I would not pick this up for a good time read, but I would highly recommend it to everyone. West picks up every angry thought we have had for the last few years and channels them into some very powerful essays.

This book feels incredibly timely. It could've been literally written last week, what with Lindy West mentioning the limitations of kindness as a political device and Greta Thunberg. (Is she a literal witch or has she just been paying better attention than the rest of us? Is it both? They're probably not mutually exclusive.)

I laughed out loud multiple times and I also sighed more than once. I highlighted parts of my egalley and shared them on my Facebook* and shared some via text to some of my favorite people. 

This is the book we need right now. Yes, parts made me angry, but most of it gave me hope. I feel like we're all dealing with right-wing gaslighting and it's good to have someone saying, "No, this is all really happening. No, you're right." 

Also? It's so funny. Like, ridiculously funny. Like, laugh so hard on your commute that the stranger next to you will get up and move away funny. So it's a win-win!

* = Yes, I have a Facebook page still. Mark Zuckerberg is awful and the site is awful but it's where I see my friends and pictures of their kids and grandkids. It's where I see pictures of my friends' dogs and cats and where I learn how to be a better person, thanks to a lot of my intersectional groups and my smarter-than-me friends.

A thrilling roller coaster of an essay collection, Lindy West's newest THE WITCHES ARE COMING is a must-read. It's certainly not an easy read though, as your blood pressure will probably rise and you will want to take to the streets. West nails truths about feminism, the Trump administration, the crazy times we're living in, and coming to terms with pop culture we know and love. There is a lot packed in, but once you strap in, it will be hard to put it down.

My only question is - who is this collection for? As a person who agrees with pretty much everything West says, I spent the book nodding my head, but my opinions about everything stayed the same at the end of the book. For those who are on the same page with West about most things, this could be a bit of an echo chamber. I don't think anyone who disagrees with West will pick this book up, unfortunately, though I wish they would. West does leave us with hope though, which despite all the shit we wade through with her during the essays, is appreciated and needed.

Lindy West is mad. As she explains in the book, it took her a while to get here; getting mad about the state of politics and inequality has been sold to us as something only humorless, uncool people do. But Lindy West is funny, cool, and mad as hell. In this essay collection, she looks at some of the most toxic yet unsuspecting parts of our culture - Adam Sandler movies, Twitter, internet famous cats, etc. - and unpacks how they explain our current political situation. Many of the essays start with an endearing, funny story that becomes a cultural takedown that will leave you angry, too. West's unique perspectives on racism, sexism, climate change, and more are so necessary, and this collection is a call to action that can't be ignored.

Thank you, Netgalley, for an advanced copy for review! I have been reading a ton of feminist literature recently and they were starting to blend together, so I took this nice and slow.

This book was fantastic, taking a place for me among the recent feminist literary giants like Feminasty or Good & Mad of the past year or so. Surprisingly, I hadn’t heard of Lindy or her social media storm and other happenings of the past few years, so I went in unbiased, and I was glad for it.

This book is quotable as heck. For the sake of this being an advanced copy I read, I think I’m not allowed to quote anything, but consider it sufficient to say I want to just print this book on a scroll, walk to public areas, unravel it across the pavement and get up on a soapbox to read it aloud. It’s great. Any chapter would make an excellent oration – in fact, the audiobook version, if being made, will probably be fantastic, just like Feminasty was; some stuff needs snarky enunciation and so forth. The book was written in a great tone for those formats of delivery – alternating internet slang with millennial street lingo with scholarly rhetoric that I want to engrave on something. That exact tone, casual with strong tones of exasperation, made it extremely readable and relatable reading.

Lindy covers a lot in this book, a lot that rational women today should be mad about, concerned with, or fighting for actively. Her frank explication of #MeToo, abortions and how they really aren’t the big deal everyone thinks they are, Adam Sandler’s comedy, heck, even GOOP by Gwyneth Paltrow. Lindy’s there with an unvarnished take on most things that have come up in at least my own personal life. Trump is more than hateful rhetoric, she impresses, he is the embodiment and symptom of hate and gross behavior that has grown like a tumor beneath America’s skin for years and years. And climate change. She doesn’t hold back, and she is a native of Seattle, close to where I live, so her no-holds-barred take on how this crisis will affect it specifically hit home for me.

