Go pre-order this book. It comes out November 5th, I got an advance digital copy through NetGalley.

This book feels like catharsis, just a tiny bit of fist pumping “f@&$ yes!” In the sea of misery that is the current state of the world.


I couldn’t stop screen shoting this book, I kept highlighting, and silently fist pumping in my head. And it’s not just that Lindy West is preaching to the choir that is me, because okay sure she is, but she’s doing it with wit and humor and compassion. She’s angry, as she should be, but she’s also smart and trying to use her platform to give voice to all our fears and anxieties which are also her own and I love her for it.

There are so many quotes from this book that I internally shouted “YES!” to.

Here is just one:

“The Trump/Brexit era is a rich, famous, white, middle-aged man declaring the world to be in decline the moment he stops understanding it.”
Lindy West, “The Wiches Are Coming.”

I’ve heard men who consider themselves progressive, Who I consider friends and allies call her “shrill” without an ounce of irony.

I wish more men would read her work and the work of women like her because then they might have just the tiniest idea what it’s like for women who have spent our lives reading, hearing, and watching a vast landscape of media that wasn’t written for us.

I love Lindy West, I loved Shrill, and I loved this book too. It is very different from Shrill but my god it is so resonant and on point. Everything she said I was basically fist pumping and shouting in agreement while also being simultaneously enraged and depressed. She articulates everything so WELL, from feminism to Trump to climate change to white supremacy. She covers all of it and every single time, she puts her finger on the heart of the problem and lays it bare. And, as always, she’s funny and relatable while she does it - I laughed out loud quite a few times while reading it. Yes, with me she is preaching to the choir because she and I have extremely similar viewpoints, and yes, the biggest bummer about this book is that the people who most need to read it never will, but I don’t care. As she says, we need to say the truth over and over again until it sticks, and women SHOULD be spewing our anger, and good for her for doing it. I found the book galvanizing and I hope others do too.

In her second essay collection, West scorches Trump, Adam Sandler, South Park, internet trolls and more.

Scratch that: to call this an essay collection is an insult to Ellen Willis. I have not read Shrill (though I was charmed by the Hulu series), but it must have been better than this. West's writing is facile and undisciplined. Even in the strongest piece, a takedown of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, she can't help but misrepresent the men's views. She is clueless about pop culture, believing that, say, Weird Science is another brick in the sexism wall rather than a silly depiction of a juvenile male fantasy come true. Most irritating is her selective sensitivity; she evaluates abortion with the utmost care but twice equates stuttering with weakness, for which she can go to hell by a short road, as far as this disfluent reader is concerned.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hachette Books for the ARC in exchange for this review.

Timely, daring, important. Lindy West is back! West is sharp in her observations and had me laughing and crying in equal measure. A must read!

The writer of Shrill comes back with a response to the response of the #metoo movement. West packs a punch with her critique on the current cultural climate.

I loved the show that was based off of West's Shrill, so I decided I wanted to read more from her. There were times where I loved what she wrote, wanting to quote it to everyone I know or put the quotes on a pillow. Other times, her critique felt like one long Twitter thread or something that had already been said numerous times.

I absolutely love this book. I listened to "Shrill" as an audio book after bingeing the TV show in a weekend and loving it. When I read "The Witches Are Coming", I totally hear Lindy West's voice in my head. You can tell that she writes exactly how she thinks and speaks and it is so fun to read. This book is so important and topical right now. It is full of smart and sassy commentary and parts of it are laugh out loud hilarious. I will highly recommend this book to my friends and family. I can't wait until this comes out so I can tell everyone to read it. I'm thinking I'll need to give it a second "read" once the audio book is released.

**Received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**

I devoured this in three days. That’s saying something because I’m a slow, easily distracted reader. I think my dogs were annoyed at how engrossed I was by ‘The Witches are Coming’. Lindy West’s ‘Shrill’ has been on my TBR list for a while, but as I mentioned, I’m a slow reader (and easily distracted by shiny new things at the top of my TBR). Although I hadn’t read the book version, I blasted through the first season of Shrill the television show. I was enamored with the character (and story) who felt so much of what I’ve felt in life. In this series of essays, West once again echoed my feelings with her snappy writing and clever quips. She’s hilarious. If you only read a single essay, I highly recommend the Adam Sandler chapter. I was cackling to myself, wrapped like a burrito in a blanket, and apologizing to my husband for interrupting his focused work.

I only wish to someday craft a voice as evocative as hers, as witty and fun. She balances humor and serious topics with effortlessness and I want to shove this book in the mailbox of everyone I know.. Sadly, I’m sure that those who SHOULD read this book are more likely to burn it....but I hope it’s because they’re worried that the withches are fucking coming.

Reading this in August, which has probably been one of the craziest months of the 2016 presidency in recent memory, it’s hard not to burst into hysterical, crazed, bitter laughter as you read through this. It’s a combination of a hard clear look at how we got here and an extrapolation of the idea of the “witch hunt” that some people believe they’re facing and why people are so fucking angry. It’s also a good look back at some of the stuff from our teenagerhoods (Adam Sandler, South Park most notably), and our current culture (fucking GOOP). It’s not all fire and blood though - she does end with some anecdotes about her stepdaughters and hope for the future. (And I should not need to say oh it’s not all angry feminist writing but lol irony.) Definitely pick this up when it comes out.

This was an interesting set of essays from Lindy West; however, I enjoyed Shrill more. It was nice, shorter read.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve enjoyed Lindy West’s writing since I used to read Jezebel regularly and I liked Shrill.

