Synopsis:
‘I did an evil thing to be put in here, and I’m going to have to do an evil thing to get out.’
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, 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. There, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to keep her baby and escape to a commune. Zinnia, a budding musician who plans to marry her baby’s father. And Holly, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.
Every moment of their waking day 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.
Review:
I was sent a copy of Witchcraft for Wayward Girls in exchange for an honest review.
This was my first Grady Hendrix novel and I can safely say this will not be my last. I completely devoured this book and my god did it make me feel so many things, plus the end had me nearly in tears. I had to take a second on the last page because the emotions were just so much.
I can confidently say that this is the first book I’ve read where I’ve felt physically unwell reading a birth scene. There’s one in particular where the girl is referred to as a ‘patient’ and it’s meant to feel detached from reality, but the body horror and detail Hendrix included made me flush hot and cold. I genuinely felt like I was going to pass out. And I think that’s a sign of some truly incredible writing.
This starts out as more of a historical fiction, and for me in those first few pages the real horror is how these young girls are treated, and how unjust it is that they’re sent away and punished while the guys get no repercussions. You find out what happened to some of the girls, and just how little they understand about sex and their own bodies. None of these girls are portrayed as weak, Hendrix gives every girl a personality beyond their pregnancies.
After a while our main girls start to dabble in Witchcraft, at first it’s a small spell as a tester, and then they start thinking and doing bigger things. This is dark Witchcraft that comes with a price, there’s no small helpful spells here. And what it gives them power that they didn’t have before. You watch them descend down this path both in awe and in fear of what they may end up doing, or giving away. I never hated the girls, I always understood why they did everything they were doing. It was the adults who feel like the real bad guys here, for what they put the girls through and for what they hide from them.
At over 450 pages of small font I thought this would be a long read for me. But it flew by and I think it’s the perfect length. All of the exposition is needed to add context and reasoning to the events in the later part of the book. I could easily have read this in a day or two if I had the time to dedicate to reading.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls will haunt me for some time.
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