As I finished reading, I felt both hopeful and choked-up with frustration, just as Lindy is throughout these pages. We can do something to mitigate climate change, we can choose not to watch South Park or Adam Sandler movies, we can vote Donald Trump out (or impeach him, at this point).

I like that Lindy didn’t present a rose-colored glasses vision of anything; her blunt honesty is everything we need, and probably exactly why she was hounded on social media so viciously. Most can’t handle frank truth from feminists, and that’s a fact. But Lindy is hilarious, she makes sense, she is convincing. The witches are coming, and we can join and help them.

Not at all what I expected but I found that I loved it! What a great writer. Funny and insightful, and just plain awesome. Not only are we witches coming, we've arrived ;)

I absolutely adored this book. Lindy West is the best friend you want who will make you laugh and make you think critically about the world. The Witches Are Coming is the perfect social commentary for 2019. It confronts the brutal realities of our current polarized political climate, but without making readers lose all hope. Highly recommended!

Many thanks to the author, published, and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

I saw Lindy West talk a few years ago at a conference and as it was just a few months after the 2016 election the talk was quite charged. I then read Lindy's book Shrill and was excited when I saw she had a new book coming out. This book channels rage in an important and well-done way and is a look into society and life post-2016. While this might seem like it is a very serious book, it is also filled with witty and funny moments as we learn about her trip to a Goop festival and her husband's love of audio equipment.

I enjoyed my read of this book and I feel like it is an important voice to be heard.

Lindy West's new book of essays is focused on the horrific age of Trump. There are several new books of essays by prominent feminist voices. Most of them will be preaching to the choir. Her insights are astute and articulate. She takes on Ted Bundy, Adam Sandler, Adam Carolla, Priuses, climate change, racism, misogeny- always intelligently and absorbing the reader. There are parts with humor- and it all leads back to Trump, and how the current culture created him and his ilk, and the fear of speaking up enables them to continue their destruction.

Lindy West sics her acerbic wit on Donald Trump, white supremacy, climate change deniers, and inequity in general. Her call to arms is masked in humor, but the result still hits home: if we want change (and if we don't we're not paying attention) we have to get to work.

I used to read these essay type books about feminist issues all the time, but it's been ages since I've picked one up. They were starting to get a bit repetitive, but I really enjoy Lindy West's second book. I was a little on the fence at first, but she killed it with some of her later essays and I really liked it.

I'm struggling to remember many of the essays now, but the one that stands out in my mind is 'What Is an Abortion, Anyways?' Abortion is so controversial and so relevant in the United States right now and I thought this was a really good thought piece about it. She also discusses the #metoo movement and how things having been changing in her essay 'Anger is a Weapon'. Women can literally never win. We're mobilized by anger at the status quo, only to then have that anger used against us. It's so hard to pursue justice when you're not allowed to be loud, angry, or passionate about it.

So please forgive me for not reviewing this sooner. I am fuzzy now on a lot of the essays, but I was definitely interested in what Lindy had to say. She's perceptive, relevant, and relatable. I did read her first book Shrill, although I haven't seen the TV show, but I think I may have liked this book even more than Shrill. Keep on writing and being awesome Lindy!

The Witches are Coming is available in stores Nov. 5th, 2019.

I loved this book! I love Lindy West and all the work she puts out into the world. This was just brilliant, it was a lot of thought that I've had silently but didn't think anyone else had. The Adam Sandler essay was just dead on, as well as the South Park essay. I have thought these things forever, but they are just so much a part of our culture that we accept them with out any critical thought. I truly appreciated West's take on the subject. Also she gave me so much to think about, esp. regarding Joan Rivers. I look forward to recommending this book to everyone I know.

What can I say about Lindy West and her writing that hasn’t already been said? She’s fierce, eloquent, blunt, a rabid feminist, an ally and an advocate, body-positive and passionate. She’s a force to be reckoned with.

I’m obviously a fan, and I suspect that if you consider yourself to be any or all of the above, then you will be too. Lindy’s talent for laying bare and clarifying complex topics makes her one of the preeminent feminist writers of our time.

The Witches are Coming speaks to topics and issues like the “Me Too” movement, Fat Shaming, raising a blended family and 21st century feminism among others, as only Lindy can - insightfully, thoughtfully and fearlessly.

