3.5 | “We want some chaos. We want havoc. Bring us hell.”

One of the epigraphs of this book is a Jennifer’s Body quote (“Hell is a teenage girl”), and I feel like that tells you a lot about this book.

Sideways (it’s a nickname - thank god) Pike finds herself at the party of three of the most untouchable girls in her year. At school she’s mostly known for her witchery, and that’s exactly why she was asked here, to perform some magic during the halloween party. Freak everyone out. Sideways enlists the help of said untouchable trio - Jing, Daisy & Yates - and by doing so, unravels the magic the other three girls all hold inside, and binds the four of them together.

“The magic snapped back like a rubber band. It struck hard and all at once … A jagged, painful pulse reverberated from my lungs to my core, and I heaved in a breath through my teeth, wheezed a cough. There was a whistling in my ears loud enough to rupture my skull.”

I love how visceral magic feels. Sideways senses it in her entire body, and the writing is so reflective of that. At times it was a little overdone, but overall I think it really contributed to the atmosphere, this sense of magic being a full body experience. It brought it really close, and made it almost tangible. I think the style is one of the things that really won’t be for everybody, but it was for me.

“‘Can girls not be soft and still be powerful?’
‘Girls can. Girls are.’”

I’ve seen some people comment on the immediacy of their friendship, but I think an event like the one they went through together is exactly the kind of thing that binds you together. And I believe in the magic of this created world enough that I can imagine if you feel magic the way they did, you’re not just going to walk away from the person who instigated it. The closeness of the girls was one of the things I liked most about this story. They’re all very different, but the way they care for each other and take care of each other without flinching, without hesitation, really appeals to me as a reader. I liked that they weren’t clean-cut, but a little (or a lot) ragged at the edges. I liked their anger, and how justified they felt in it. I liked their loyalty.

“Feeling witchy is a large part of successfully being witchy, and nothing makes you feel powerful like surrounding yourself with gigantic dripping candles.”

Lastly I want to point out the worldbuilding. It’s one of the things I feel ambivalent about in this book, but I’m going to start with the positives. The ideas we got - regarding covens, and spellbooks, and devils, were really interesting and exciting to me. I love when magic changes overtime, so the idea of older versus modern witch covens and traditions I think is really cool. Really liked Mr. Scratch as well - a lot of Calcifer from Howl’s Moving Castle vibes.

And a small thing I wanted to point out that I very much enjoyed - the chapter titles. Not enough books make good use of them these days, and I really liked all the references. Very fun.

“There was something repugnant about the absence of rage in me. I wanted my fury back.”

Then in terms of negatives… Starting where we left off: the worldbuilding did take very very long to really get a grip on. Really just the last quarter of the book we were introduced to these concepts that I think the story as a whole would’ve really benefited from being introduced earlier. Especially because they are so fascinating! I want to know more about them! I want these girls to know more about them! Show us what they mean!

Secondly, and I think most importantly, the plot feels flimsy. I called the ‘reveal’ in the first chapter and I don’t know if I was meant to, but if I was, then it just feels frustrating to have to wait until the absolute last moment to have it be revealed to our main characters. There are all these things happening that could be forming a plot, but they’re threads that kind of dangle. They’re not pulled tight, like the author didn’t have a good grip on them. When Sideways gets kidnapped by some weird, religious family, it’s obviously terrifying and dark, but we hear almost nothing of it after she escapes. It’s left almost entirely untouched until the end of the book, when all the threads are suddenly pulled taut, supposedly coming together, even though it feels messy and unearned.

