Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix #WitchcraftforWaywardGirls #NetGalley

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.
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).

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Hi and welcome to my review of Witchcraft for Wayward Girls!

I’m often the kind of reader who’s desperate to get her mitts on a certain book, and then when said highly anticipated book arrives, manages to ignore it for a long, long time. Not so with Grady Hendrix, I started it the second it landed on my Kobo. There is only one rule when it comes to his books: run, don’t walk!

I’m pretty sure I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: one of the things I love about this author is that I’m never quite sure where I’ll end up when I start one of his books, and that was most definitely the case with Witchcraft for Wayward Girls. In this case, though, it worked a little less for me than it usually does.

I gobbled up the witchy bits of Witchcraft for Wayward Girls. That was definitely what I’d signed up for. Particularly the first time this band of wayward pregnant teens dabbles with witchcraft was perfection. Highly reminiscent, for me at least, of The Craft (my favourite film back when I was about these girls’ age) but with that trademark dark Hendrix humour.

A large chunk of Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, however, reads more like drama (Holly’s story is devastating) and “historical” (1960s-1970s) fiction, portraying the horrors of childbirth (including multiple graphic childbirth scenes I could have done without) and the homes unwed pregnant girls were sent to to have their babies, any choice taken away from them. I suspect the author’s afterword, which was not yet included in the digital review copy I read, might have something to say about the overturning of Roe vs Wade.

While fascinating and thought-provoking, it wasn’t quite what I expected to read when I picked up Witchcraft for Wayward Girls. I was in it for the witchy and the creepy, and for me personally, there wasn’t enough of it.

Despite the fact that my expectations were not met entirely, I still had a really good time with this story, rooting for its girls and being witness to them finding their strength in each other and themselves, and a little witchcraft. Recommended but be sure to go in with the right expectations.

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls is out in digital formats, audio and hardcover on 16 January. 

Massive thanks to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for the digital review copy. All opinions are my own.