It’s astonishing to read how women were treated in the 1640’s.
This book mixes reality and fiction and does a very good job of it too.
Details are not spared and you feel and imagine the atmosphere whilst reading.

I would recommend you to read it.

A 17th century English village becomes a centre of witchcraft. Martha is a nurse, maid, healer and midwife, an unmarried woman who is unable to speak so uses a form of sign language. From her point of view we know that her mother was hanged and she finds her poppet - a wax doll that could be for evil use or good. As women in the village are quickly accused, arrested then tested and tried Martha is under suspicion.

There's a lot of witch-lit at the moment and the majority focuses on the ways in which men control women. It's an interesting twist to have Martha unable to speak so there is always an environment of fear around her as she cannot defend herself.

I’m torn with a rating for this book. Whilst I enjoyed it a lot, it was also a bit too slow for me and I was hoping for a bit more fast paced and suspenseful action.

However, that being said, I think Meyer is an incredibly skilled writer and that is what has largely influenced me to put my overall rating closer to 4 stars.

I really enjoy historical fiction and I’m fascinated by the history of witch-hunts so this was right up my alley. I loved the way the book highlighted both the solidarity of women but also acknowledged that many were also accusers of fellow innocent women (although I’ve always been conflicted as to wether I can fully blame them for it as it was truly a matter of life or death).

The protagonist being mute was an interesting perspective and I thought it was a great commentary on the silencing of women. I did find it incredibly frustrating at times because I just wanted her to actually do something and try harder, but I suppose from another angle it just shows that no matter what the women did and how hard the tried to prove their innocence, they hardly stood a chance.

Overall I’d rate this a 3.5 stars as it was beautifully written and an intriguing story and I’d likely recommend it to others!

I’ve read several novels about English witch trials in the 16th and 17th centuries and I wondered whether this one – The Witching Tide, Margaret Meyer’s debut novel – would have anything new to offer. I’m pleased to say that although there are some obvious similarities with the other books I’ve read, this book also explores some different elements and ideas so was definitely worth reading.

The novel is set in 1645 in the small coastal village of Cleftwater, East Anglia. Martha Hallybread is a servant in the household of Kit Crozier, whom she nursed as a child. Martha has never married herself, choosing instead to devote her life to Kit and his family, as well as serving as the village midwife and healer. When the witchfinder Master Makepeace arrives in Cleftwater, Martha fears that she could become a target, particularly if anyone discovers her secret ‘poppet’, a wax doll inherited from her mother. However, a twist comes very early in the novel when Martha avoids being rounded up with the other suspected witches – and finds herself one of several women enlisted by the witchfinder as assistants.

Most books focus on the misogyny behind the witch hunts, but The Witching Tide reminds us that there were also women involved in condemning their fellow women. Some of them may have really believed they were cleansing their towns and villages of witchcraft, others probably just thought it was the best way to avoid falling under suspicion themselves; in Martha’s case, she hopes that her position will allow her to bring some comfort to the women awaiting trial and find a way to prove they are innocent.

Another thing that makes Martha an unusual protagonist is the fact that she is mute – and yet this is the aspect of the book I found least successful. Margaret Meyer has said that Martha’s lack of speech is intended to represent the way in which the ‘witches’ were silenced, denied a voice and prevented from defending themselves against their accusers, but although this is a clever idea, I felt that Martha made herself understood too easily, expressing complex ideas and sentences through gestures so that even strangers seemed to know what she meant. I could see what the author was trying to do, but I wasn’t completely convinced.

Martha’s story is fictional, but inspired by the real life East Anglian witch hunts of 1645-47 and the imaginary Cleftwater is loosely based on Aldeburgh, Suffolk, the location of one of the hunts. Knowing that real people experienced the things Martha and her friends went through makes the book even more meaningful.

"This women's life of ours. Why must we suffer so? Cursed for being women. Prized for our cunts and maybe our looks, but not much else. They use us, Martha. They trade us, they shag us, they trap us. No sooner raise us up than they beat us down."

The summer rain hasn't let up all day. It's been far to dull and grey to go anywhere, but it has been the perfect weather to relax indoors with a witchy novel. This one was sent to me a couple of months ago by Orion and I have been engrossed in it all day.

The Witching Tide is a novel about the witch hunts. It follows a protagonist called Martha, a midwife who is nonverbal and who has no power of speech, though she can hear perfectly well and has learned to communicate with her own brand of sign language. The novel begins when a fellow housemaid of Martha's is carted away on a charge of witchcraft. From then on it reads like a countdown to the inevitable, as one woman after another is taken up on similarly fabricated charges.

