Today’s #spellbooksaturday feature was a recommendation for fans of horror, and in that regard, it did not disappoint.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
[Content warning: sexual assault including assault of a child, birth trauma and pregnancy loss, medical abuse, self-harm, racism, system issues & trauma, etc.]
They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the 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, frightened, 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 the 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.
[source: bookshop.org]
I love a good “women discovering their personal power via witchcraft” narrative, and as someone who once worked for a library, I was tickled by the depiction the occult-peddling librarian. However, this book was a slog at times, with the aforementioned content warnings being quite prominent elements of the book. There is plenty of horror to be found in these topics, fitting for a horror novelist like Hendrix, and the fact that our rights are being steadily erroded to the pre-Roe reality of the novel is terrifying. But Hendrix seems at times to wallow in the gore and grief, and I occasionally found myself feeling that his message was muddied by a desire to titillate and frighten. Overall, I found the book to be fine, with the tonal shift of the final chapter jarring and a bit saccharine, but I would recommend it to fans of horror novels.
Have you read Witchcraft for Wayward Girls? What were your thoughts? Share in the comments!
Since I stopped using Goodreads, I will be recommending books via Bookshop.org, and have a list of #spellbooksaturday features for folks to peruse. In the spirit of full transparency: as a Bookshop.org affiliate, I will receive a small percentage of book sales purchased through my links. If you find that off-putting, feel free to shop directly through Bookshop.org or your own local bookseller! My only goal here is to fight Amazon and the mega-rich.
DID YOU ENJOY THIS SPELLBOOK SATURDAY FEATURE? SHOP THE LIST ON BOOKSHOP.ORG, OR CHECK OUT SOME MORE READING RECOMMENDATIONS…
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