In addition, the writing of the characters constantly teetered on an edge for me. I know I said earlier that I really liked the writing style overall, and I did, but only just. Sometimes, the prose got too much, and I could feel myself cringe at it. Sometimes, the teenage-ness of the girls felt performative. Look, the author seemed to say, I know how teens these days act and speak. Look! Look! Look! I don’t want to have to look. I want to notice. I was on a similar edge when it came to the depiction of the girls’ queerness. I love them, I love having multiple queer girls in one gang, I’m totally here for it. But especially Sideways’ own inner monologue when it came to her attraction to girls felt sometimes a little bit too much like the author was like, hey, that joke you people on the internet always make about disaster lesbians, look! Here is one! She can’t think straight when she sees a girl! Again, I want to notice that as a reader, I don’t need it shoved in my face. And obviously I don’t mean I don’t want queerness shoved in my face. I’m saying that as a queer girl (though not a lesbian) I felt the depiction really was on the edge of being performative in its intensity.

As of right now, I am planning to read the next book in this series. I really hope it will flesh out the world and the plot, and be a more coherent story (and make this book a more coherent part of the series).

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my digital copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Ever since watching Bewitched as a young girl, I have been fascinated by witches and everything about them. So when I saw a new series about teenage witches, I knew I had to give it a shot. I might be 50 years old but I still love young adult books and I still love stories about witches. I personally was not disappointed. Sideways Pike is one of the main characters and she is a teenage outsider who always happens to be a witch and a lesbian. When she is paid to do a magic gig at the party of the most popular girls at school, she has no idea it will literally change her entire life. Soon she has friends and a possible girlfriend...but she also has witch hunters and an inkstain within her skin that also happens to be a demon. Personally, I loved the girls in the book and I loved the storyline and all of the trouble they keep finding themselves in. I can see that many people do not agree and did not like it. I never go into a book expecting too much from it so I am almost never disappointed. Myself, I could personally see a movie coming from it and I would love to help cast it. These girls were something...

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for honest feedback.

Rating: 2

This book sounded amazing; I'm a sucker for witchy reads, however, I did not enjoy this book. I feel as though the first person point of view does not work for this book; I feel like with such a character driven book that third person would have been a better approach. The characters felt as though they needed to be more developed, which could have been done through the third person point of view. I did feel like the description of this book is amazing and it is great that the book is covering some lesbian characters.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This had witches and it had lesbians. It also had good female friendships. These are all things that I love in books. There was a ton of queer rep, even if just briefly mentioned, in this book. Unfortunately, it didn’t all come together for me in a way that made me love the book.


The Writing
I think one of the things I had the hardest time with was the writing. It wasn’t bad writing, but its style wasn’t for me. The best way I can describe the writing is jagged. There were sentences that weren’t sentences, and sometimes they didn’t make sense.


The Pacing
The pacing, like the writing, just didn’t work for me. The pacing felt all over the place. This book felt like it was supposed to be character driven, and yet, I think that the pacing of it was less that and more of an action oriented book. I don’t know. Something just didn’t sit well, the scenes didn’t mesh for me. I felt lost.


The Plot
See, I loved the plot. I think the plot was one of my favorite parts of this book. I think had the characters been fleshed out more, more time spent on certain aspects of the plot and character development, this could have easily been a three or four star read for me. Instead, we get a plot that I loved. The whole idea of it was great, and yet, it felt so little time was spent on it. So little that sometimes I forgot what the book was about! And I think that this also may have been character driven, but again, I think, sadly, the book fell down on that.


The Characters
I liked the characters, don’t get me wrong. I just felt that they were underdeveloped and as far as character development goes I felt that there was very little. When I did love were the relationships they had with each other. I think the friendship was written very well, and I enjoyed that aspect of it. But I felt they could have all used some more individual development as well. I will mention that these are flawed characters, and they are great because of that.

Overall, the lesbian relationship had a spot in this, and I liked the development of it. It was creative, and I liked that there was a lot of queer rep outside that in this book.


The Worldbuilding
The magic was a bit underwhelming. It was sort of explained and sort of not. This book had an overall dark tone and atmosphere to it, which was great. It really did have atmosphere.


Overall

This was a 2.5 star book for me. It was almost a three, but I just couldn’t find a way to honestly give it that when I felt like skimming or skipping pages in the book. I think some people will love this book and eat it up, but I just didn’t enjoy it overall. It was an okay book.