This book of essays was pretty good, and had some funny parts. Some of the essays seemed repetitive and I don’t feel like I really heard anything new. The essay on the Adam Sandler movies cracked me up.

This was a quick and entertaining read and I look forward to anything else Lindy West writes.

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE! Lindy West is an incredible writer, and I loved The Witches Are Coming. Essays on our current cultural climate, it's a feminist book that should be read by EVERYBODY.

I loved Shrill, so when I saw this was coming, I knew I had to read it. I love Lindy’s voice, her humor makes some of these upsetting topics easier to read about, and she’s accessible, nothing overly complicated or hard to follow. Reading this got me more excited to watch her show, and I’d definitely pick up anything by her in the future.

Just as terrifying, brilliant, hilarious, and motivating as I expected. I will be covering it for Book Riot in the coming weeks.

The Witches Are Coming is a collection of new and old works by Lindy West. Each chapter is organized around a central concept such as Joan Crawford and West’s view of her as a female entertainer in male-dominated Hollywood. The chapters range in terms of quality and logic. It is not necessary to read West’s previous writings to understand this collection.

While not flawless, TWAC should appeal to its target audience of the older Milennial liberal feminist. West includes many anecdotes and approaches all of her topics from a personal level rather than professional or scientific. This works with her informal style but means the material should be taken with a grain of salt. TWAC is a collection of thoughts, not an instructional guide.

The book is unfortunately lopsided; some sections flow incredibly well and are filled with passion while others feel emotionally detached.

Die-hard fans of West will notice that she has directly copy/pasted previously published works into this book, such as her Jezebel article on the Goop cookbook. It is not indicated in TWAC when these unquoted quotations are inserted (at least in the ARC).

Overall, I would recommend The Witches Are Coming for casual fans of West’s previous work or for those who want a call to arms regarding changing the current course of politics in the United States.

I love Lindy West. I'm just going to throw that out there. She is intelligent, funny, thoughtful, and no-holds barred in a way that I had always (in the early 90s) secretly hoped Roseanne Barr would be - but she's not, as we all learned and then re-learned ad nauseum (thanks, Roseanne for your groundbreaking television show, but I really wish you'd reconsider your batshit political leanings, at least). But I digress (shocker, I know).

*ahem*

Starting over. I love Lindy West. I loved Shrill, I've loved her published essays/articles, and this book is no exception. I love it too. I love a good, positive women/witches comparison.

This book has it all. It's pithy, brutal, frank, and hopeful at turns. Is Lindy angry? Undoubtedly. But you know what? So am I. And so too, should you be. The world is falling apart around us. Women are losing their rights and their autonomy left and right. So are trans folks. And POC. Who's next? And why do we keep letting it happen?

West covers feminism, abortion, climate change, misogyny, Goop, whether or not Adam Sandler is really funny, Joan Rivers, Ricky Gervais, Adam Carolla, Harvey Weinstein, the aforementioned Roseanne Barr, Gamergate, Pizzagate, toxic masculinity, gendered violence, and pretty much every other interesting (and incendiary) topic a modern human might care to explore.



My determination: 5 out of 5 arbitrary items of rating. Buy this book. And Shrill. Bask in the warm, fiery glow of Lindy gleefully lambasting the worst of the worst, and utterly refusing to apologize for it. As she should.

Lindy West continues to blow me away with her nuanced and insightful look at the world we currently live in. I couldn't recommend this novel enough. Thank you, Lindy!

People who already have these opinions will enjoy this. People who should read this are dicks and wouldn't even dream of it. Part of why they are dicks.

It was humorous. I read each section over a period of time when I just needed something short/a time killer. I read 2 sections in a row and it was a bit too much for me - it went from amusing me to annoying me. Definitely a "in small doses" kinda of read that is good to have on your phone in case of insomnia, trains, or waiting for food.

Lindy West is one of the sharpest, funniest writers out there. The Witches are Coming deals with many heavy topics, but it is well worth reading because of the insights and excellent wordplay that Lindy West skillfully uses. I would recommend reading these excellent essays in small settings because of the heavy nature of many of the topics. In reading The Witches are Coming, I felt affirmed in continually being upset with how the world is and not feeling ashamed for speaking my mind. I feel like I have been conditioned to stay quiet so I can be liked, but the truth is, as I get older, I care much more about not being complacent in the state of the world and don't care as much if people don't like me. My favorite essay was about GOOP and the weird brand of wellness it promotes, but I thought all of these essays were great.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

"If there is magic in Trump's ability to conjure reality out of hot air and spittle, there is an equally powerful magic in the opposite: in speaking the truth, unvarnished, about what we see, what we remember, what has been done to us by people who have assumed power and status as a birthright, rules written just for them. People who are nervous or just trying to wait this moment out until everything settles down. There is power in saying, no, we will not settle down. We will not go back. It's the lifting of a veil, the opposite of a glamour. So fine, if you insist. This is a witch hunt. We're witches, and we're hunting you."


This book is what I needed to read. It's what we all need to read in the year of our lord 2019. Pick this up as soon as it is released and let the reality of our future as Americans wash over you. Get really angry. And then go tell everyone about it.

This book is well-written and enjoyable, with laugh out loud moments, but I feel like the people who need to read it, won't. There are some really great quotes in this book, but overall, I felt like it lacked substance. The themes of the essays didn't feel cohesive to me.