Weyward by Emilia Hart is a really unique read. I’m not sure I’ve read a book before that covers three different stories from three different timelines – therefore it piqued my interest before I picked it up. Plus I’d heard soe very positive things about it.
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Weyward tells the story of three women throughout three different times who are all struggling with oppression from one thing or another. In two instances, men ruin the lives of two women and in another, it’s a story of how she’s accused of being a witch simply because she was in a field when cows trampled a man.
Weyward plot – 4/5
As I said above, Weyward covers the stories of three different women. I really thought this was something that was going to grab me as I love reading about multiple different people at the same time. There’s also the nice link between the women as well which added some intrigue.
However, Weyward as a book isn’t that long so there doesn’t feel like enough time for any of the stories to ever really get going. Therefore, I finished the book never really feeling like anything big happened and that none of the stories really ever reached their full potential. Rather than three stories that felt like one large overarching story, it felt more like three short different stories.
Despite the shortness of them, I did find myself quite interested in each of the stories as they were going
Weyward characters – 4/5
Without harping on with the same excuse, there just wasn’t enough time for the characters to build any real personality. Without remembering their names and the fact I listened to a lot of it on audiobook so it was actually different narrators, I’m not sure I would have known who was who based on the differing personalities.
There’s an argument to be made that it wouldn’t be that easy to put in characters who are vastly different from one another when you’re trying to focus on their stories. What’s worth noting is this likely isn’t an issue with Hart’s writing, simply a case that due to the short amount of time we get with each character means we can’t really read enough of their experiences to build enough personality for each of them.
Weyward final rating – 4/5
Putting three stories into about 400 pages will always be a struggle but Emilia Hart does do just enough of a job rounding them off the make them interesting enough. However, I was hoping for a lot more from Weyward. I was hoping for slightly more interesting stories, maybe some clever intertwining or plot twists and some better-defined characters. However, these elements all left me slightly underwhelmed and I got the end wishing the book was a couple of hundred pages longer so more depth could have been added.
