Hillary Monahan, who is part-Romani and a sexual assault survivor, explores both topics in this wrenching but flawed novel. I really wanted to like it more than I did, but though I devoured it, I couldn’t give it more than three stars.

Bethan is a Welsh Romani girl who has been raised by a woman whom she believes to be unrelated to her. Her guardian is a witch in a world where magic is rare but real, and she wants Bethan to follow in her footsteps. Bethan is more concerned about dealing with her harasser, Silas, whose father is a leader who won’t accept that his son could do wrong. She’s also enjoying a budding friendship (or maybe something more) with diddicoy (part-Romani) farmboy Martyn, who is curious about her culture and helps her out at the market.

Things go seriously wrong when Silas attacks Martyn and Bethan, raping her and nearly killing her friend. Bethan turns to her grandmother’s arts to engage in a gruesome ritual to save Martyn and avenge herself on Silas and his accomplices. She deals with dissociation after the attack, and also has to consider whether or not she wants to continue along the path her grandmother set her on.

The ethics of the book are downright weird, with outright slavery in the form of a magical bond being condoned. The prose is also not at the level I hoped it would be. The setting is vague in terms of time–it seems to be in the past, but there aren’t a lot of clues as to when. Nevertheless, the characters sometimes use very modern language when discussing racism and other topics. And the grandmother character’s backstory somewhat unbalanced the book–I felt like it should have taken up either less space or more.

That said, it’s an interesting and readable book. Monahan brings her personal knowledge and experience to bear on two very important topics, and reading the book was certainly educational for me. But I feel like it had a lot of unrealized potential in terms of the writing.