I find it interesting that Martha is nonverbal, because her very silence serves to give a voice to the historical women who were also tried and hanged or burnt as witches. Martha has no words to defend her friends, or herself and this is a very clever way of ensuring that the reader can empathize with the women of the past who were shouted down and disbelieved when they attempted to reason with their accusers. Those historical women, condemned as witches, were also silenced, just as Martha is silent.

This is a very visceral novel. The author doesn't shy away from describing the conditions in which the prisoners were kept and the things they were forced to do to try and survive. No female is safe from the witch hunters, not even innocent children. There is plenty of room on the scaffold for any women who dares to stand up for herself or her neighbours.

Whilst this does make for rather harrowing reading at times, it also illustrates the dilemma that such women found themselves in when the witch-finder came to town. Often, the safest place for a woman was right by his side, becoming an aid in his investigations and helping to examine the accused witches. Such women were known as witch-prickers, needling their neighbours in order to try and keep themselves above suspicion. As Martha's friend says;

"We got no witches in Cleftwater. Leastways, we had none, until the witch man came. He's poisoned us all."

This needling of other women is something that still goes on today, as some women do band together and turn on one another, motivated by jealousy and spite. We might not refer to it as witch-finding or witch-pricking anymore, but such ordeals do still take place within modern society. Finding yourself on the receiving end of this kind of female spite can be very unpleasant. When one women gathers her friends and family together, so that they can put another women through an ordeal of this kind, the needling leaves its mark.

That said, a clever women will be able to defeat her enemies quite swiftly, by turning the tables on them and living well herself. A modern witch will always survive and thrive, proving to her enemies that they cannot keep her down, no matter how hard they might try, or how envious they might be. She will always rise above them, for all to see. Also, life has a way of ensuring that we hear of the fall of our enemies - which after being subjected to such an ordeal, is always welcome news! Survive and thrive - that's just what we witches do. They may have hanged us in the past, but these days we tend to be the last ones standing!

Martha is certainly a character with a strong survival instinct. She plays the hand that she has been dealt to the best of her ability, carefully walking a very thin line between safety and sorcery. All it takes is one wrong move and the noose awaits.

Overall I enjoyed The Witching Tide very much. It swings along at a good pace, though I did find that the momentum waned towards the end of the book. I wouldn't say that the final pages were an anti-climax as such, but it wasn't the conclusion that I was expecting. It is, however, an interesting novel, steeped in the chilling atmosphere of the witch hunts, so if you like that kind of thing, you will probably enjoy it. I found it to be a great way to spend a rainy, summers day. Happy Reading!

BB Marie x

Thank you NetGalley and Orion Publishing Group, Phoenix for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

This historical fiction, which was based on actual events, was incredibly enjoyable.
The story takes place in East Anglia in 1645, and we follow Martha, a servant and mute healer.


Unjustly executed innocent women who were burned alive, drowned, or hanged after being accused of being witches The majority were healers who assisted in childbirth while others were midwives who utilised plants or herbs to treat the sick. blamed for any catastrophes or natural occurrences in the village that had nothing to do with witchcraft.Because it's frequently believed that only women were accused of being witches, which was untrue, I enjoyed that a man was among the characters being brought away for execution.


#TheWitchingTide #NetGalley #Historicalfiction

I just reviewed The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer. #TheWitchingTide #NetGalley

Whilst I’m usually more for the Victorian era, the Witch Trials of the 1600’s are very interesting as well as disgusting miscarriages of justice!

Innocent women who were murdered as witches, some burnt alive and others drowned or hanged…… most were healers who used herbs or foliage to cure the sick, others were midwives who helped deliver babies…. Blamed for any misfortunes in the village which were natural events and tragedies - nothing to do with witchcraft.

I really enjoyed this historical fiction, inspired by true events.
The story takes place in 1645, in East Anglia, where follow Martha, a servant and healer who is also mute.

I'm very difficult with "my" historical fictions as I relatively new to the genre (as a reader, I tend to prefer thrillers), but I was really interested by this novel, and the time period depicted.

Misogyny is, sadly, nothing new, but the witch hunt that took place during that specific time was infuriating to read about, in this book or other works. Besides infuriating, it is also fascinating to see how events, words, etc. were being twisted, so that no matter what the targeted women (almost every single woman) says it will be proof that they are the "Devil's brides". As history and fiction taught us, these women would have been guilty no matter what, and only men were safe, unless they sided with their wives, daughters, friends, etc. against the accusation.

Without spoiling anything, I was actively rooting for a spell to be cast on the witch man, Mogg, Herry, or any other men who were condemning these women, when they were the sinners.

