Rating: 3/5
When Kit Tyler’s grandfather dies, she sails from her beautiful home country of Barbados to America, where her only remaining family live. Kit’s mother’s sister Rachel and her gruff husband Matthew Wood live in a Puritan village in Connecticut with their two teenage children, Judith and Mercy. Kit finds it hard to fit in with the Woods, being accustomed to wearing fancy silk dresses and having slaves do all the work for her. But things get even more confusing when her elderly forbidden Quaker friend, Hannah Tupper, or the “Witch of Blackbird Pond” as the prejudiced townsfolk call her, finds herself in terrible danger—and Kit herself is accused of witchcraft.
I would have given this a 3 1/2 if I could. It was quite good and had an interesting plot, but the whole marrying theme was, at the end of the day, unnecessary and boring. Elizabeth Speare had quite a modern way of writing, as you can see in these mildly annoying and teenage-girly quotes:
“One hand moved guiltily to her tangled brown curls.”
“Those great listening eyes were fastened on the face of the young man bent over his book, and for one instant Mercy’s whole heart was revealed. Mercy was in love with John Holbrook.”
I just thought it would have been better without all the lovey-doveyness.