Reincarnation Station: A Review of A Witch in Time by Constance Sayers

Hello, Book Nerds! Welcome back to Reading Has Ruined My Life or welcome if you are new. As always, my name is Hannah and I am your captain on this journey into my bookcases.

I have something a lot less unhinged to review this week. There are no werewolves, wolf fur sweaters or characters named Poodles to see today. Nay, nay. We do have ancient curses, demons, and reincarnation though so buckle up for a wild ride. Let’s get into it.

Please give a warm welcome to A Witch in Time by Constance Sayers!

As always, a spoiler alert is in order. If you’ve read any other review on this site then you will know I simply love to spoil the entirety of the books I read. This is your one and only warning. I also have a content and trigger warning to issue. A Witch in Time discusses rape, sexual assault, grooming, suicide, and various forms of abuse. Please take care while reading. Now let’s get to the synopsis.

Juliet LaCompte, Nora Wheeler, Sandra Keane, Helen Lambert. Four women separated by time, but four women who share the same life. Juliet was the first. In 1895 she began a love affair with famous painter Auguste Marchant. This relationship is doomed from the start; mainly because it’s pedophilic and is grooming and should have never been presented as “love story” or romance. It ends with Juliet’s mother summoning a demon and cursing Marchant.

What follows is Juliet falling in love with the lesser demon who is watching over her, her dying, and being reincarnated as a woman named Nora where she must relive her love affair with Auguste Marchant with his reincarnation. There’s a lot going on right now, I know. Just know this happens to the main character four times and Helen Lambert is the latest incarnation. She’s the one who plans to end this cycle. And she only has two weeks to do so.

Yes, not only does she need to break this curse, she has a time limit. Helen is destined to die at 34-years-old in every life as that is the age Juliet’s mother died at. Helen only has two weeks to end her curse. So can she do it? Or will she be forced to relive a doomed romance for a fifth time?

I want to like A Witch in Time more than I did. The binding/reincarnation curse was a premise that piqued my interest when I heard it. But the more I read, the more disappointed I became.

The more I read, the less I enjoyed.

My issue isn’t with the main plot, nor the quality of the writing, this issue is with the main character. The main female lead is wholly defined by her relationships with men. First Juliet is Auguste’s muse, then Nora is Billy’s unwilling beard, and Sandra is turned into a magical healer by Luke. Helen is the only one who doesn’t fall into this issue, but that’s only because she has a curse to break. I guess this is also in part an issue with the quality of the writing.

I could not tell you any of Juliet’s, Nora’s, Sandra’s or Helen’s personality traits. I could not tell you about them as a person. The best I could do is tell you their jobs. Girly has no personality in any life. A Witch in Time is supposed to be their collective story, yet at times it feels the story is only about their relationships with men. Every single lifetime, every single version of the heroine readers meet, needs a romantic relationship to define her life.

That's something I never want to see in my books.

Also, why is the main character never truly upset about her binding curse when she relearns what happened to her as Juliet? I want to see this girl angry. I want to see this girl seething. Throwing items all around, shouting at the sky, cursing her mother, Luke, and the demon who accepted this binding curse in the first place. Yet that doesn’t happen. Why does she more or less accept things right away? And why does she fall in love with Luke? They have some okay banter, they certainly have a history together, but the pair feel pushed together because the author could do so and not for any legitimate reason.

A Witch in Time has such an interesting premise and set up. The main character’s four lives are told via flashback as Helen in the current day dreams of them. I like the idea. It’s a great narrative structure and makes perfect sense. Some of the flashback chapters do feel more like exposition dumps than actually propelling the story forward. I am talking about one of Sandra’s chapters in particular here. It was over fifty pages long and it felt as if Constance Sayers included everything about Sandra in this one chapter simply to avoid writing more from Sandra’s point-of-view and wrap up the story at large.

I love the premise of A Witch in Time. There is so much potential in this book. Alas I find the execution lacking and the main character/characters flat. This book, this story, relies heavily on the four female leads. They are the driving force of this book, but they offer nothing. Had they been reworked, had they not been defined by their relationships with men, then A Witch in Time would have worked. Sadly that is not the case.

With that, I shall bid you all adieu. Thank you very much for joining me today, Book Nerds. I hope you had a lovely time here, and I will see you all again next week with another new post. If you can’t wait that long then give Reading Has Ruined My Life a follow over on Instagram (@ReadingHasRuinedMyLife). I post there almost daily so come back often to revel in literary goodness. You can also follow the blog on Twitter and BlueSky (@RHRMLBlog). If you’d like something not related to books, then I highly suggest checking out my podcast Nothing to See Hear. The show stars me and two of my dearest friends as we talk about everything and anything under the sun. May I recommend our Scooby-Doo review series for ya today? You can currently find the show on Spotify and YouTube.

Until next time, stay safe, wash your hands, and read some good books for me.

See y'all then, bye!