The story is set in 1979 when 15 year old pregnant Neva is taken to a home for “wayward girls” to deliver her baby, have it adopted and then return home as if nothing has happened.
The home is run by an authoritarian who takes away their names, clothes and any references to their normal life. The girls get a weekly mobile library service and the are thrilled when a book on witchcraft is recommended.
In an effort to prevent Holly, the youngest of the girls at 13, returning to the arms of the minister that molested her and who wants to adopt her baby, the girls take to witchcraft with devastating consequences.
I was super excited to read a Grady Hendrix book as I’ve heard so much about his gothic/ horror style that it sounded right up my alley. However this book read more like a YA novel than the noir book I was expecting. I still enjoyed it but it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. I’d give it 3.5 but have rounded down to a 3 star. Thanks NetGalley for the arc.

Fern is an unforgettable protagonist—her vulnerability and determination draw you in as she navigates a world designed to silence her and the other girls. Hendrix’s vivid portrayal of the 1970s, with its stifling societal expectations, adds a rich layer of realism that makes the supernatural elements feel all the more unsettling.

The introduction of witchcraft and the occult is brilliantly executed, giving the girls a taste of power in a world where they’ve had none. But as the story spirals into darker territory, the true horror isn’t just the supernatural—it’s the monstrous truths hidden behind Wellwood’s walls.

Hendrix masterfully blends spine-tingling terror with poignant social commentary, making Wayward Girls a must-read for fans of gothic horror and gripping storytelling. This is a book that will leave you thinking—and shivering—long after the final page.

That’s a really good read, heartbreaking reality of so many women in the 70s. Some scenes were so graphic my body hurts, the childbirth scenes were also greatly executed.
People will, without a doubt, LOVE this book.

thank you netgalley for the early copy

Although it was a bit slow in parts, I really enjoyed this. Not as ‘horror’ as I would expect from Grady Hendrix but the girls are going through some ‘horrific’ things.
I loved the girls power aspect from the group of girls, and cried a bit at the end as it wrapped up.

I must confess Witchcraft for Wayward girls by Grady Hendrix is the first book from the author that I have read. But I have heard such good things about this author that I was excited to receive this copy.
Fifteen-year-old Neva Craven lives in Alabama in the 1970’s. She is also an unwed and pregnant. Her father is ashamed of his daughter like any teenager in them times so Neva is sent to her ‘Aunt’ for the summer until the baby comes. But after the long journey she finds herself instead sent to a home for Wayward mothers/ teenage pregnancies until the baby is born. The children are then forcibly adopted, and the girls are sent home as if nothing has happened. The mothers never see their children ever again.
When she gets their Neve is given a new name and told never use her own. Her new name is Fern. The other girls have been given new names too. The girls fill their day doing housework and smoking until the days when their children are born. The girls get bored until a travelling library arrives at the home and the girls are given a Spell book, which they use to try and right the wrongs that they have been dealt with and try and break free. But things don’t always go they way they want them too.
This is a fantastic read. Not only because of the supernatural and engaging storyline. But it is a thought provoking read. How pregnant teenagers were sent away, shamed by their families and worse still their babies forcibly taken away. But certain circumstances it was a product of children being abused by others. It is also journey of empowerment and trying to break free from the ills that they see themselves in. I can’t wait to read the backlog from this author 5 stars from me.

I love Grady’s writing and story telling ability. This book took me by surprise with less “horror” aspects and more feminists themes.
Initially I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to palate the topic of pregnancy and horror - particularly pregnancy written by a man - however, Grady managed to represent what was a reality for girls/women exceptionally well and elicited a range of emotions from me, particularly anger and rage for how women were treated, especially from loved ones during one of the most challenging times of an individuals life. I can’t fathom how places like this truely existed.
The witchy element of this book was great- not overdone and I loved the fact the Librarian is a witch was an automatic love for me.
Overall this was a great feminist read and Grady continues to solidify himself as one of my favourite authors

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls - Grady Hendrix

A super atmospheric read, with some really interesting characters. The staff were particularly awful and as always with a Grady Hendrix book there is always something unexpected from the characters, I found the librarian was an exceptionally complex character and added so much to the story. I found certain descriptions in the story very graphic - but again this is to be expected with a Grady Hendrix book. I always look forward to seeing what this author is going to do next and this really did not disappoint.
Many thanks to the publishers and author for the e-book in return for ,y honest thought and opinions.

Title - Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
Author - Grady Hendrix
Release Date - Jan 16th 2025
Page Count - 496
Read/Listen Time - 14hrs
Rating - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ /5 stars

Fans of Grady Hendrix will not be disappointed with his new offering, this is an amazing read. Another nostalgia driven story set in the 70s; funny, tragic, gory and action packed.

We follow Fern, the main protagonist, as a 15 year old pregnant girl sent to a home for underage, unwed pregnant girls in the middle of nowhere. When Fern and her friends find a book for witchcraft they think they're having a bit of fun at first but then things start happening to the targets of their spells. The girls feel powerful and invincible but of course power comes with a cost.

