While I didn’t rate The Change as 5 stars (there were some pacing issues in the middle), I quite enjoyed it and have been thinking back to it quite a bit since reading it last December (even more so in the last few months given certain political topics). As a result, I was looking forward to Kirsten Miller’s new release, The Women of Wild Hill.
As a general reaction, there were quite a few things I liked better about this novel and that I think she improved on, especially the pacing. On the other hand, the ending slightly lost steam for me, and even though it was a big ending, it also felt less impactful/satisfying than the ending of The Change. I also will say, there was something about this one that that made it feel very much like a white feminism approach to issues (despite including POC characters). But we can’t expect every book to be everything to everyone so that might be a bit unfair (it’s just sometimes when you get into books that get very into women and power, there can be a slight tinge of gender essentialism, however unintentional).
But having said all that and made my disclaimers, let’s get into what I liked – because I liked a lot, especially in the first half to two thirds. Right from the beginning, this novel has the same mood and vibes as The Change, including the connection to Long Island. Brigid and Phoebe are estranged sisters but very much aware of their powers and their family’s history of powers (even if they are missing quite a few details). Bessie is the family and estate’s protector ghost, who was on the land centuries before the Duncan witches ever came to the US, with her own POV chapters and heartbreaking backstory.
After 30 years away from home, the Old One calls Phoebe and Brigid back home and as much as they want to resist, it only takes them each about a day to book flights back to New York from Texas and California, respectively. It has been foretold that the Duncan line of witches would lead to The Three, the most powerful witches of their lineage and that they would lead the world to change. For a while Brigid, Phoebe and their mother Fiona thought they were this prophesied group until Fiona realized that her future granddaughter was the intended third, not her.
And now, it is time. After six generations, their fate and destiny have arrived. Brigid and Phoebe answer the call to return home while Sybil discovers a family legacy her mom tried to hide and protect her from.
We also get chapters from each of the previous generations of the family, with Lilith and her husband Levi (there are some very good men in this novel to combat all the power hungry tools of the patriarchy) being my favorite.
So much of this novel channels the anger many of us feel at the way the world is – at how power has been consolidated in the hands of the few at the cost of the many, how they hide behind hypocrisy and disinformation as they harm women, people and the environment all in the name of greed and more power. How media has manipulated public perception, whether it is Fox News or this novel’s fictional American Media Network, and even when the writing is on the wall, they just keep lying and doubling down (this is one of those novels set in not quite present day, where climate change has already decimated Salt Lake City as a result of a declining water levels exposing toxic dusts, where even as water levels were sinking, developers kept building).
The challenge is that the build up and the history are all so well done that it is hard to create a satisfying conclusion. The very fact that the novel is operating within our world’s structures is what forces some of the way the ending has to come together, and while it is an ending we might want, within the novel, there is also just a feeling of “why did we have to wait till now?” There was something about The Change where it was easier to appreciate and celebrate when villains finally got retribution, maybe because it was focused on a more specific group and crime?
Spoiler:
Basically, there is a whole part of the plot that involves Fiona dating Calum who basically becomes Rupert Murdoch in this world after she dies – he takes over American Media Network, driving its negative and outsized influence on the world. After Calum dies, his son Liam inherits the company and the power, and Liam brings together a large portion of the rich, powerful, evil men destroying the world in one place, creating the opportunity for the Three to destroy them. And as satisfying as that might be, there’s still the frustration of how much damage happened first, even if the novel tries to explain that it had to happen like this. We live in a world with Fox News so a version of it has to be part of the story but I think the fact that the family had interacted with the man behind it before he became the villain made it a bit of a clunky fit within the story (even if I understand that someone else would have filled his spot if he hadn’t done it).