Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
by Grady Hendrix
Blurb:
Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.
Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood.
In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master” (NPR).
My Review:
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix absolutely pissed me off, and I
mean that in the most visceral, blood-boiling way possible before it slowly,
almost reluctantly, let me come back down to earth.
From the very beginning, I felt personally
attacked. Not in a cheap, gimmicky way, but in that deep, uncomfortable way
where a story holds up a mirror and you don’t like what you see reflected back.
As a young mother, I was furious. The way these girls are treated? Dumped,
discarded, hidden away like shameful secrets just because they got pregnant?
It’s not just upsetting, it’s infuriating. The idea that a parent could abandon
their child, not out of necessity but out of fear of society’s opinion, is absolutely unhinged. I was sitting
there genuinely seeing red. It made my stomach turn.
And maybe that’s what hit me the hardest, because
I can’t relate to those parents. I had a
mother who stood by me, who loved me through everything, and because of that, I
genuinely cannot wrap my mind around choosing reputation over your own child.
It’s cruel. It’s cowardly. And this book doesn’t soften that reality it shoves
it in your face and dares you to look away.
But once I got past that initial wave of anger,
once I stopped wanting to scream at fictional parents and judgmental strangers,
the story started to settle into something deeper. Because underneath all that
rage, this book has a point. Actually, it has several, and none of them are
subtle.
First: this isn’t just some outdated,
historical issue. This has happened, and
in different ways, it’s still happening. Girls are still being judged,
silenced, and punished for things that involve more than just them, but somehow
they’re the only ones carrying the blame. And the judgment? Oh, the judgment.
The constant, suffocating, holier-than-thou commentary from people who have
absolutely no stake in the situation. Honestly, if your name isn’t on the
problem, your opinion shouldn’t be either. Keep it to yourself.
Second: every action has consequences, but
what this book does so well is show how unfairly those consequences are
distributed. The girls suffer. The girls are hidden. The girls are forced to
“atone.” Meanwhile, where is everyone else? Exactly.
And then there’s the chaos, the glorious,
unhinged chaos, and the feminine rage that pulses through this story. That
part? I loved. Give me anger. Give me rebellion. Give me girls who are done
being quiet and start pushing back, even when it gets messy, even when it gets
dark. Especially then. That energy carried the book for me and turned my
frustration into something almost cathartic.
Now, as for calling this horror? I don’t know
if it fits neatly into that box. It’s not horror in the traditional sense, there
aren’t constant jump scares or relentless dread, but don’t get it twisted: this
book is horrifying. Not because of
monsters, but because of how real it feels. The situation, the treatment, the
emotional brutality, that’s what sticks with you. It’s eerie, it’s unsettling,
and it lingers in a way that’s arguably worse than typical horror.
What really pulled me through, though, were
the twists and the direction the plot takes. Just when you think you have a
handle on it, the story shifts, and suddenly you’re deeper in than you
expected. That creeping unease builds into something sharp and unforgettable.
So
yeah, this book made me angry. It made me uncomfortable. It made me want to
yell. But it also made me think, and feel, and reflect in ways that stuck long
after I finished it. And honestly? That kind of reaction is powerful, even when
it’s messy.
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