Full of great fleshed out characters that you will love, hate, and pity and a spellbinding storyline this needs to be the first thing on your 2025 reading list.

You can of course pre-order now from all the usual places and there are even signed editions from Waterstones and Forbidden Planet.

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls is a touching and haunting book by the horror writer Grady Hendrix. In this book, we follow Fern and a number of other vulnerable girls as they discover the occult. Witchcraft may be dark and require sacrifice, but it gives them power for the first time in their lives.

Despite how scary the idea of dark witchcraft may be, I think that anyone who reads this book will agree that the true horror is what the families of each of our main characters does to these girls. After getting pregnant, each is sent to the Wellwood Home to have their lives controlled until they can give birth and have their child ripped from their arms. This book may be set in the 1970’s, but in some parts of the world this is an ongoing practice. Without bodily autonomy, the girls are forced to turn to the occult to fight for their freedom.

The real strength of this story seems to come from the characters and their relationships. Hendrix really makes you care about these people and the plights they are facing. All of the injustices make you rage and when they get a bit of power you rejoice. I think that all horror and thriller books need to be grounded in characters like this. No matter how well the suspense is written, if you don’t care about the characters the horror elements won’t hit the way they need to.

It is a very relevant book given some of the things happening in the world right now, but I also understand that it could be very triggering for some people. This is the second pregnancy-based horror book I’ve read and although the style of body horror is fascinating, I don’t think I could read much more. I do appreciate the attention it draws to the dangers and trauma of pregnancy though. We tend to think of it as magical and wonderful, but it is still a terribly painful and transformative experience (with severe psychological impacts for some).

I would recommend this book to fans of body horror and feminist horror. And if you really liked this book and want to read more like it, I would recommend My Throat an Open Grave by Tori Bovalino.

Grady Hendrix delivers a compelling drama about a group of girls in the 1960s who are sent to a home for unwed pregnant teenagers and turn to witchcraft to help them deal with their impending situations.
The story sees these girls - who are as young as 14 - shipped off and forced to live in an isolated boarding house until they deliver and surrender their babies, a decision made by their parents to stop them being shunned in greater society.
Looking for an escape, the group are enticed by a group of neighbouring witches who may or may not have the girls' best interests at heart.
While the witchcraft elements are present, they are really just a backdrop for a story about a group of girls dealing with a lack of choice and control over their own teen pregnancies.
As such, the witchcraft element feels somewhat pigeonholed into an otherwise powerful coming of age story. It almost feels like Grady wanted to step outside of horror completely for this one but didn't want to stray too far from his established brand so used witchcraft to keep the genre elements.

We were girls: girls in trouble; unsocialized girls, fast girls, loose girls, emotionally immature girls, wayward girls. Whatever you wanted to call us, we were children. And we had to make terrible choices.

This was my first Grady Hendrix novel and I was completely blown away. First let me begin by saying this book is much more than your typical witchy read. The story has depth and took me on a roller coaster of different emotions.

The story is slower paced. However, what it lacks in action, it makes up for in well written and diverse characters with interesting back stories. These girls had me chuckling with the their differing and unique personalities throughout this book.

I like how Hendrix tactfully handles the subject of teenage and illegitimate pregnancy in the 70s. The abuse and shame these young girls faced for simply having a moment of weakness, is something he did not fail to capture in the story. At times, I found I hard to read but the book is so immersive, I couldn't put it down.

The witchy aspect of the book was well done and though it takes a while to get there. I think the build up worked. Why? Because it shows what leads these girls to make a deal with evil and sell their souls.

I wouldn't necessarily class this in the horror category, however it does has horrific elements to it. It's a gripping and enthralling tale of young girls forced to make very adult decisions.
Skilfully and masterfully written. I highly recommend this one.

Thank you to Netgalley, Pan Macmillan and Grady Hendrix. For my eARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

This book was fascinating. An insight into the fate of un-wed 'loose' girls who find themselves in a helpless situation with choices taken from the.
You get Grady's supernatural, horror take on the situation but this felt somewhat more character driven with the horror providing a perfect backdrop to underpin the tale.
Loved it.

The plot of this story is certainly an intriguing one - underage, unmarried girls who have fallen pregnant in some way have been shipped off to Wellwood House to have their babies in secret and give them away for adoption. Each character's backstory is really interesting, a couple that pull some heart strings, but as an overall plot, it seemed a bit drawn out. The conflict that Neva/Fern goes through feels a bit of a drag, with it all coming to a conclusion that they had thought of about 8 chapters ago. Grady Hendrix often chooses a format or era for his books that makes them more interesting to read - the 80s horror of My Best Friend's Exorcism, the catalogue style of Horrorstör. This one didn't dive into that so much. An okay read but not as consumable as some of his others.

This unfortunately wasn’t for me at all. I like the premise and I think Grady Hendrix has an important message here, but I didn’t like the execution at all. Fern, the main character, is one-dimensional for most of the novel and I didn’t care about her at all. At the beginning so many characters are introduced that it’s impossible to keep track and it took quite a while to figure out which characters were important. The plot felt underdeveloped. The novel can’t decide if it wants to describe pregnancy in all its horror or be a book about witches; in theory, it could be both but in the end it doesn’t do justice to either.

