Review: The Mercies

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

F**k this book and what it did to my heart.

Two points of note:
1. This was not what I was expecting.
2. This book held me captivated from start to finish.

I honestly thought this was going to have real witchcraft but it's firmly on the solid land of Historical Fiction. We're in 1620 Norway, visiting a tiny commune in Vardo following an unexpected storm that's wiped out the majority of the male population. The women have to fend for themselves as best they can, before an outsider comes to take control.

I genuinely thought this was a book set on a fictional island that was inhabited solely by women - something more akin to the Amazons (I'm not the greatest at blurb comprehension, I'll admit). I was ready for some badass ladies finding their power. But this is all snow and ice and backwards ways and dark, dark times. It was super depressing.

This entire story is gloomy and overcast, and the author does such an incredible job of transporting us to this historical village of ice and snow with a storm hanging over its head. I knew very early on this was not going to be a happy story.

Add to that the fact that this story is inspired by true events and it's enough to make your blood run cold.

I was fully entrenched in this world while reading, and I felt so much for the characters. I connected completely and felt their pain as my own. By the end of it I was nearly crying from all the hardship. And I'm not really a crier.

This is a heart-wrenching story about the evil of ignorance. About how following blindly can have tragic consequences. And about how contagious fear is, and how detrimental that fear becomes. How grateful I am to live in a world that's moved past these evils, but how terrified I am to see the same ignorance and fear causing different tragedies around the world four hundred years later.

I'll likely be recommending this one to a lot of people. If I hadn't been lured in by wrong impressions I would not have picked this up, and that would have been a real loss, because this is such an incredible read. It's not particularly happy but it's fascinating and atmospheric and creates a true connection to these women and what they experience.

A highly worthy read.

With thanks to Macmillan for an ARC.

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