Witchcraft for Wayward Girls BOOK REVIEW

• Date Published:
  2025
• Length:
  496 pages—Listening Time: 16 hours 19 minutes
• Genre:
  Fiction, Horror, Historical Fiction
• Setting:
  Summer of 1970 and present day; St. Augustine, Florida, specifically inside a fictional, isolated unwed mother's home called Wellwood House
• Awards:
  Shirley Jackson Award Nominee Novel 2025; Bram Stoker Award Nominee Novel 2025; British Fantasy Award Nominee Horror Novel 2026; Library Journal Best Books Horror 2025; Barnes & Noble Best Books of the Year Horror 2025; Indigo Best Books of the Year Top 100 2025; Indigo Best Books of the Year Mystery & Thriller 2025; Astra Book Awards Nominee Best Horror Book 2026; Goodreads Choice Awards Winner Horror 2025; NPR: Books We Love Mysteries & Thrillers 2025; Los Angeles Public Library Best of the Year Fiction & Literature 2025; Lariat Adult Fiction Reading List Top Ten 2026; LibraryReads Monthly Pick Hall of Fame January 2025; Chicago Public Library Best of the Best: Adults 2025; Chicago Public Library Best of the Best: Adults Must-Read Books: Fantasy, Horror & Sci-Fi 2025; LibraryThing: Top Five Books of the Year 2025; Brooklyn Public Library's Favorite Books of the Year Adults 18+ 2025; Powell's Favorite Books of the Year Fiction 2025; Booklist Editor's Choice: Adult Books for Young Adults Fiction 2025; Mid-Continent Public Library Best Books Adult Fiction 2025; Mid-Continent Public Library Best Books Audiobooks 2025
• Languages:
  English, Polish, Spanish
• Sensitive Aspects:
  Sexual assault and child sexual abuse, teenage pregnancy, graphic childbirth and birth trauma, invasive medical procedures without consent, coerced adoption and mother–baby separation, institutional abuse and confinement, emotional abuse and humiliation, misogyny and sexual shaming, racism and discriminatory treatment, loss of bodily autonomy, graphic violence and gore, body horror and mutilation, blood and ritual self-harm, witchcraft and occult themes, smoking during pregnancy
• Movie:
  There is no official movie or TV adaptation currently greenlit or in production for Witchcraft for Wayward Girls.
• Recommended for Book Club:
  Yes

Some books make you check the locks before bed. This one made me want to check on every girl I knew in high school.

I saved Witchcraft for Wayward Girls for the end of our Readers With Wrinkles Halloween series because I love Grady Hendrix. I trusted him to deliver a memorable finale—something unsettling, wickedly funny and clever and worth leaving the porch light on for. What I didn’t know was that I was saving a book I would love this much.

Hendrix takes us to Florida in 1970, where pregnant teenage girls are sent away to have their babies in secret. At Wellwood House, adults control their days, their choices, and even their names. Then a book about witchcraft offers something these girls have been denied: the possibility of power. You can understand the appeal. When everyone insists they know what’s best for you while refusing to listen to a word you say, a spell book starts looking downright reasonable.

But here’s what I want you to know before you pick this up: the supernatural isn’t the only thing that will frighten you. The shame, the secrecy, the way these girls are treated as problems to be managed rather than people to be loved—that’s where this story sinks its claws in.

And if you were a teenager in the ’70s, you should absolutely read this book. Not because everyone’s adolescence looked like this, but because its world may feel uncomfortably recognizable: the whispered judgments, the uneven rules, the importance of what the neighbors might think. Hendrix puts those attitudes inside a place where vulnerable girls can’t escape their consequences.

Now, a warning from one reader to another: he also brings the true horror of childbirth to life, gore and all. There’s no discreet fade-out followed by a freshly washed baby. These scenes are graphic, frightening, and deeply concerned with what it means to give birth when you’re young, scared, and denied control over your own body. Readers with childbirth-related trauma should approach with care.

Plenty of horror writers serve up gore for the sake of shock or another notch on the body count. What I love about Hendrix is that his horror has heart—and a message. Here, the blood isn’t a substitute for emotional depth. It makes the girls’ vulnerability impossible to look away from, while their friendships give us every reason to keep looking.

I expected witches. I expected trouble. I didn’t expect to care so fiercely about these girls that the scares would become almost secondary to my need for someone, somewhere, to finally do right by them.

That’s the book I saved for last. And that’s why I’m asking you not to let this one slip past your reading pile.

Spoiler-Free

In the sweltering Florida summer of 1970, fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at Wellwood House pregnant, frightened, and far from home. It’s a place where families send their unmarried daughters to have their babies quietly, surrender them for adoption, and return home as though nothing happened. For the adults, the arrangement offers a tidy solution. For the girls living through it, there’s nothing tidy about it.

