Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

Format: 482 pages, Paperback

Published: January 14, 2025 by Tor Nightfire

Historical fiction Horror/borrowed

Horror, eh, no, there is no horror, except for the horror of girls being sent away to a home and their babies taken from them.

Fern is 15 and gets sent away to a house for unwed mothers. Their families lie where their daughters are. And here they are pretty isolated, bored and doing chores. While others preach that they ruined their lives and how good it will be to give those sins away.

It is very real and raw at times. The girls all have different stories and hopes, but in the end those are crushed. The babies are all adopted and the girls sent home like nothing happened.

The horror I guess comes from the said title, Fern gets a book about witchcraft and she and her new friends try it out. Magic is real, but there is always a price...

I enjoyed it a lot. It was easy to read and the pages flew by. I really wanted to know how it all turned out. I think the only negative part was part of the kind of epilogue that takes place 40-50? years later. That felt different, a new tone. It was not long, but somehow...bittersweet.

Def a pageturner.

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.