Witchcraft for Wayward Girls in Bookworm Bitches

Mar 06, 2025 Noe Crockett rated it liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, book-club, fantasy

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 subje 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 three stars after waffling between three and four. In a world where partial stars exist, this would be a 3.5 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. ...more

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