Hannah Abigail Clarke peered into my past to write this book just for teenage Robyn.

Eloise “Sideways” Pike (but always Sideways, never Eloise) is in high school and unapologetically gay and unabashadly a witch. Always ready to make a scene, Sideways jumps at the chance to publicly perform magic at a party by invitation from the intimidatingly cool trio of girls, Jing, Daisy and Yates. Then things get wild.

Clarke does a great job of jumping right into the action and meat of the story. Their prose are sketchy-lyrical, reminiscent of the spells muttered and cast in the pages of the book. Scapegracers is weird but delightful. If you ever had a The Craft phase, then do yourself a favor and pick up this book. (It gives you the occult sharpness without all the girl on girl infighting.)

This is not a YA book without edges; it is full of cursing and grit and brief mentions of sex, which I am very aware of as an adult thinking about reader advisory. However, I am also aware that this is exactly the sort of story I would have eaten up as a teenager! Scapegracers is about carving out space for yourself, finding your people and being accepted by them, for all your faults and peculiarities, not despite them.

Overall, I loved it. Hannah Abigail Clarke and I share sun and rising signs, so is it really a surprise?

This is my honest review of The Scapegracers novel. I was able to be able to read an advanced copy of this novel from the publisher, Erewhon Books, via an ebook through NetGalley.

Magic, friendship, and betrayal.

This book follows a group of young girls Sideways, Jing, Yates, and Daisy on their adventure of becoming witches and friends. The story is told in first person and works to build the magic system as the main character, sideways, learns it. I think this helps to add mystery to how magic works in this world, where it comes from, and how it is used. There are some other interesting characters you come to learn about such as witch hunters, spell books, devils, and other covens. There is also a few small romances and betrayals throughout this book which play into the main plot.

I enjoyed reading this story and although I skimmed through some parts, I did enjoy it overall. I would have liked to see more with the witch hunters and other covens. However, I am hoping to see more of that in the second book. I am intrigued enough to find out is they get back what was stolen, how Mr. Scratches comes into play, and how the other coven will react to their new bond with the Scratches at the end. I think the second book already has great promise to be exiting and a worth wile read. I think this book would make a good CW show- as it is along that type of vibe.

Although, one of the very first things I noticed about this novel was the grammar and writing. Although, it appears it gets better in later chapters, the first few pages of chapter one needs work. I am hoping, as this is an ARC, the grammar and writing will be very polished upon release. I think the cover will make people pick it up but the grammar may have people putting it back if not polished.

I loved this! It was a fun, fast paced story about a group of witches. Our main character, Sideways, does magic for a clique of popular girls and they end up forming a coven. This then results in a crazy, action packed weekend. I have to say I really liked how even though this is a YA book there wasn’t too much romance just enough to keep you intrigued. Also, I thought all our characters were enjoyable to read about, they were flawed but relatable. I can’t wait to see where the series goes from here.

LOOK at that cover! It is seriously beautiful and what drew me to the book when I saw it on NetGalley, along with the promise of a teenage lesbian witch. That’s all it took to draw me in and put in a request.

This book was quite interesting in the way it handles witches, covens, and spellcraft but it was centered so much around Sideways (our main character) and her new friends/coven (Jing, Yates, and Daisy) that I don’t think it really got to dive deep into the magic aspect of it. I’m hoping with the way this book ended the next one in the series will give more of that.

The characters were a lot of fun and this group of popular girls could totally be a caricature of Mean Girls, but they’re actually not that bad when you get to know them. Daisy is insane, Yates is the sweet fluffy girl, and Jing is definitely the HBIC. Sideways isn’t super interesting without them and there’s just a hint of LBTQ+ going on that I was a little disappointed there wasn’t a great knife to cut through all the sexual tension that was going on.

There’s a subplot that is fairly predictable, but the main action wasn’t something I predicted. The prose is lovely but gets a little bogged down in that first novel kind of way, but luckily doesn’t cram too much in there that it could save for a second book. The ending was not something I expected and I think I want to check out the second book now so I can find out what this baby coven is going to do!

