Books
‘Witchcraft for Wayward Girls’ Review – Grady Hendrix Mines Historical Horrors in Witchy ’70s Tale
Grady Hendrix prefers his scares to have substance. More specifically, the author tends to give a unique, witty, and poignant spin on classic monster archetypes and horror subgenres in his novels. My Best Friend’s Exorcism put a lighthearted, charming ’80s spin on demonic possession, The Final Girl Support Group envisioned forged friendships born of slasher trauma, and How to Sell a Haunted House captured a deeply Southern family learning to reconnect amidst a pesky poltergeist problem, for a few examples.
Hendrix’s latest, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, offers the author’s take on witches but with a far meatier and more mature story grounding it. Here, witchcraft is rarely as scary as the historically based horrors tormenting a handful of terrified teens shunned by society.
The 1970-set novel Witchcraft for Wayward Girls introduces 15-year-old Neva Craven, left scared and confused as her irate father coldly drives her across state lines and unceremoniously deposits her in Florida’s Wellwood House, a strict and controlling place for people like Neva: unwed pregnant teens. Neva doesn’t learn until she’s abandoned by her family that she’s there to give birth in secrecy, far from her town’s prying eyes, and surrender the baby for adoption.
The idea, of course, is that life will resume as normal for Neva and her disgraced family once the evidence of her transgression has been thoroughly resolved. The arduous, painful process begins the day Neva arrives, where she’s renamed Fern and given a fake background, joining similarly renamed pregnant teens Rose, Zinnia, and Holly, among others. The girls bond over Wellwood House’s cruelty and oppressive lack of agency, commiserating over the powerlessness of their situation. That’s precisely when Fern comes upon How To Be A Groovy Witch, a cryptic, worn paperback that offers the girls power like they’ve never experienced before.
By the time the book lands in Fern’s possession, Wayward Girls has already painted Wellwood House as a grim house of horrors of its own merit. It’s less a boarding school and more of a prison for its unlucky tenants, many too young to even understand what changes their bodies are undergoing, let alone the physical horrors of giving birth. There’s rarely a trace of empathy to be found within the creaking, groaning walls of the Floridian home, either, as the adults treat them as incarcerated felons unworthy of kindness. Wayward girls are, after all, a blight on polite society, a dirty secret to be kept hidden away under lock and key.
The House’s callous and grim proprietor, condescending doctor, and prickly staff all feel deserving of comeuppance in some form so that by the time a magical book lands in Fern’s hands, it brings an initial sigh of relief and hope that the power imbalance can be restored in some way. So much so that it falsely sets up the expectation that Hendrix might borrow from The Craft; Fern and her three friends deserve to call up the four corners to smite this rotten bunch of adults, surely.
Yet that would be too tidy and easy. Hendrix isn’t interested in retreading that familiar story, nor rewrite history. Instead, Wayward Girls maintains an unflinching eye on the horrific treatment of these girls and sometimes the even more heartbreaking reasons they wind up in places like Wellwood House. Witchcraft dangles exhilarating relief, only to violently rip it away with harrowing new consequences that further plunge Fern and friends into darkness. What begins as the start of a vengeance story through supernatural means instead slowly transforms into a harrowing tale of survival.
Driving home the girls’ relentless plight is the constant body horror. Witchcraft demands a price, often through blood and self-harm, yet it pales in comparison to the physical horrors of giving birth; Hendrix dedicates pages to demonstrating the gory, painful details of childbearing from ill-prepared mothers. Stephen King famously captured the abject terror of young Carrie White experiencing her first period, and Hendrix stretches that acute feeling over the course of an entire novel on a much larger scale. Of course, the body horror here isn’t exclusively pregnancy-related; expect to wince in sympathy over grotesquely broken fingernails, eviscerated tongues, and more.
There’s a solemn maturity to Wayward Girls matching its primal horror. While its witchcraft plotline feels a bit too neatly wrapped up by the novel’s end and one supporting character comes perilously close to a tired trope, though perhaps befitting of the era, Hendrix gives precedence and utmost weight to giving a voice to a specific generation of silence women. Levity doesn’t come in the form of Hendrix’s usual lighthearted wit but in the tender friendships formed by teens trapped in an unthinkable nightmare. It’s those friendships and the immediacy of their loss of agency that drives Wayward Girls, giving it rich complexity right through to its emotionally satisfying conclusion. It’s an affecting journey that casts a harrowing spotlight on a more insidious corner of history and immerses with its powerful portrayal of rebellion.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls publishes January 14, 2025.
Books
Urban Legends, Serial Killers, and Space Epics: 10 Horror Books We Can’t Wait to Read This June
We have entered summer reading season.
Schools are emptying, beaches are filling, and it’s a great time to pack a tote full of brand-new books and get some reading done in the shade. But even if the sun is bright, your fiction can still be dark, because June is absolutely packed with great new horror releases from rising stars and genre icons.
From a Psycho retelling to a dark twist on Peter Pan lore to a new book from a Pulitzer Prize winner, these are the horror titles we can’t wait to crack open this June.
The Children by Melissa Albert – June 2
A blend of dark fantasy, Gothic family saga, and horror novel that’s received rave reviews from Stephen King and more, The Children follows the adult children of a legendary fantasy author who died when a fire consumed their home. Now, living their own creative lives, Guinevere and Ennis must revisit the secrets from the night of the fire, the darkness surrounding Ennis’s new art installation, and the truth of their family legacy in both fact and fiction. It sounds like a wonderful twisted nest of secrets and magic, and I’m eager to dive in.
