The Familiars by Stacey Halls – Book review by Kimberly Foreman

By Kimberly Foreman

Genre: Gothic suspense / historical fiction 

With not long to go until Halloween, this week I’m recommending an eerie novel I really loved, which I hope you will enjoy too. The Familiars by Stacey Halls was her debut novel and what a debut it was! Halls has since published three other novels, but The Familiars remains one of my favourites.  

I always find stories about witchcraft and witch trials so interesting — the things us women had to go through back in the day. Herbalists, midwives, wise women… many accused of worshipping the devil for being good at their careers or crafts.

The Familiars focuses on the Pendle witch trials which took place in Lancashire in 1612. 12 people (2 of whom were men, which was unusual) were accused of witchcraft, and 10 were eventually executed. Though The Familiars is a fictional story, it is based upon this historical event and many of the characters in the book actually existed.

The story revolves around Fleetwood, a young gentry woman who keeps having miscarriages. By chance, she meets Alice — a midwife from a nearby town who promises to try and help Fleetwood and stop the miscarriages from happening. But as other people start being arrested for witchcraft, Alice finds herself drawn into the tangle of lies and Fleetwood fears for both her own life and her unborn baby’s, as well as Alice’s.

Halls seems to have a natural talent for storytelling. I loved the atmospheric writing, and I enjoyed reading about the growing bond between Alice and Fleetwood. I also thought the story had a fitting ending. This story both moved me and fascinated me in equal measure, as it sucked me into the past — a past where women were persecuted and brutally killed for supposedly doing wicked and wrong things, when in reality many were simply trying to help their communities, often through unconventional methods. The Familiars backs up the long-told saying “mankind fears what it does not understand”.

Read this book if you enjoyed:

*The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
*The Witch Finder’s Sister by Beth Underdown
*The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea 

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