For my second book love book, I read Conversion by Katherine Howe. This book is fiction, specifically young adult and historical fiction, with some fantasy hinted at. Conversion uses themes of stress, gender, and class to convey multiple important messages throughout the story. For some background, this story is based on the Salem Witch trials of 1692. Conversion follows high school senior Colleen and her friends as strange things start happening during their last semester of senior year. At their all-girls Catholic school, girls begin getting strange symptoms - speaking gibberish, losing their hair, throwing up pins, and more. But something isn’t adding up - these girls don’t have anything in common. Every few chapters, a chapter taking place in 1702 about a girl named Ann’s experience during the Salem Witch trials goes side-by-side with the story. While the senior girls struggle to understand what’s going on, with little support from adults, Ann learns to tell her story of what really happened during the witch trials all those years ago - obviously, this is a work of fiction so it’s not an exact account of what happened during this time, but it provides enough information to give you the bigger picture. While this book had some good parts, and the plot was good, I just felt like it dragged on. There were chapters where nothing exciting happened and I was close to quitting the book. Also, the ending doesn’t specify some things that left me wondering about the book, and it made me frustrated. This book brings up the possibility of something similar to the Salem Witch Trials in modern times - you’re not sure whether these girls are actually bewitched or just faking. And if so, who’s to blame? One thing that I enjoyed about this book was how it also had information about the Salem Witch Trials, which I didn’t know much about before. All in all, I would recommend this book to you if you feel like learning something new, or just like history a lot. It’s a good book that covers a lot of different themes and ideas. I simply didn’t enjoy it because of how the plot dragged on for a long time and how it had an open ending. Also, I’m not much of a history person. But if you do choose to read this book, you’ll likely appreciate the plot and themes. Thanks for reading my book review of Conversion by Katherine Howe!
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