My only "issue", or should I say "challenge" was the language used. As a non-native English speakers, I find certain writing styles slightly harder to read, so I have to focus a bit more to get some sentences and their meanings. But this did not take away from the story in the end, and I still enjoyed reading it.

I have to give this book four stars for the quality of the writing - it’s a powerful portrayal of the hysterical witch hunts that took place in the early seventeenth century and feels so authentic in its portrayal of a small community gripped by terror. An air of the supernatural is added by the existence of the poppet, a small doll that may or may not have the capacity to harm or heal. But I have to confess I found the story too upsetting - the suffering of poor frightened women accused by their neighbours and undergoing awful intimate searches and torture by people who were once their friends and neighbours was harrowing, and the cruelty of many of the characters - justified as they felt they were in doing “God’s work” - was distressing. This may be a story that needs to be told, and it is definitely a well written and well researched novel, but the subject matter wasn’t for me.

Overall I did enjoy this book. The prose is lovely and the main character interesting and sympathetic. The rising hysteria is generally believable and you feel a real sense of dread as the story progresses and you realise there cannot be a truly happy ending.

However, the middle section dragged quite a bit and for a long time there really wasn't very much to the other characters.

The Witching Tide is set in the late Summer of 1645, in Cleftwater, a coastal town in Suffolk. Martha Hallybread is a servant to the household of the wealthy Kit Crozier, for whom she was nurse as he grew up. Her loyalty to Kit is absolute and she sees him as her ‘almost son’, having set aside any hope of marriage and family herself so that she can stay by his side.

Martha is mute and does not speak. She has served the town as midwife, and she has healed many of the townspeople with her herbal remedies. As a result, when the witchfinder, Master Makepeace, descends on Cleftwater, she is seen as trusted member of the community, and is enlisted to search the bodies of the accused women for ‘signs’ which ‘prove’ they are witches.

However, Martha is also keeping a secret that threatens her own freedom, and as the witch hunt gathers momentum, in desperation, Martha revives a poppet, a wax witching doll, that she inherited from her mother, in the hope that it will bring protection.
But the poppet's true powers are unknowable, the tide is turning, and time is running out . . .

The author must have done a great deal of research to underpin this novel, but it is worn lightly and never bogs it down. It informs the story and brings history to life, but never feels heavy handed, investing the novel with a great sense of power. It is a novel which has great impact as the reader can so easily see the division, the terror and the fear that witch hunts would have brought to communities, as well as the inhuman treatment and conditions that the accused women endured.

It is without doubt a beautifully written novel, and Meyer has created a constant sense of fear, tension and dread which runs as an undercurrent through the pages, just as it would have pervaded the town.

The prose has many detailed descriptions of the town, the sea and shoreline and the natural world around it, as well as the people, their homes and dress, and their various occupations. She has created a real and vivid sense of time, place and setting.

The characterisation is well done, and in Martha, Meyer has created a ‘flawed’ main character as she struggles to know what to do for the best. Her actions don’t always lead to the best outcomes and this seems to be one of the themes of this novel: the choices made, the attempts to do the right thing (even though it is so very hard to know what that might be), as the characters navigate their way through the maze-like moral ambiguity of the events which are unfolding.
The novel also explores concepts of loyalty and betrayal; and of persecution and resistance.

Through the events of the novel we see how the witch hunts appear to be born out of misogyny, and the preservation of male dominance and power, and are fuelled within communities by superstition, ignorance, fear, and mass hysteria, as well as providing an opportunity to settle old scores and grievances, or petty jealousies.

The novel is based on real events and is dedicated by the author to the women of East Anglia who were victims of the1645-47 witch-hunts, to remember them within the pages of her novel. Women who were found guilty of being witches were hanged and often their names and graves were not recorded, thus removing them from history, but, in The Witching Tide, Margarat Meyer attempts to redress this, highlighting how many innocent women were wrongly and shamefully persecuted, tortured and murdered.

Meyer’s impressive debut is a powerful, emotional and immersive read, with real depth. It leaves you with much to think about, not least how far we have actually come in the modern world, given the way women’s rights are threatened, freedoms removed and women facing all manner of subjugation and discrimination. It is the kind of novel that will live on in your head long after you have finished it.

This story of the English witch hunts of the 17th century, this is an engrossing, thrilling, horrifying look at how evil can appear, seemingly of its own volition, in the quietest of places. In a similar way to witch trials around the world, gossip and revenge are used to settle grudges. I liked that a man is included in the characters being hauled off for execution, as it's often assumed that only women were taken as witches, and this wasn't the case. Characters are really well rounded, in particular the spittle-crazed madness of the Witch Finder <shudder>.
The pleasure that people took in the hideous mistreatment of ordinary people in this way is so well portrayed.
Utterly recommended.

