A young Puritan woman–faithful, resourceful, but afraid of the demons that dog her soul–plots her escape from a violent marriage in this riveting and propulsive novel of historical suspense from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant.

Boston, 1662. Mary Deerfield is twenty-four-years-old. Her skin is porcelain, her eyes delft blue, and in England she might have had many suitors. But here in the New World, amid this community of saints, Mary is the second wife of Thomas Deerfield, a man as cruel as he is powerful. When Thomas, prone to drunken rage, drives a three-tined fork into the back of Mary’s hand, she resolves that she must divorce him to save her life. But in a world where every neighbor is watching for signs of the devil, a woman like Mary–a woman who harbors secret desires and finds it difficult to tolerate the brazen hypocrisy of so many men in the colony–soon becomes herself the object of suspicion and rumor. When tainted objects are discovered buried in Mary’s garden, when a boy she has treated with herbs and simples dies, and when their servant girl runs screaming in fright from her home, Mary must fight to not only escape her marriage, but also the gallows. A twisting, tightly plotted novel of historical suspense from one of our greatest storytellers, Hour of the Witch is a timely and terrifying story of socially sanctioned brutality and the original American witch hunt.

My rating: 1.5 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review.

I was interested in the premise behind this book and thought I would give it a try. And I should have known that I wouldn’t end up loving it but I still thought it sounded interesting. I just couldn’t get into the characters or even the plot line. I’m sure it’s historically accurate but it was so depressing and more than that it was maddening! Which I’m sure it was supposed to be maddening because they did actually murder a bunch of innocent women calling them “witches.” The whole book though with trying to first divorce Thomas and then second defend herself against a completely unfounded accusation of witchery. I liked maybe the last 5% of the book (the ending) but the rest of the book was somewhat torturous to get through. Overall I really didn’t enjoy this book very much but I’m sure that there are many who would end up loving it – it seems like it might be an accurate representation of the frustrations of the time.

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