Scapegracers comes out on May 12th and you should definitely add it to your quarantine reading stack! 3.5/5 stars!

I recieved this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thoughts:
The first 20% of the novel was fast paced and very witchy. Then everything slowed way down and I was just bored. I felt like this was a cheaper version of The Craft and Mean Girls. Outcast invited to hang out with the cool girl group only to learn that her magic becomes more powerful.

I did keep reading but by 75% I was finding myself wanting to pick up anything else but my kindle to finish. Normally I would have forced myself to push on but I couldn`t. I was not invested in Sideways or any other character.

Just because this novel wasn't for me doesn't mean you won`t enjoy it. It has representation that YA books need and if you haven't seen The Craft or even AHS Coven then maybe you won't notice the similarities.

TTFN,
Ashley

I really wanted to love this book. "Feral teenage coven" is something I have aspirations for every book I encounter in my life to be described as. Most of my problem with this book was the POV. First person, while leaving you directly with the character, instantly made the story harder to delve into and made the book suffer from a lot of cringe-y this isn't how teenagers speak or internalize moments. The friendships and representation in this book were INCREDIBLE. The premise and the plot, were also really great ideas. But the execution and the manner in which the story was presented lacked a lot for me.

*First of all i want to thank Netgalley and Erewhon books for this arc*

The cover of this book is adorable and that was my main reason to get this book.
The story line of this book goes about Sideways (a witch) who was invited by a group of popular girls to perform spells at a party. when the girls sat together to perform the magic, an unexpected thing happened, kind of an unique disaster. Daisy, Yates, jing and sideways soon become great friends with a strong bond, despite of their different characters. I like the attitude, anger and moody sides of the girls. Sideways is actually not the type of person who makes friends easy. she is a lesbian and often gets into fights. More complex things happens, the more they dive into their identities.

Overall it was a great book, but i expected a bit more. I wanted it to be a bit more darker.

I'm looking forward to the next book. And YOU, yes you if you like witchy, a bit dark magic and true friendship books the grab this one for sure.

#TheScapegracers #Netgalley

The Scapegracers is the story of Eloise 'Sideways' Pike, a lesbian witch who lives with her two adoptive dads in a small town full of magic and secrets. Sideways, an outcast both by virtue of her sexuality and her prickly attitude towards her classmates, is invited to a Halloween party by the three most popular girls in her year: Yates, the sweetheart; Daisy, the loose cannon; Jing, the protector. What begins as a party trick becomes a fierce friendship, and soon Sideways and her new friends find themselves in pursuit of magical objects, hotly pursued themselves by witch hunters, rival covens, and other manner of supernatural beasts.

I'm normally not a fan of first person POV, and the first few chapters were initially difficult to understand and read. However, once I grew used to the voice, and once I'd spent a little more time with Sideways, she started to grow on me. More importantly, I absolutely adored the relationships between Sideways and her friends: ride-or-die female friendships has always been one of my favorite tropes, and adding witchcraft into the mix just made the story more engaging. Clarke writes friendships so beautifully, and with so much tenderness and importance. Clarke grants friendships the importance they deserve, which is a sadly unique position in the world of young adult literature.

The selling point of this book is obviously the witchcraft element. I liked the take on magic in this book - namely, how normal the fantastic appears. Sideways and her friends react to witchcraft with the excitement of finding a copy of a rare book at a secondhand store. This is such a unique view on the role of magic in "non-magical" society, and I really loved reading about the interaction between witches and non-witches in such a relaxed environment. On the whole, this book is everything I would've loved to read as a teenager, and I'm so happy that today's queer girls have such a fantastic, effortlessly diverse, and engaging book to read.


the good: Characters are engaging and developed; the plot is interesting and greatly picks up as the story unfolds; the voice of the narrator (Sideways) is engaging.

the bad: The plot was initially slow, but picked up as the story went on; the writing style took some getting used to initially.

the ugly: I didn't love that the queer love interest was revealed to be using Sideways and we didn't get any healthy wlw rep in this book. Hopefully, some to come in book two!