Inside, Fern finds other teenagers facing the same uncertain future. Among them are Rose, who’s determined to keep her baby; Zinnia, who dreams of marrying her baby’s father; and Holly, barely fourteen and silent about how she ended up there. Their friendships offer some comfort in a house where adults decide nearly everything—from what they eat to what happens to their children. Everyone claims to know what’s best for them. Nobody seems particularly interested in asking.

Then a visiting librarian hands Fern a book about witchcraft, opening a door she never knew existed. For girls who’ve been denied even the smallest choices, the possibility of changing their circumstances is irresistible. But the magic they begin exploring comes with its own demands, and taking control of their lives may be more complicated—and more dangerous—than they imagined.

If we were having coffee right now, this is the point where I’d lean across the table and say, “Okay, but let me tell you why this book got to me.” Because recommending horror can be tricky, can’t it? My idea of a wonderful evening might be your reason for sleeping with the hallway light on.

But what made me love this book wasn’t simply how frightening it was. It was how much I cared. Underneath the witchcraft, the blood, and the things you’d rather not picture while eating a muffin, there’s a story with heart. Here’s why I think it might get under your skin, too.

You’ll care about the girls before you worry about the witchcraft

You know that moment when fictional characters stop feeling like names on a page and start feeling like people you need updates on? That’s what happened here. I wasn’t reading just to find out what the magic would do. I wanted to know whether these girls would be heard, whether they could trust someone, whether they’d get a say in their own lives. Once a book makes me that invested, putting it down becomes less a choice and more an interruption.

The horror has something to say

I can handle gore. What wears me out is gore that seems to exist because the author ran out of other ways to keep my attention. Here, the disturbing moments carried emotional weight for me. They made the girls’ fear, vulnerability, and lack of control feel immediate. Hendrix doesn’t just ask, “Did that scare you?” He leaves you thinking about why it scared you—and why some of the most upsetting parts don’t require anything supernatural at all.

If you were a teenager in the ’70s, this one may hit particularly close to home

Maybe you remember the judgments people delivered in lowered voices. Maybe you remember how a girl’s reputation could become everybody’s business, while her feelings somehow remained beside the point. You don’t need to have shared these characters’ experiences to recognize the attitudes surrounding them. That recognition is part of what makes this such an affecting read. Sometimes a book takes you back without making you the least bit nostalgic.

The friendships give you something to hold on to

With a premise this unsettling, I needed moments of connection. I needed to feel that these girls had more than fear in common. Their friendships were a huge part of the book’s pull for me. There’s something moving about watching people find understanding in one another when the adults around them are so busy making decisions on their behalf. Those connections gave me reasons to hope—even when I wasn’t feeling especially optimistic.

It refuses to make childbirth look tidy

Let’s put our coffee cups down for this part.

Hendrix brings childbirth’s physical horror onto the page, gore and all. I found those scenes frightening because of the pain, certainly, but also because of the vulnerability surrounding it. Being scared and needing someone to listen to you is one thing. Being scared while everyone else holds the authority over your body is another.

This won’t be a selling point for every reader, and I wouldn’t pretend otherwise. But the refusal to soften that experience is part of what made the book so powerful for me.

You’ll have plenty to talk about afterward

Some books give you a pleasant book-club evening. Others make everyone forget to refill their wineglass because someone has just said, “But did they really have a choice?” This feels like the second kind.

I’d want to talk about shame, friendship, power, and the difference between protecting someone and controlling them. I’d also want to ask which moments frightened everyone most. I suspect the answers would tell us quite a bit about what each reader brought to the story.

It might surprise you—even if you already love Grady Hendrix

That was my favorite part of the experience. I went in expecting to enjoy myself. I’d saved it for the end of the Readers With Wrinkles Halloween series because I trusted Hendrix to deliver. I didn’t expect to become quite so attached, or so angry on these girls’ behalf.

For me, that’s the difference between a book I’m happy to recommend and one I want to press into a friend’s hands.

Solidarity to groovy witches! Go sisters, go!

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Something Wicked This Page Comes… and Now We Leave the Light On

Well, my fellow readers, we’ve reached the last page of Something Wicked This Page Comes, our Readers With Wrinkles Halloween book series. The coffee’s gone cold, someone has eaten the candy we were saving for trick-or-treaters, and that perfectly ordinary noise in the hallway has become everybody’s business.

I hope you’ve found something during this series that made you lose track of the time—and then briefly regret noticing what time it was. Something worth staying up for. Something you were eager to tell a friend about, perhaps with the affectionate warning, “Don’t read this alone.”