Marion by Leah Rowan – June 2
Just when you thought we’d run out of interesting ways to riff on Robert Bloch and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Leah Rowan comes along with Marion. As the title suggests, it’s the story of the Bates Motel’s most famous victim, but this time, she doesn’t die in the shower. She takes control of the knife and the narrative in this daring retelling of a proto-slasher classic. The story we know is just the beginning, and I can’t wait to find out the end.
Headlights by CJ Leede – June 9
Through her first two novels, Maeve Fly and American Rapture, CJ Leede emerged as one of the most exciting new horror voices of the 2020s, and she’s just getting warmed up. Leede’s third novel follows an FBI agent on the brink of retirement, running from his past and from the unsolved case that haunts him most, as he’s slowly pulled back into a gruesome serial killer narrative. Victims start turning up again, wearing someone else’s skin like a cape, with no memory of how they got that way, or how they got a lone strand of unidentified hair tied around their tongue. Both a riff on The Shining and a journey into the dark Colorado night, Headlights is one of the year’s most exciting horror lit events.
It Came From Neverland by Cynthia Pelayo – June 9
Cynthia Pelayo‘s novels have always felt like dark fairy tales, and with her latest, she’s taking things into the realm of one of the most famous children’s stories ever. It Came From Neverland follows a version of Wendy Darling who, while working as a schoolteacher and as an aid to rehabilitate World War I soldiers, finds old fears returning when a student goes missing. It seems that an entity Wendy knows only as “Peter Pan” is back on the prowl, and unlocking her memories might be the only way to stop it. That’s right, it’s a dark Peter Pan retelling as only Pelayo can do it, and you know you want a piece of that.
The Other by Annie Neugebauer – June 9
Annie Neugebauer’s The Extra ranks as one of the most clever and frightening horror novellas in recent memory, but that was only the beginning. This June, Neugebauer returns with the next book in what’s been dubbed “The Outsiders Sequence.” This time, Neugebauer’s strange world of doppelgangers and mimics turns to a couple on a hike who run into their exact duplicates, setting off a chain of events that will test their understanding of each other in terrifying ways. Neugebauer’s one of horror’s finest rising stars right now, so if you haven’t jumped on board The Outsiders Sequence yet, pick up The Extra and get ready for The Other.
Marla by Jonathan Janz – August 18 (Editor’s update: Release has now shifted from initial June 23 publication date)
Speaking of rising stars in the horror world, we’ve got Jonathan Janz, whose work has hit another level in recent years thanks to work like Children of the Dark and Veil. Now he’s back with Marla, the story of a local woman surrounded by urban legend, and her possible connection to a string of crimes in the community of King’s Branch. Is Marla a witch, a killer, a victim, a helpless child? We’ll have to read and find out in what feels like a perfect jumping-on point for new Janz readers.
The Sixth Nik by Daniel Kraus – June 23
Daniel Kraus has long been a favorite among genre readers, but thanks to his recent Pulitzer Prize win for his brilliant novel Angel Down, he’s more visible than ever, and all that visibility comes as he’s about to unleash a space epic with all the hallmarks of epic sci-fi and horror alike. The Sixth Nik promises everything from a sentient spaceship to a rogue planet full of plague to a nine-year-old “cultist” with an enhanced brain. This is Kraus playing in a brand-new sandbox, and genre readers everywhere won’t want to miss that.
Slasher Summer by E.L. Chen – June 23
E.L. Chen‘s latest novel is described as a love letter to ’80s slasher films, and anyone who’s taken a dive into the meta-horror of Scream or My Heart is a Chainsaw will want to sit up and take notice. The book follows a group of friends who grew up in a town famous as the location of a slasher movie, where they frequently played the characters during midnight shows. As adults, they return to their hometown, and to the location of the slasher movie, only to find that someone’s out to get them, someone wearing a very familiar mask. This sounds like a blast, and the latest in an ever-growing strand of slasher novels reinventing the genre on the page.
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay – June 30
Modern horror master Paul Tremblay‘s latest novel sounds like his most ambitious yet, and that’s really saying something. Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep follows Julia, a former pro gamer who gets an offer she can’t refuse: For a hefty payday, she must pilot a man named “Bernie” across the country for her mother’s tech company. The catch? Bernie’s in a vegetative state, and his mobility comes from the AI chip in his head. As Julia moves Bernie’s body, Bernie’s mind moves through an unfathomable nightmare world, but where are they heading, and what’s Bernie really meant to find? Every new Paul Tremblay book is an event, and this one feels particularly special.
Red X by David Demchuk – June 30
This one’s technically a reprint, but David Demchuk’s Red X is so revered among the horror community, and particularly other horror authors, that it feels worth highlighting, especially during Pride Month. Complex and metatextual, Red X is about a series of disappearances and a demonic entity plaguing the gay community of Toronto, but it’s also an autobiographical sketch of an author navigating death, survival, queer culture, horror as a means of expression, and more. In short, it’s an essential, and this new edition, complete with fresh writing by Gretchen Felker-Martin and Anthony Oliveira, is a must-have.
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