(Link will go live on my blog on April 12th)

An e-ARC was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange of an honest review. This does not effect my opinion in any way.

The Scapegracers is a story about a lesbian witch bonding with the three most popular girls in her high school after she did some witch stuff during a Halloween party.

To be perfectly honest, I’m still not sure about my rating. I gave the book 3* but I may lower it to 2.5* because even though I like some part of the story, it was still really boring. Enjoyable because the author wrote an absolute amazing witchy atmosphere. I’m not really into witch stuff — and maybe that’s why the book wasn’t more enjoyable to me — so I don’t know for sure if it was well done but The Scapegracers has such an incredible vibe. Reading the book is like walking in the street in the dark and then you start hearing stuff, whispers. You start having goosebumps, you feel like someone or something is watching you.

The Scapegracers is the perfect formula for someone like me who didn’t know much about witch craft. Sideways is a witch and knows a lot of stuff about it but Jing, Yates and Daisy were pretty much new to all of this so them discovering witch craft felt like I was also the one discovering it too, you know?

"Magic doesn’t do well with being cut off early."

The idea of coven — e.g when several witches form a group — was also one of my favorite parts. I liked the idea of witches joining each other to do magic together. I always had this one presumption: the fact that being a witch is a lonely occupation. I don’t know why but this is how I’ve always pictured them.

The Scapegracers is definitely a character driven story. I liked all the girls: Sideways the witch who likes nothing more than witch stuff and girls. Jing, the strong asian-american bisexual girl the coven could rely on. Daisy who would fight anybody who dare to bother one of her girls and Yates, the softest but fiercest of them all.

I liked how they were all supportive and protective of each other. The story was set up to have those three popular girls hating on the weird girl doing witch craft — as we all saw in other books — but instead, what I got was girls loving and supporting each other and I loved that. I loved how the three popular girls didn’t care about all those weird rumors about Sideways and instead, just went for it. I liked how into magic they were.

" Blood is truly thicker than water, is it not? We spilled some blood between us with that glass."

Honestly the best parts of the book were when they did magic together. Those scenes had something special to them — gayness, i guess — and I absolutely loved them. Four girls cursing and hating on disgusting boys? Sign me up, I want to join the coven too. Reading the book, you can feel how much these girls love each other. Sideways joined them much later but immediately, the three other girls would have done anything for her.

"Don’t do that. Never do that. Don’t ever say you’re not beautiful, not ever, okay? Girls are just beautiful. That’s the way they are."

Here we go. As much as I liked the main characters and the side characters (gosh I loved Sideways’ dads), the plot and pacing almost ruined it for me. The book started strongly : girls doing magic at a party and the next morning they found dead deer in a pool and then they put a curse on a boy. I couldn’t have ask for better. But then, the author lost me in their book. I didn’t understand what they were going for, I didn’t understand what was the point of most of the stuff which had happened. As much as I liked Sideways, I’m sad to say I didn’t care that much about her internal monologue. More precisely, I guess I’d have cared more if they weren’t that long. You just read line after line about her feelings and if I liked it at first, it just got tiring and boring.

I feel like the author wanted to put too much stuff in the first book. You pretty much jump from one plot point to another and sometimes it didn’t make sense for me. I didn’t understand how something was linked to the other thing. Also, I believe the book didn’t need to be that long. 400 pages isn’t that big when it comes to fantasy book but when the fantasy book is set in our world I guess it starts to become long. I also read that there will be a second and a third book so I guess the author could have split some of the stuff which happened in the first book to put it in the other ones.

I don’t know if I’ll read the second book. I liked the characters and the last part of the book was quite great too so I’m curious about what will happen next. I just hope the two next books will not be that long.

A really fun mean girls with witches story. I really liked the main characters and the plot was well done. I'm really glad I got to read this book!

