The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer

The Witching Tide takes place in the 1600's in a small village where chaos comes to reign. The story centers around Martha Hallybread, who is known for her caregiving to the residents with her herbs and helping to welcome new babies into this world. She is also house servant to Kit and his wife Agnes. Martha has known Kit since birth and feels very maternal toward him, considering him the son she never had. Agnes is getting ready to give birth herself so it should be a happy time in the household.

However, a stranger comes to town. His name is Master Makepeace and he is on the hunt for any woman who may be a witch. He wants to rid the town of any evil that he deems is detrimental to the area. Martha is mute and uses a sort of sign language to communicate with her loved ones. This proves a disaster in this kind of situation where everyone is on edge and scared for their lives. Anything seems to be suggestive of being a witch and Martha is in Makepeace's sights. 

Kit uses his influence to get Martha a position WITH Makepeace to "examine" and interrogate the women brought forth on charges of being a witch. What's heartbreaking is, that, because it's such a small village, Martha knows everyone and even brought some of their children into the world, so loyalties are tested and heartbreak follows. 

I really have never read anything like this before and I had such mixed emotions reading it. First, the good. The author does a beautiful job describing the scenes, emotions and abject terror these women feel being rounded up.  Her prose is beautiful and I genuinely felt sad in some parts, so that shows I connected with the characters.  Well done there. 

However, I thought it dragged in some places and it took me longer to finish that I would have liked. Once it got going, I found myself finally wanting to come back to it. Also, and this is going to sound nitpicky, but I started getting annoyed with some of the words the author chose to use. There's one I won't mention at all but as far as the other one, boy, did this woman love the word piss.  Isn't there another word she could have used? Oxford dictionary says it's vulgar slang as it is. I read the kindle version so I put a count on it only because it grabbed my attention that it was used a lot. She used it 14 times. 

In any event, it was enjoyable to the point that I wanted to finish it and was glad that I felt some connection to these characters, so if this sounds like your cup of tea, pick it up. Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for this opportunity. No review was required.