What made Witchcraft for Wayward Girls so memorable for me wasn’t just the fear. It was the feeling beneath it: the fierce attachment to these girls, the anger on their behalf, the need to keep turning pages because I cared what happened to them. A good scare is a pleasure. A good scare that also breaks your heart? That’s a book you carry with you.

And that’s what I’ve loved about sharing this Halloween reading season with you. We can enjoy the delicious business of being frightened while still looking for stories with something to say. We can laugh, shudder, argue about a character’s decisions, and wonder why anyone in fiction ever investigates a suspicious noise without first putting on sensible shoes.

Now it’s Halloween, and I’m officially releasing you to your evening’s festivities. Answer the door. Admire the costumes. Pretend you haven’t been picking out your favorite candy all afternoon. And when the porch goes quiet, settle into your reading chair with whatever wicked little book you’ve chosen next.

Thank you for spending part of your spooky season with Readers With Wrinkles. Whether you read along, added a title to your towering pile, or simply stopped by to see what trouble I've found, I’m so glad you were here.

Happy Halloween, dear readers.

May your treats be plentiful, your reading glasses be within reach, and every alarming sound tonight turn out to be the cat.

If what you loved was the combination of female friendship, righteous anger, and horror with heart, these eight books deserve a place on your reading pile—not just because they’re frightening, but because the people facing the darkness matter.

The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson
Immanuelle Moore lives under the rule of a ruthless religious leader, but an encounter with the witches haunting a forbidden forest draws her toward dangerous magic and buried truths about her community. The novel was shortlisted for the 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards in both Best Horror and Best Debut Novel. Like Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, it connects witchcraft with a young woman’s struggle against religious oppression and control over women’s bodies, making it a particularly strong choice if you rooted for Fern to reclaim her power.

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
A Charleston book club’s discussions of true crime become alarmingly relevant when its members suspect that a charming newcomer is a monster preying on their community. The novel earned places on Barnes & Noble’s Top 10 Novels of 2020 and the New York Public Library’s Top 10 Books of 2020. If you loved Hendrix’s combination of female solidarity, dark humor, and anger at women being dismissed, this offers another group of underestimated women who discover that being polite won’t keep anyone safe. Read my full review here.

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
In Jim Crow Florida, a young Black boy is sent to a brutal reform school, where his ability to see ghosts exposes dangers both supernatural and devastatingly human. The novel won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel and the 2024 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Its closest connection to Witchcraft for Wayward Girls is the terror of children trapped in an institution supposedly meant to help them, making it a compelling next read if Wellwood House’s human cruelty frightened you more than its magic.

Just Like Mother by Anne Heltzel
Decades after escaping a mother-worshipping cult, Maeve reconnects with her wealthy cousin Andrea, only to find that their renewed closeness threatens the independent life she’s built. The novel was a Goodreads Choice Award finalist for Best Horror and was named one of LitReactor’s Best Books of 2022. Its disturbing treatment of compulsory motherhood, reproductive control, and manipulation makes it a strong match if Hendrix’s exploration of who gets to make decisions about women’s bodies stayed with you.

Lone Women by Victor LaValle
In 1915, Adelaide Henry heads to Montana to become a homesteader, bringing an enormous locked trunk whose terrifying contents threaten her chance at a new life. A national bestseller, the novel was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Locus Award, and appeared on best-of-the-year lists from NPR, Time, and The New York Times Book Review. Like Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, it blends historical horror with women’s resilience, shame, secrets, and unexpected sisterhood—an excellent choice if you want monsters with emotional meaning rather than merely impressive teeth.

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
After a storm kills the men of a remote Norwegian community in 1617, the surviving women learn to support themselves, only to attract the attention of an authority determined to bring them to heel. The novel won a 2021 Betty Trask Award and was selected as one of The New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2020. Although it’s historical fiction rather than supernatural horror, its portrayal of female friendship, religious persecution, and independence, treated as a threat, makes it a natural companion to Hendrix’s novel.

The Change by Kirsten Miller
Three women discover extraordinary powers in midlife and join forces to investigate the death of a teenage girl whose murder the authorities seem willing to dismiss. The novel was selected as the Good Morning America Book Club pick for May 2022. It shares Witchcraft for Wayward Girls’ feminist anger and connection between supernatural power and female solidarity, but shifts the spotlight to older women who are thoroughly finished with being underestimated.

My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix
When her best friend Gretchen begins behaving disturbingly after a disastrous night in the woods, teenage Abby becomes convinced that something demonic is threatening their friendship. The novel was adapted into a feature film of the same name, bringing Hendrix’s friendship-centered horror to the screen. If the girls’ emotional bonds were what made Witchcraft for Wayward Girls a ten-star read for you, this blend of teenage vulnerability, supernatural terror, and fierce loyalty should go straight to the top of your list.

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