This book is... visceral, in terms of language and story. I admit it seemed a bit much at first, the description of organs and feeling things in a strange way in strange parts of the human body, but as the book progressed it began to make sense. The magic in this book is visceral and requires the use of descriptive and at times uncomfortable language to describe how it affects the characters and the world they inhabit. For the first few chapters the book reminded me a quite a bit of Foul is Fair by Hannah Capin, in the sense that it was a group of teenage girls coming into magic and using it to exact revenge on a boy that had done them wrong. However, the further in you go the more the author continues to build up and expand her world until the story of these particular girls takes on a life of its own. I was about 80% in when it hit me that this is definitely the first book in a series, because there was way too much still to be explained and sorted out in only 20% of a book. It leaves on a definite cliffhanger of sorts that compels you to wait around for the next one to find out how these strange, feral, powerful girls will come into their own and eventually fix all their problems. This was a very interesting read and I recommend it for anyone looking for an interesting world full of very unique characters and a yet to be fully explored magic system.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange of an honest review and all the opinions are my own.

I was attracted by the cover of this book, because it's really cool and the plot sounded interesting! I wasn't disappointed!

Sideways is a witch, a lesbian and an outsider, having hard times to make friends, but when three popular girls pay her to cast a spell, she becomes part of their group. Together they are a powerful coven, bent to cast curses on boys, having fun, plannning parties and so on.

I really liked this book and I loved the characters! I like the way Sideways become part of the group and starts a friendship with Jing, Daisy and Yates. They are well written and, above all, Sideways is great! The magic is really captivating and the plot is thrilling, dealing with magic, friendship, love, with LGBT rep, characters that are brimming with life and rage.
The scapegracers is the first of a trilogy and I can't wait to know more about this world!

The Scapegracers was another book that attracted me because of it’s cover. It’s simple but yet complex at the same time and I loved that about it. The story it self though left me disappointed. I loved the idea behind the witches and revenge but other then that I found the story to be weirdly paced and the relationship dynamic of the characters to be weird as well. Honestly, the characters behaved as if they were twelve rather than sixteen/seventeen year olds that they are suppose to be.


The Scapegracers is the first book in a series, so there is room for the author to have these characters grow and for the writing story to develop. Which I hope it does. But I don’t plan on continuing with this series

**Thank you to Erewhon and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.**

“What the four of us could do was something else. I felt seasick and disgustingly in love with it, with them.”

A girl gang, witches, and LGBTQ representation? This book had it all! Unfortunately, it fell a little flat for me. The concept was amazing, but the execution was shaky. There were several times when I was reading that I felt like there was dissonance between the writing and the actual story.

While the writing style was meh, the character development was incredible! I love the way Clarke wrote the character’s friendships and emotions. It was so fresh and realistic; that part of the writing never felt forced.

Because I loved the concept and the characters so much I really struggled with my rating. Four stars felt too generous, but three felt harsh. In the end, I decided that the awkwardness of the writing style is was too much to overlook. I have really high hopes for the second book, and I will definitely be picking it up to see what’s going on with Sideways and the rest of the gang!!

I’m not actually sure how I feel about this book. There were some parts that I liked and there were some parts that I didn’t like. I found myself enjoying myself and then I found myself skimming through parts because I was a bit bored. But that seemed to leave me as we headed towards the end of the book. I really did love the interactions between the MC and her newly built coven, so every part they were not together I wasn’t interested in. Those I think were the strongest moments in this book.

Overall not a bad book, will definitely look out for book 2.

I really love the premise of this book. Witches, high-school drama, friendships, queer and poc rep? Sign me up! If this type of book sounds appealing to you-- it's worth the read. However, the major issue I had with it was pacing. I wanted to enjoy this book so much, but often found myself frustrated or confused because there were whole sections where nothing was happening or developing. I also think there might have been more depth to the book if the side characters had been explored a little more as well. Overall, I think I would have enjoyed this more if it was a single book with a resolved story arc, rather than a first book in a series, but as is-- I am happy I picked up the book and gave it a read.