A chilling account of witch trials in the 1600's. The madness of the era really comes across. Heart-breaking .

Books of this type never bode well for the women in them. What's very sad is how you can see parallels with the mid 1600s and today. I very much liked the characters and the writing style. Based on a true story made it all the more poignant

It's 1645 in the small viillge of Cleftwater where Martha Hallybrand a middle aged "mute" with tuberculosis lives contentedly as a devout christian and local healer who spends most of her time in her physic garden and tending to the inhabitants. Her mother was a whore and abandoned her as an abused child leaving her with only a wooden box and a wax poppet doll whose chin has a splinter of wood pushed through it, echoing the deceased John who had a jaw hanging open just before her mother fled. Martha thinks the doll has magic properties and often has visions of it and her mother visiting her. Martha had the good fortune to be hired as a nursemaid to a kind family and her charge, Kit has become her best friend and protector in life. However, things are changing. Kit has married a vain, snobbish woman who dislikes Martha and is due to give birth to Kit's first child. Martha and the cook in Kit's house have recently acted as midwives to a neighbour who has given birth to a deformed baby that died soon after and now a "Witchfinder" has arrived in town to cleanse it. Soon. many of the women will be locked up in the local Inn and their husbands and life long friends will be denouncing them. I feel so much anger on behalf of how the women are treated by those they have nurtured, birthed and cured and the raging misogyny in the village. I thought the book was well written and I really wanted to find out how Martha as a woman with a disability and a herbalist would fare in a "no win" situation. I thought the plot lacked pace at times and some points were repeated or belaboured a bit too much but I still enjoyed the story.

Set in the Seventeenth Century The Witching Tide book is an imagined story from the point of view of a Mistress Martha Hallybread,
Martha living in Cleftwood, her small world is soon to be upturned when the witch hunter arrives in their small town, turning normal lives of peaceful folk into chaos.
Friendships to be tested.

The writing and words of the author were powerfully descriptive, in detail, all of the little details. I could feel, and see the places being described.

Causing fear, condemning innocent women as witches, in my opinion made the accusers powerful. It makes me wonder how many women during those times were accused as a way to be rid of them? Call them a witch, the fear instigated and tittle tattle would drive it on. Fear or power, or maybe both? feeding hysteria. I can only guess from reading this book, and others on the same subject of how it may have been driven. How terrifying to have lived through the dark witch hunters days.

The end of the book was not how I imagined, but contemplating it afterwards gave me much food for thought. A good book.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Publisher for an advanced e-book copy. Opinions about this book are entirely my own.

3.5 stars

This is really slow and pulsing story, that builds and builds - you can feel the tension and the fear that Martha and her community are feeling.

The dialect and language used is typical and authentic for the place and time, which might be off putting for some readers. It certainly took me a while to get used to. But I think it added an element that would have otherwise been missing.

I did find this a little repetitive but it’s also shocking and raw.

Set in the 17th century, The Witching Tide set in a sleepy coastal village in East Anglia, follows Martha the village midwife and herbal healer who is also mute, and the upheaval of the village when a witchfinder arrives on the hunt for witches leaving very few of the local women safe from his hunting. Having read a few books within this genre, I felt the Witching Tide bought a compelling story that will certainly draw on your heartstrings, invoke anger and sadness in equal parts, and is historically accurate in the persecution methods of 17th century witchfinders. As well as highlighting how the patriarchy played a big part in the historical persecution of women as witches. I recommend if this genre of books is your kind of thing.

Thanks to Netgalley and Orion Publishing Group for the ARC so I could review.

The scene setting and works building was wonderfully descriptive and atmospheric but I found the main character increasing annoying and difficult to like as she continued to make bad decisions. However I did enjoy the sense of unease and distrust that was building up in the village that lent itself to really looking at how communities stick together, or not!

Taking place in 17th century England, Martha is a midwife and healer who has lived in the coastal village of Cleftwater for over four decades. She is known by everyone in the village yet she is also mute. One day a witch hunter comes to the village and declares a witch hunt and women to be searched, with secrets of her own Martha must do whatever she can to keep them hidden.

This was a spellbinding and interesting masterpiece that keeps you hooked throughout. I loved the historical aspect of learning about witch trials and the old ways of healers. I felt completely transported into this tragic novel and couldn't put this down. If your a fan of historical and women's fiction this book is for you.