her intentions are genuine. The reason the manor is being destroyed is fairly over the top

Spoiler

(the local men want to bulldoze it to build a "Man's World" theme park)

, but that fades to the background in the face of all the women need to do to save it and, in the progress, forgive one another for a major event in the past. A lighthearted and emotional tale of sisterhood, love, magic, and the ties that bond.

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stevie_in_the_stacks's review

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adventurous funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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uraveragelesbianreader's review

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adventurous emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This book was a really fun read! I read it back around halloween and quite literally devoured it all in one day in maybe about 5 hours. Usually I am not a big fan of magical realism, but this book I really enjoyed. I'll Strat my review with the good parts. The characters in this book are immaculate. All the relationships feel fleshed out and well earned and although I had complex and unique feelings about every character, there wasn't one I particularly hated (beyond the very clear villains but I will get to that shortly in the negatives.) The writing was clear and spoke to the characterization well, I never had trouble visualizing the scenes or the characters throughout the novel. All this is done while still not being aggressively complex or literary prose which I think actually helped this book more than hindered it. Never before have I been so compelled by so many of the relationships in one book, the friendships and the platonic relationships all flowed well and felt natural. They were flawed and occasionally harmful but never felt fully toxic or underdeveloped or that the flaws are unexplainable or unrealistic. The plot to me is mostly secondary to the relationships that are developed by it so if you're a person who prefers plot to characters, you may not like this book as much as I did. On the note of the plot at points it reads more like a buzzed article than a book but I actually did not find this to the detriment of the book because I feel it was intentional. This book does not have morally grey antagonists they are VERY morally bad, the main characters do have moral greyness but that is about it. It reads like an old 90s witch movie with a modern progressive twist and the plot is not logical but it is fun, and the message sent is important. This book has a lot of sex positivity as well as queer rep shown in very explicit way there is no messing around about the plot in that way. I found that a really enjoyable and unique part of this book, I haven't really seen a lot of fiction be this explicit in its exploration of things like the queer experience and sex so blatantly and it was refreshing. Very few books also focus this much on the relationships between women especially women in their older age. Its a very underrepresented group in literature and when they are represented it is oftentimes done in a way such as to make them the but of the joke but this book didn't feel like that. They talk about aging, specifically aging as it occurs in women very openly and very blatantly and it is never made to be gross or funny it just is. The relationships also feel organic and although they did not show us the development directly the hints we do get of the past allow the relationships to feel more organic especially because it is intermixed wonderfully with the main plot. Although I do think the main issue is resolved a little quickly for my liking and once again the final 50 pages I feel could've been stretched a bit more. However, I like the resolution and it felt rewarding and well built up to. Overall this book represents a wonderful demographic that we often don't see in media and although it can be a touch heavy-handed in its themes, that only serves to help the plot in the end. I would recommend this book for those looking for a uniquely touching witchy story about the relationships between women over time.

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morganperks's review

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challenging emotional funny hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

can you say Hocus Pocus vibes? Persephone is a gem. smash that patriarchy babe.

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bookforthought's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional lighthearted reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Witches of Moonshyne Manor was the perfect read to transition from summer to autumn, with its witchy vibes, delightful characters, and a healthy dose of patriarchy smashing!

I have to admit, it took me a while to fully get into this as we are plunged into Moonshyne Manor in the midst of a crisis, meeting (almost) all the sisterhood members in close succession. I needed a few beats to remember who was who, but once I did, I soon became really attached to them. I loved how each witch had a special talent and an affinity for a different type of magic (plants, animals, inventions, seduction…) and how different all their personalities were.

It also quickly became clear that there was more, much more, lurking beneath the surface, with multiple risks for the sisterhood and old secrets coming to light. The author did an excellent job of spreading the clues around for me to pick up like tiny breadcrumbs drawing the trail to that beautiful ending. There were quite a few things I hadn’t seen coming, so I was very pleasantly surprised, but also kept wanting to read to finally understand how all the pieces fit together.

The alternating POVs worked really well to help me see things from the different sisters’ perspectives, and I liked how smoothly it all flowed: even though at times the writing was slightly repetitive, these sections were never prevalent and were improved by developments further down the line.

This book was so many things! It combines some of my favourite things, like witches, heists and secrets, as well as some tropes I love such as found family. It also tackles a wide range of themes, like ageing and the relationship between older and younger generations; the importance of friendships and family; love and forgiveness; and, above all, sisterhood. Mix them all together, sprinkle in a good dose of humour and magic, and you have a great, heartwarming, autumnal witchy read!

Disclaimer: I received a digital copy of this book as part of the blog tour organised by Random Things Tours and Harper360. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.

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amandalorianxo's review

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful lighthearted reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was a great modern day witch story centered around a group of women in their late 70’s / early 80’s. This story is more than just about a group of women who are behind on their mortgage payments. This revolves around sisterhood, abandonment, death, ageism, sexism, tinges of racism, gender identity and sexual identity as well. This does sometimes felt a little too “woke” when it came to dialogue / certain scenarios when Persephone is brought into the story (the teenager who immerses herself with this group.) I’m glad Ursula is not painted as someone who needed to be redeemed too. But a good palette cleanser if you don’t want anything to horrifying but still in the spooky / witchy realm

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serendipitysbooks's review

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emotional lighthearted mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

The Witches of Moonshyne Manor is delightfully satisfying and subversive, ideal for when you want to see the patriarchy get what it deserves. The plot involves men named Cotton Mather, Will Stoughton and John Hathorne (recognise those names from your history class on the Salem Witch Trials?) trying to illegally seize the home of six eighty year old witches who are in the gin distilling business, and turn it into a theme park called Men’s World. In other words don’t go into this book looking for subtlety and nuance. That’s very much not the point.

I love a positive depiction of older women and these six are total badasses, the sort of woman I want to be when I grow up. I love their sense of sisterhood and the way they began to mentor the younger generation. There are some serious threads woven into this book including dementia and the trans journey of one witch. But these are balanced by elements of pure fun, like a magical heist and a flaming spectacular variation of billiards.

If the rise of anti-woman ideas and policies has you fuming this story will be a welcome catharsis. Read it. And then join Ursula, Queenie, Ivy, Ruby, Jezebel, Tabitha and Persephone by doing your bit to dismantle the patriarchy.

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kirstym25's review

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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northernzephyr's review against another edition

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Strong character development? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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