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A review by stacyrenee
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Adult
Horror / historical
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
•She didn’t think things could get any worse, then she saw the sign.
“Welcome to Florida,” it read. “The Sunshine State.”•
Set in the sweltering summer of 1970, ‘Fern’ is hauled off to the Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida where she and a number of other young, pregnant, flower-named girls and women are sent to convalesce in secret before giving birth and giving their babies up for adoption, all hidden away to protect their family’s good names, but then she meets a librarian who gives her a book of witchcraft that helps the girls take back their power.
I read The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead just before this (also set in north Florida, around the same decade, at an abusive reform school) so I feel like my thoughts on the two overlap a lot at the moment.
I’ve read other historical books like this about unwed pregnant women and the babies they were forced to give up for adoption (The Home For Unwanted Girls, historical fiction) but Grady Hendrix has a unique way of turning his stories into a gore-show at some point or another (there seems to be some ‘ick’ factor in all of his books) so this may be a bit much for anyone with pregnancy/birth/adoption content triggers but may appeal to those looking for more ‘feminine rage’ reads.
🎶: Witchcraft by Graveyard Club
Horror / historical
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
•She didn’t think things could get any worse, then she saw the sign.
“Welcome to Florida,” it read. “The Sunshine State.”•
Set in the sweltering summer of 1970, ‘Fern’ is hauled off to the Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida where she and a number of other young, pregnant, flower-named girls and women are sent to convalesce in secret before giving birth and giving their babies up for adoption, all hidden away to protect their family’s good names, but then she meets a librarian who gives her a book of witchcraft that helps the girls take back their power.
I read The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead just before this (also set in north Florida, around the same decade, at an abusive reform school) so I feel like my thoughts on the two overlap a lot at the moment.
I’ve read other historical books like this about unwed pregnant women and the babies they were forced to give up for adoption (The Home For Unwanted Girls, historical fiction) but Grady Hendrix has a unique way of turning his stories into a gore-show at some point or another (there seems to be some ‘ick’ factor in all of his books) so this may be a bit much for anyone with pregnancy/birth/adoption content triggers but may appeal to those looking for more ‘feminine rage’ reads.
🎶: Witchcraft by Graveyard Club