Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
Berkley (January 14, 2025)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Great horror reflects the societal fears of its time. In the 1950s, fear of the unknown and the atomic age inspired classics like Richard Matherson’s I Am Legend and Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney. In the 1960s, distrust in the government worsened, and many feared mental illness and occultism, giving birth to Robert Bloch’s Psycho and Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby. In Witchcraft For Wayward Girls, Grady Hendrix speaks to the evolution of these social anxieties and unrest but prioritizes an often suppressed point of view: women’s.
I went into this witchy genre blend without knowing anything about the plot or characters. I was pleasantly surprised to see Hendrix, praised for his horrific absurdity, approach pink horror, a subgenre about women’s issues and in response to misogyny.
Remember how everyone was shocked to learn that Nat Cassidy’s perimenopausal horror novel Mary: An Awakening of Terror was written by a man? Cassidy’s compassionate author’s note supported him as an ally to women. Hendrix does something similar and opens Witchcraft For Wayward Girls detailing his family’s connection to young girls and women sent away to maternity homes in the 1970s. I appreciated this because it created a sense of trust between me, a female reader, and this male storyteller writing about women’s historical traumas and pregnancies.
They called them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast.
Fifteen-year-old Fern, renamed to conceal her identity, is taken to the Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, to live amongst other unwed mothers-to-be, hidden from their communities and friends to have their baby in secret. Miss Wellwood, the head of the home, and Doctor Vincent refuse to tell the girls anything about what’s happening to their bodies. Nor do they explain their enforced diets or the purpose of invasive medical exams. Instead, they insist they know what’s best. Dr. Vincent says they wouldn’t be at home if the girls could care for and control themselves. In perhaps the most impressively empathetic element of the novel, Hendrix makes readers sit with the heavy realization of what becomes a mandatory exchange at home, and for many girls in this era, adoption isn’t only an option; it is the option. Here, the author captures a loss of autonomy that I hope male readers allow themselves to sit with.
A quirky, very Grady-esque traveling librarian gives Fern a book about witchcraft, and for the first time, the girls feel powerful. From here, the book gets graphic, gory, and unputdownable. Witches are known for sacrifice and tricks, but revenge is all too tempting, and soon, the girls will make the adults understand what it’s like to feel helpless as your body rebels beyond self-control.
A coven of pregnant girls, lava lamps, bloody sacrifices, and pink everywhere you turn, Grady Hendrix’s Witchcraft For Wayward Girls is his magnum opus. It’s every bit as whimsical as you’d expect of the How To Sell A Haunted House author, but achieves the highest power of fiction and puts the reader in the shoes of those who experience a struggle some may otherwise never have known.
Hendrix writes, “The last time I checked, it took two people to make a baby. But we only ever shamed one of them.”
I recommend this book to fans of occult horror and horror genre blends and those who enjoyed the hilarity and heart of Hendrix’s YA novel My Best Friend’s Exorcism.
