Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

Listen, I'm not someone who thinks authors should only write about people who share their experiences or identity, but in this case, Grady Hendrix should have stopped to ask himself whether he was the right author for this kind of story. It's disappointing because I really liked some of his female characters in other books. Unfortunately, while he is good at writing a female character in isolation, I'm realizing that he really fails to understand how women relate to each other and the world around them. In some cases, it just vaguely feels like there's something missing from how he writes female friendships, but with Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, there was nothing about any of his female characters, their interactions, or how they perceive their world that felt true. And that's a huge deal when the entire story is about a bunch of teenage girls, their relationships with each other, and how they're treated by the world. At that point, it's not just an identity thing, it's a quality of writing thing.

The narrator of the audiobook definitely didn't help. It felt like she was hamming it up the whole time and made every. single. sentence. sound like it was the worst. thing. in. the. world. Even benign descriptions are given this tone of “Isn't this the most world-shatteringly terrible thing you've ever heard?” but the text is just like, describing the view out a window. Also her voice whenever a character was yelling or crying was painfully shrill. I got to the hospital scene towards the end of the book and gave up partly because Hendrix's writing was exhausting and partly because I couldn't stand listening to the narrator shrieking.

Sorry for the extremely subjective review, but the experience of reading this book really pissed me off. Hendrix was a must-buy author for me, and I'm feeling disillusioned.

Could not get into the storyline.

I'm a huge Grady Hendrix fan. This is one of his strongest in my opinion. I love the moral gray areas. Neither the witchcraft or the Christian opposite are the solution that anyone needs.

This was my first Grady Hendrix and whilst it wasn't a new favourite, I will definitely try more from him.

I mostly liked this, I think the writing was good, and the atmosphere and setting were great, but my main issue with this was that it was just too long. Some scenes were really drawn out when they didn't need to be. If this was around the 400 page mark it would be spot on, but it just seemed never ending, especially as the plot revolves around the suffering of these girls - the suffering they go through with their pregnancies and births, as well as the suffering at the hands of the adults running the home and their own families. It was just a lot for a long time.

