Witchcraft for Wayward Girls – ARC Book Review

There’s power in a book…

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home 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. 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 knows she’s going to go home and 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” 

I have read so many Grady Hendrix books before and when I got the ARC of his latest novel, which will be released next year, I was so ecstatic!

The Witchcraft of Wayward Girls follows the story set in 1970–when abortion was illegal and underage pregnant girls were whisked to a place in Florida called The Home run by a Miss Wellwood. Neva is one of those girls when she was dropped off to the Home. Her name was changed to Fern and she meets other girls who are like herself–Holly, Zinnia and Rose. Miss Wellwood basically controls everything in the house–from what the girls eat to what the girls should do and read. When Fern comes across a book about the witchcraft, Fern and the three girls decide to use some of the spells mentioned in the book. The spells became successful but then while using these spells, comes a price as well…

This was quiet an interesting read actually. Nearly half of the book describes about the girls’ life in the house, particularly when they were forced to give up on their babies and controlling the things that they should eat and do. But when the girls start coming across the witchcraft book then things started to get interesting. Though the whole story was fictional, the situation that these girls faced when they become pregnant out of wedlock and underage was emotionally disturbing–the child birth scenes are also a bit disturbing to read as well. I am not sure if the early 1970’s were like that mentioned in the book but nonetheless, the author had done some research about the life of girls in the 1970’s. In my opinion, this was one of the author’s best books. This book portrays about how society has a way of dictating and controlling the women’s life in every possible way which makes it also sad that it used to be like that back in the early 1970’s.

Above all, besides the emotional and disturbing parts, there were funny parts as well. Though it is a horror book, there wasn’t much scary or jump scare moments in the book in my opinion.

I enjoyed reading this book and give 4 stars to this book.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.