The Last Witch

The Last Witch by C.J. Cooke is a thrilling and infuriating historical horror novel based on the true story of the victims of the infamous witchfinder Heinrich Kramer who wrote the famous Malleus Maleficarum, a textbook on how to identify and deal with witches.

Let me start out by saying C.J. Cooke is the real deal which I know you know. This book was a thrilling page-turner, and her main characters - even the villains - were fully fleshed and sympathetic. Except Kramer. F* that guy.

The story is told primarily from the perspective of Helena Scheuberin, a typical middle-class housewife - in 15th century Austria, which means she is keeping house, being annoyed by her mother-in-law, and trying to get pregnant with the help of her husband's footman because her husband is sterile, and she doesn't want to get punished for not bearing his children. (You read that right.)

When the witchfinder Heinrich Kramer - Dominican friar turned Inquisitor, backed by the Pope - comes to town, she questions his theory that all women are evil and probably witches, so he decides she's a witch because of course he did.

The Last Witch highlights how easily neighbors can turn against neighbors, friends against friends, even family against family when encouraged by the small men who got off - literally and figuratively - by wielding their power over women (almost always women, but yes, some men). But, more importantly, it's also a story about the power of women and the friendships that are formed through and/or can withstand these trials.

This history is horrific, but it also feels eerily prescient and not all that lost to history. I mean, I can't be the only one who sees Heinrich Kramer behind the masks of those who are rounding up innocent people, encouraging their friends and neighbors to turn them in, arresting and executing them, can I?

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the review copy for my honest feedback.