If you need a shot in the arm to get you informed and fully outraged about the way our country treats POC, women, LGBTQIA folx, the poor, and other disenfranchised humans, then reading The Witches are Coming will prepare and inspire you to raise your voice.

I was provided with an electronic copy of #TheWitchesAreComing by #NetGalley in return for my honest review.

I like Lindy West a lot, and I enjoyed her first book, Shrill, so much that I've followed all her other writing since then. This book is very different from Shrill and, for me, it was a significant step down. This book is inarguably about politics and each chapter covers a new and unquestionably important issue; topics range from analyzing how the much-maligned "identity politics" brings value to people, rather than causing harm; to a passionate affirmation of the value of student activism. But as someone who has a lot in common with Lindy (in fact, that's why I like her), I was left cold by this book simply because I already agree with her. On everything. This book didn't teach me or challenge me or even entertain me with personal anecdotes (and I loved Lindy's funny anecdotes in her previous book). I'm concerned this book holds little resonance for people who think like Lindy does, because it doesn't offer much novelty and tends to restate what I think of as common knowledge in my political communities.

Woah, while comedians are complaining on their Netflix comeback tours about how “cancel culture” is ruining their careers, Lindy West managed to write a genuinely hilarious book without hating on historically marginalized groups. Weird.

The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West provides an intersectional feminist, post-#MeToo perspective about politics and culture in America in 2019. Her writing is smart, funny, and approachable, like if Samantha Irby wrote about politics. She writes about how we got to this place in time and why it’s hard for us as a culture to stop loving celebrities (and celebrity cats) even when they do bad things. She manages to cover everything from Adam Sandler and South Park to Guy’s Grocery Games and abortions.

This is a Very Internet book, meaning not only that it is about internet culture but also that it is very much a book written for this moment in time. I know her broader points will still be very applicable in 2 years, but I’m not sure if all of her references and phrases will be. Then again, I also wouldn’t have guessed that Adam Sandler and South Park would still be relevant essay topics in 2019, so who knows.

I found this book to be very affirming, but I am also a liberal feminist. West does not pretend that this book was written to cross party lines. While I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it sometimes felt like an echo chamber. For example, before discussing Chip and Joanna’s affiliation with an anti-gay church that supports conversion therapy, she writes that she doesn’t expect that readers of this book would need an explanation of why conversion therapy is bad. And they probably don’t. But, if she knew that her audience would already agree with most of what she said, then why didn’t she use that advantage to take things a few steps further? The last two essays in the book were attempts to call readers to action about fighting climate change and coming for the legacies of awful people in power. Yet, it is challenging to accept that call when there are no action steps or thorough considerations for how we might move forward.

I loved “Shrill” but honestly, much of “The Witches Are Coming” left me bewildered. The book, an essay collection, trades focus for frenetic cuteness and often wanders completely off course. I am only 14 years older than the author but found the writing completely inaccessible for a good fourth of the content.

I honor the author’s right to be strident and angry in her viewpoints (that’s the stuff I came for) and even to characterize conservatives as unmitigated monsters, but what she does owe to the reader is to be comprehensible—and not just to liberal feminist millennials who share a broad knowledge of 90s pop culture references. Incredibly and abruptly, West addresses a general audience toward the end (“no matter who you voted for”) as if anyone who voted for Donald Trump would ever still be reading at that point. I smiled and nodded a few times while reading but did not laugh once.

I appreciate many of the feminist arguments, for example: men should stand up and defend women from misogyny even at men’s cost, and it’s time women weren’t complicit in cloaking abortion in shame. Apparently West started the Twitter hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion. West always shines in cultural analysis on body image, and I admire her for quitting Twitter. The book needs a lot more polish. I read a prepub galley, so there’s still time for explaining what the heck she’s talking about and taking out the synopses of Adam Sandler movies.

I received an advance readers copy of this book from Hatchette and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I love Lindy West. The way she boils down huge issues into relatable metaphors is nothing short of amazing.
West’s anger is palpable here, and that’s good! We should be angry! Terrible stuff happens every day and it seems like nobody cares!
Caring is what West is good at. She talks about how caring has become a kind of coded action: if you care, you’re not cool. But shouldn’t we care? Isn’t that a foundational creed of society? Of America? Of darn near most religions?
This is not the book to give your Trumpist aunt, but it is the book to give your vaguely SJW niece who’s just learning how to think about stuff outside of her parents’ opinions.