I want to say first that I didn't hate this novel– it isn't bad, it's just not for me. I think if I hadn't read Hendrix's other works before this one, I'd have either liked it better, or never finished it. I do think that this is a very ambitious novel, possibly the most ambitious I've seen Hendrix try yet. I just don't think it lands, but I also think that's just because of my personal taste.For me, a novel lives and dies on its pacing, and this is the worst paced Hendrix novel I've read (and I've read all of his fiction except [b:Horrorstör 13129925 Horrorstör Grady Hendrix https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1414314217l/13129925.SX50.jpg 18306052] and [b:The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires 44074800 The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires Grady Hendrix https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1584222716l/44074800.SY75.jpg 68534292]). I think the unevenness of the pacing really undercuts the themes Hendrix is trying to work with. I find those themes very admirable and interesting! I think they're also very ambitious for an author like Hendrix.Hendrix has his predilections– he is clearly interested in writing about southern women, specifically white women, specifically ‘normal' women. By ‘normal' I mean women with no supernatural powers or ridiculous skills (except being a bassist, one time), but also he wants them to have an extremely realistic psychology. They don't know they're in a horror novel, and they react accordingly– frequently these girls are selfish, self-defeating and cowardly. Hendrix isn't interested in Strong Female Characters as a trope; these characters are meant to be relatable, not inspirational. We're not supposed to think ‘I wish I was her', we're supposed to think ‘if she could, maybe I can'. And that's fine and works great, because Hendrix's stories are often campy and vaguely comedic. He can write straight-up horror– I think [b:The Final Girl Support Group 55829194 The Final Girl Support Group Grady Hendrix https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1614275199l/55829194.SY75.jpg 86047832] is pretty light on comedy; everything is drenched in tension. That book also deals with the most heavy subjects of his works: murder, specifically femicide, school shootings, and dying of cancer. If you inserted comedy into that mix, it'd feel a little lopsided.So you see where I'm going? This book deals with some pretty heavy subjects, and it's got a lot of comedy, and a very cowardly protagonist. I'm not saying the protagonist of this novel shouldn't be cowardly; one of the main themes of this book is how much the main characters are all children, and I think that's a very good and fair theme for this subject matter. I just think that the mixture of comedy, very slow pacing, and extremely serious subject matter (child sexual abuse, which is barely a spoiler as it's pretty obvious from the book's blurb and content warnings, but whatever) makes the book feel... bad. Not bad in the way a horror story should make you feel, frightened and anxious, but for me at least, it meant spending a lot of time with a girl who was doing nothing to help a very vulnerable person while the clock wound down.A lot of this book is spent sitting, waiting and talking. I understand why– I once spent a summer in Virginia and the summers there are slow and hot. The book brilliantly evokes this lazy, sweaty feeling. But knowing that every hour that passes is another hour closer to someone being sent back to one of the worst situations a child can land in makes me want to rip off my fingernails. Add to that a long conga of humorous scenes, and multiple instances where the main character could help but flinches away and I'm straight up not having a good time.But it's stretching Hendrix, who usually doesn't write about people from these intense sorts of backgrounds. You can sort of feel his focus flickering, because the book also flinches away from the characters who are out of his wheelhouse– the character with an intensely traumatic childhood, and also the Black women. This is the first Hendrix book with more than one Black character, and all three of them are alive for the whole book! It's a mixed bag for Hendrix, who kind of doesn't know what to do with these women for a lot of the novel. Without spoiling too much, they frequently feel underwritten, one of them having almost no discernible personality (beyond the fact that she never talks), and the other two existing to prop up the white main character and deliver some deus ex machinas. There's a palpable friction between the fact that Hendrix wants to write a white female character of middle class economic means as his protagonist (from the afterward, it's clear that she's based on relatives of his, so I understand this desire) and his desire to do better than his previous novels when it comes to the writing of Black and disadvantaged characters. This book really should have been about anyone but Fern, whose perspective only really gives you an everywoman account of what takes place. I wouldn't even call the underwritten aspects of the Black and disadvantaged characters an -ism, because the main character is also underwritten.In general, this film feels like a novella stretched to fit a novel's length. There's a lot of filling, a lot of the plot not progressing for convenient reasons (for example, there's a magic book that only shows important information when the main characters ‘need' it; conveniently, they only get it this info once a huge amount of time has ticked down, forcing conflict after chapters and chapters where very little happens that progresses the plot or deepens characterization). Reading the afterward and finding out that the first two drafts of this book didn't even have the titular witches really makes sense; they frequently feel misplaced, and they disappear from the story for huge swaths of time.This book feels extremely sophomoric for a writer of Hendrix's caliber, and I don't mean that in the sense that he's a perfect writer with no flaws; I mean that his previous two novels– which I really, really loved– are head and shoulders above this one in terms of craft. (You can weigh the merits of his attempts at representation for yourself.) While I have other gripes with this book, those are very much my personal feelings, which is fine, because in the end, this book isn't made for me. It kind of feels bad, I guess, because his previous books were, but I can get over that.If you want a very quirky and slightly twee story that is very light on actual horror (except for all the gore), this is a great book for you, especially if you want a story about the power of female friendship, motherhood, and a very well researched period drama.I just don't think he did enough academic research on the history of 'witchcraft' but I do appreciate that his witches were at least not more fucking Gardnerians. I deeply resent that ridiculous speech about The Burning Times-- yes, it was capitalized like that-- but I understand that it was given from the perspective of a 'witch' who was raised in a western / Mediterranean-inspired tradition, and that erroneous and ridiculous perspective is very alive and well today. We can see from the covens Hendrix thanks in the afterward that he probably picked it up from one of them, which, fine, whatever, I just hate it. (For more on this, I encourage you to read [b:The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present 34324501 The Witch A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present Ronald Hutton https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1497092904l/34324501.SX50.jpg 55387180], which is excellent, informative, and is a comparatively very easy read. Apparently Hendrix did research the history of witchcraft, he just portrayed it in a way I didn't personally like, which, again, this is very much a personal quibble than an objective mark of quality. Happy to be wrong!

He always write some deeper meaning in his books, and here it’s not the exception. The human story is great and terrible, and probably his most serious book.

I don’t want to spoil the story. If you know Grady Hendrix and read the title, you know there will be witches in the story or something supernatural. But that’s not important and not that great in this particular book of him; it’s the human drama, the story of these girls, this kids facing a horrible age were being a woman was really hard, worst if you were a girl, a minor with no power and no one fighting for you.

That human drama, the amazing portrayal of the 1970s and the loneliness these girls had felt, powerless in a world of men where old conservative women seemed to fight for support that conservative south. That’s an amazing story, I feel what the protagonist felt. I went to bed feeling alone and angry for these girls. That’s why I recommend this book, not his best, but very good nevertheless.

“We were girls. That's what they called us in their articles and their speeches and their files: bad girls, neurotic girls, needy girls, weyward girls, selfish girls, girls with Electra complexes, girls trying to fill a void, girls who needed attention, girls with pasts, girls from broken homes, girls who needed discipline, girls desperate to fit it, girls in trouble, girls who couldn't say no. But for girls like us, down at the Home, the devil turned out to be our only friend.”

Wow. Just wow.

Just with the real newspaper excerpts included in the beginning of the book, I knew the ride I was in for. It's raw, gruesome, and will make you angry by how unfairly and dishonestly these girls are treated.

The main character is Neva, who in the Home is not allowed to have her own name, background or hobbies, and simply becomes Fern - the fifteen-year-old girl who believed her boyfriend would stay with her forever, but who ended up all alone in an isolated home together with other anonymous girls like her.

