First published 2013
Cate Cahill keeps her head down. She attends tea parties, deflects marriage proposals, and watches over her two younger sisters in their small New England town. The neighbors already find the Cahill girls suspicious: too pretty, too bookish, too withdrawn. What the neighbors don't know is that all three sisters are witches. Cate promised her dying mother she would keep them safe, and she intends to keep that promise. Then she finds her mother's diary. The entries inside point to a secret that puts the whole family at risk, not just from the Brotherhood priests who would send witches to an asylum or a prison ship, but from the Sisterhood as well. With six months left before she must choose between marriage and joining the Sisterhood, Cate starts reading banned books and forming alliances with friends who ask dangerous questions. She also falls into a forbidden romance with Finn Belastra, a man her world considers completely unsuitable. The closer Cate gets to the truth, the clearer it becomes that no one around her, not the Brotherhood, not the Sisterhood, and possibly not even her own sisters, can be fully trusted.
Genres: romance, coming-of-age, fantasy, young-adult, dark-fantasy, historical-fantasy
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, emotional, mysterious, suspenseful, tension-filled
Tropes: coming-of-age, forbidden-romance, found-family, secrets-and-lies
Setting: New England
Period: 19th-century
346 pages · Paperback · Puffin Books
Content warnings: death