Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

Grady Hendrix

Enjoyment: 3.0Quality: 3.0Characters: 4.0Plot: 3.0

There’s power in a book… 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).


From the Forum
  • Reading Update from 42% (page 200)

    The pacing on this one is pretty slow...kind of reminds me of the pacing of My Best Friend's Exorcism where half the book none of the horror elements really kick in except the horror of the reality of unwed mothers in the '70s. Which, yes, very horrific in and of itself, but if you're gonna put Witchcraft in the title, idk, I would prefer those elements kick in faster than they are personally. Nearly halfway through the book and it's been such a minor element that it might as well not even be a thing tbh.

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  • Enjoyment: 3.0Quality: 3.0Characters: 4.0Plot: 3.0

    I wanted to love this one more than I did. A lot of the horror elements just felt cheesy in unintentional ways. The pacing wasn't great, I felt like the book took too long to get into the actual witchcraft/horror elements for me personally. I enjoyed the characters, but they also felt a little one-note for most of the book. There weren't any huge transformations or arcs for the characters. It was enjoyable but not a book I think I would reread.

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    Review pending. Really solid read though. 

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