Throughout her stay, Fern learns that the adults in this Home do not have their best interest in mind, and see them as nothing more than Jane Does that have to pop out a baby, surrender it, and go back to their regular life. But as she learns of a few girls who cannot go back to their old life, or do not want to give up their baby, Fern and her companions turn to magic to help them out. But is magic really all that great? Well, all actions have consequences...

This book reads like you're watching a slow-burn thriller film that builds up plenty of high stakes. The characters all have interesting motivations and I love that nothing about them is spelled out for you, but you can infer exactly what kind of person they are from their actions. Fern, also, isn't just a simple main character that always does the right thing. You can be frustrated with her, but at all times have empathy for her because of the things she had gone through.

This isn't a light read. It's evocative, honest, and well-researched. I can only recommend it.

Hendrix has a wonderful way of writing really empowered female lead characters. He chooses to use real life tied into some sort of horror trope; is what is really happening more horrific then the monster? That’s always the question. What was difficult with this work was that he chose to highlight some really horrific reality with young girls who were forced to give away their babies. And just like the forced lobotomy of “Onew Flew over the Cuckoo’s nest” we see that reality is truly more terribly then anything a writer may invent. I thought this was a power and meaningful work. I gave 4 stars because it was hard to get through and perhaps maybe I shouldn’t penalize the work for that; but in terms of pleasurable reads, this wasn’t as enjoyable as “How to Sell a Haunted House” and that’s the point, really.

Another solid effort from Hendrix, who I trust to take me to interesting places with well-drawn characters and a nice dash of creepiness typically factoring in. The underlying, real-life horrors here far outweigh the witchiness, but Hendrix does important work bringing this forgotten story that faced so many young girls in our nation's history and weaves an intriguing tale around it.

I tore through Witchcraft for Wayward Girls in a day—it’s an incredibly compelling read, with layered characters and a story that’s both gripping and unsettling. Beyond the narrative itself, there’s some heavy thematic material here, especially when considered against the backdrop of current events, making it all the more resonant.

Interestingly, while this is marketed as horror, the horror elements are sporadic. There’s a slow build-up to anything supernatural, followed by a particularly graphic scene that seems to signal a full shift into horror—only for the novel to ease off the gas again for long stretches. It never loses momentum, but it reads more like dark fantasy with horror elements rather than a straight-up horror novel.

One of its greatest strengths is the immersive atmosphere. Hendrix paints a vivid picture of Wellwood House—you can practically feel the oppressive Florida heat and the claustrophobic unease of the girls’ situation. Without diving into spoilers, this is absolutely worth a read, both for the story itself and the broader conversations it invites.

15yr old Fern (Neva) is sent to Wellwood House in 1970 to give birth in secret and surrender her baby for adoption. Under the horrible supervision of Miss Wellwood, Fern and the other pregnant girls form bonds, united by their shared isolation and desperation. When a librarian gives Fern an occult book but kind of kitschy on witchcraft, the girls discover a way to reclaim their power in a world that has stripped everything. But wielding such power comes with major and dangerous consequences.

“There’s power in a book” is a great way to describe this scary, highly uncomfortable story about young girls reclaiming their power in a society intent on silencing them. This was a great story of defiance, sisterhood, and the dangers of wielding forbidden knowledge. I loved all of that part! I loved it enough that I wanted to read it slower to stay in that story longer. AND THERE’S A CHARACTER NAMED ZINNIA!!!!

HOWEVER, I didn’t like the way he wrote some characters and moments—especially involving Black characters and birth scenes—feels inauthentic and could have benefited from greater sensitivity. The birth scenes were kinda comical and I thought, “ugh a man definitely wrote this!”

Despite these missteps, the book’s feminist undertones left an indelible mark, reminding me of that quote, “they didn’t burn witches, they burned women.” - witch hunts were never about witches, but about silencing women. If you like eerie, thought-provoking stories then I definitely recommend this one!

“They hate us enough. Don’t hate yourself too.”

“What do you think librarians do? Checkout books? Certainly not! We deliver knowledge to those who need it.”

This could have gone terribly wrong. A successful middle aged man writing about young girls punished for being pregnant could have gone off the rails in so many ways, but Hendrix pulls it off (disclaimer: I am also a middle aged man, and it's quite possible that someone else may feel differently). This is full of tenderness and empathy, as well as some pretty full on body horror which does not flinch from the reality of pregnancy and childbirth. It's a powerful read, one that should leave you with a deep and abiding sense of anger. Hendrix doesn't labour the point, just a brief reference at the end, but in an era where the US establishment is closer than ever to rolling back safe and legal abortion, this is anything but a historical novel.

Grady did it again. A chilling peek into the lives of children, who had children, at a maternity home in the 70’s. The young women learn about the magic that lives inside all of us, and in our sisterhoods. The utter cringe and horror that reality and our world can be, is the real scary story.