Lindy West continues the appealing whip-smart, snarky tone of Shrill in her newest book. I enjoyed it tremendously and will recommend it whole heartedly.

Scathing and insightful, Lindy West dissects aspects of contemporary life through a feminist lens. I devoured Shrill, and this one was just as wonderful but took me far longer to finish. It's heavy and some parts are difficult to digest. I read most of it sitting at my mechanic while waiting for my car to be fixed and avoiding the news of shootings across the country. I highly recommend you read this book somewhere more relaxing, or at the very least plant some quiet time around some of the harder chapters that center around #MeToo.

”This is a witch hunt. We’re witches, and we’re hunting you.”

God, I missed Lindy West. I mean, she didn’t go anywhere and I read Shrill only two months ago and I still haven’t seen the show and she’s written pieces for a dozen or so other media outlets, but I still miiiiiiissed her!

While Shrill was a lot of West’s own personal life, growth and realizations, The Witches Are Coming examines societal shifts more holistically and offers a ruthlessly necessary cultural critique. If her previous book was in part a crash course on the history of the internet up through the first half of 2016, we’re now taken on a trip through many generation-defining events that have taken place over the past three and a half years. The election of Donald Trump, Brexit, the #MeToo movement—these all have happened in the relatively short but also inexplicably long period since. In addressing not only these happenings, but the inevitable backlash to the backlash, Lindy West provides a thoughtful and well-reasoned examination of subjects that *still* are too discomfiting to bring up in some ‘polite company’. And she does it all with the same level of cutting humor that you’d come to expect from her work.

And, guys, it’s really REALLY funny. I was cracking up over even the chapter titles. Come on, “Ted Bundy Was Not Charming—Are You High?” That’s fucking classic; I want it embroidered on a pillow or something. And she replicates one of my favorite parts of her last book, which was the reflective look at one the idols of her youth, Howard Stern. But instead of Stern this time, she devotes entire chapters to examining the legacies of comedy legends such as Adam Sandler and Joan Rivers. Even some of the chapter titles, like “Is Adam Sandler Funny?”, would be enough provocation to set off a pack of furious fanboys to defend his honor, but I beg you all to take the time to read what she’s written. These aren’t hit pieces; the conclusions she reaches are nuanced and even the criticisms aren’t really levied at the performer personally, but at the society that shaped as well as consumed them.

Even those who weren’t #blessed with their own chapter received credit where it was due. Ricky Gervais and Louis C.K.’s contributions to comedy aren’t merely tossed aside by a changing world, but they also aren’t immune to being challenged by it. One of the funniest chapters features Gwyneth Paltrow in all her Goopiness and it’s not mocking or glowing in the way we’ve come to expect towards her, but instead is refreshingly giddy and candid. West balances comic whimsy and difficult truths with the same level of deftness as Mary Poppins, disguising the bitterness of medicine with a spoonful of sugar. It really does make it all easier to swallow.

Most chapters feature a story from West’s own life, either a hilarious anecdote or a moment of frustration, that is used as a segue into a topic of importance for her. A few are really Trojan Horses that don’t reveal their true nature until further into the piece, but some are upfront about the content for good reason. In “What Is an Abortion, Anyway?” she discusses not just her own real abortion, but her fictional one as well. Her insistence to include Shrill’s main character, Annie’s, abortion in the pilot was the same determination that birthed the #ShoutYourAbortion movement online. While not as satirical as the other essays, it’s just as sharp and truly beneficial to anyone who considers themselves pro-choice.

Real talk, I was so giggly while reading this. My Kindle copy is so full of highlighted passages that if I had done the same thing to a physical copy it would be like 65% highlighter. Her self-awareness makes her so endearing and her biting wit is funny as hell—I just thoroughly enjoyed every bit of this book. The end left me optimistic and with a sense of pending accomplishment, which, yeah, is probably unearned at this stage, but with a clear path forward. I don’t know what else to say; Lindy West left me feeling happy and gave me some hope.