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Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
"Superb ... a perfect horror for our imperfect age.” – The New York Times
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER
There’s power in a book…
They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to 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 plans to 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).
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER
There’s power in a book…
They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to 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 plans to 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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Community Reviews
Painful look at the history of "wayward girls" in America... a close examination of the systems and the history of suppression and repression that has kept women down for centuries. BUT, it also has some really beautiful moments of trimumph. Ultimately, I really enjoyed.
An excellent blend of research and magic set at a home for pregnant girls
prior to Roe V. Wade and a scary similarity to what is currently happening…..
Hendrix is skilled at writing strong female protagonists that feel like real people, and he’s done it again in this one. I loved the relationships between these forgotten girls based on real American women.
Hendrix does a great job setting the scene historically while weaving in the supernatural and feminist themes.
I really enjoyed this one but the plot was a little slow at points and the ending was lackluster, which is why I didn’t give this one a full five stars, but I definitely enjoyed it and would recommend it!
This was a very good book but it was such a slow burn for me that I almost DNFd it. I switched to audio and was able to finish it. I’m glad I did! The subject matter of the oppression of women was so well told with just a little bit of magic.
This was my first book by Grady Hendrix and I REALLY loved his writing style. It was easy to read, somehow familiar and comfortable - which feels like a weird way to describe writing, but here we are. I'm not sure if that's his style in general or if it's exclusive to this book, but I'll read more in his backlist in the future to find out.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls pulled me in immediately. I am a HUGE feminist and advocate for reproductive rights so this was a homerun for me in terms of subject matter. It takes place in the summer of 1970 in the south, at a home for unwed young mothers sent there by their "disgraced" families to have and then surrender their babies.
Right away, it was giving me "Girl, Interrupted" vibes. These girls were thrown away by their families and society like trash, until their "crisis" passed and they were again considered acceptable (as long as they pretended their pregnancies never happened).
Hendrix is a master at coming up with delightful little word bites, some of my favorites from this novel include "hillbillies who couldn't outrun their cousins" and "Mrs. Richard Nixon." And the quote by Fern/Neva's mother of, " Happiness isn't about doing what you like, but learning to like what you have to do" made me want to scream and drop all of the F bombs for the manipulation of it all.
Hendrix is equally adept at crafting horror scenes that are graphic, grotesque, and oddly compelling - something we saw in this novel through the childbirth and miscarriage scenes. And maybe it was because I was given an epidural or because I wasn't a teen mom with no education on childbirth or because I had a strong support system or because I wasn't treated like a subhuman, but this was a stark contrast from my own child birthing experience and it hurt my heart to think of anyone having that kind of trauma tied to theirs, particularly at such a young age.
I also realized that I would have quickly jumped head first into the coven and worried about my soul probably too late and I'm not sure what that says about me other than I trend toward passionate, escapist, and impulsive. Even when the truth about Mrs. Parcae came out, I was still kind of like...."I mean, I get it, but we're still running away with them, right?" and then begrudgingly accepted that it probably *wasn't* the wisest choice as the story evolved (still not happy about it).
All of that said, the ending with Holly was a little annoying. Like, if we were going that direction, there were a lot of pages that now feel like a waste of time. Couldn't we have just made that happen sooner? Couldn't Mags have intervened sooner? What was even the point of all of that?
These girls were my mother's generation and it is absolutely INSANE to me that only one generation ahead of me experienced such barbaric treatment for situations that were often (if not exclusively) caused by predatory behavior, trauma, abuse, and manipulation inflicted on them by others. It's even more disturbing given our current political climate and what seems like more than half of our country's desire to go back to these times when things were apparently so "great." It all makes me want to vomit in my mouth.
Ultimately, I gave this book 7 out of 10 stars after waffling between 7 and 8. In a world where partial stars exist, this would be a 7.5 for me. It was a fun read (with incredibly important historical references and detail), had amazing writing, and completely addictive characters that I just simply wanted MORE of. This isn't my typical read, it was a book club pick, but I will be recommending it to my non-smut book reading friends.
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