I want to give a big shout out to Pan Macmillan | Tor Nightfire for granting me access to this ARC. I chose to apply for it because I really admire the author's work, and I can confidently say that it did not disappoint. I enjoyed it so much—more than I can express. The book was not only realistic but also featured a nice blend of horror and some truly horrific elements, which is exactly what I look for and enjoy in a story. I loved the narrative, the ambiance, and, of course, the characters, who were all brilliantly crafted. It make me feel so much female rage because of the times and the “obligations” of females but I truly enjoy it.

Another Grady Hendrix book that did not disappoint!

I'm SUCH a big fan of Grady's, so I couldn't wait to devour Witchcraft for Wayward Girls—and I love the title. I was actually really impressed with just how eerie it was, without being too overtly 'this is a horror book', and I thought the girl's lives and what they experienced (which was incredibly harrowing and difficult to explore without coming across as superficial) was done very well. The writing is exactly what I've come to expect, and love, in Grady's writing. The historical context was quite interesting, although I would have loved to have read even more about it. There's a real darkness throughout that really grips you, and I managed to finish this over the weekend—I didn't want to pull myself aware from these girls!

Highly recommend and if you're a fan of Grady already, definitely add this to your TBR!

Thanks as always to Netgalley and the publisher for the chance to read this ahead of many other eager fans.

This book was gripping, horrifying and deeply realistic. When I say horrifying it’s not a horror that’s tense and on the edge of your seat it’s the disturbing nature of what’s happening to these young girls and the effects this has. I know this is written by a man but I do feel that he explored women’s stories and rights well. There are some gory scenes and the child birthing is beyond brutal. The witchcraft element is creepy and dark. I also loved the characters, they felt like believable young women. Overall a great exploration of historical events with an added magical element that makes you feel and draws you in.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC. This is a voluntary review of my own thoughts.

Many thanks NetGalley for the e-arc in exchange for my honest feedback.

“You see, we’d been taught that the devil was the worst thing in the world, but we were too young to understand that there were worse things than the devil. We were too young to understand that their job was to convince us that the most natural thing in the world was evil, and the most evil thing in the world was natural.
For girls like us, down there at the home, the devil turned out to be our only friend.”

I love Grady Hendrix. I won’t say that his books are horror in the “real” way, because the only scary things in his books are the people. This is my fourth book by him and it was such a good one. To make you read it, I just want to post all the quotes from it.
The feeling I had while reading “Witchcraft for wayward girls” was rage. Rage for these girls that went through so many things because of the men and the adults around them.

“They were told over and over that all they could do was ruin their babies’s lives.”

“Witchcraft for wayward girls” is set in 1970, when women were seen only as tools for having children. It’s about religion towards women and so much sexism, it’s about feminism and it’s heartbreaking and powerful.
It’s about Wellwood house, a house where underage girls are sent by their families to birth their babies and then give them to strangers. After that, they are sent home and has to act as if nothing happened and just go on with their life. Because it’s so easy.
Life’s not easy in the house, as you can imagine.

“No one cares what you wish, my dear. Isn’t that your problem? No one cares what any of you wish, or hope, or pray. You speak, you cry, you scream, you beg, and what good has it done you?”

Neva is fifteen and she’s dropped off at this house by her father. There, she meets the other girls, and the adults that control the house. She has to change her name to Fern and follow the rules for her own good and the baby’s. Besides Fern, we have Rose, pregnant at not even eighteen, Zinnia, fifteen and Holly, who was raped at eight years old and no one believes her. And she doesn’t talk.

“Maybe doing witchcraft means you go to hell, but I don’t mind if it means I don’t have to go home.”

They follow every rule and try to make their life easier, until a librarian and her shop comes to them. She teaches them witchcraft and from them, their lives change again.

I loved everything about this book. The births are so realistic, they almost made me change my mind about having a baby. It really makes you think about how many things we endure as women and as mothers and I was raging about how the doctors acted towards these young girls.
“You’ll look like this one day. They hate us enough. Don’t let them make you hate yourselves too.”

While I wanted more horror and witchcraft, it wasn’t necessarily a problem not having a lot of it. The book is horror on its own. You can feel how powerless these girls were and how much they needed to take control over their lives.

“Daughter, student, whore. They change you in whatever they need you to be. Choose for yourself. For once in your life.”

I loved the writing, the characters, the story, the horror parts and how the story ended. I always cry at the end of his books, he just knows how to write a sad and beautiful story. I can’t say negative things about it because of these girls. I know it’s just a story, but it’s inspired from real stories. Women were not loved, we still aren’t loved by everyone. We are still seen as tools for having children and people still think that our “place” is in the kitchen. There is still sexism and hate and shaming and pure hate towards us.
This is what story is about. Women and their choices.

“They say she was wayward. They said it was all her fault. They said she had done something wrong. They lied. So why did none of them ever pay it? Why did someone else always pay? Someone like Holly. Like Fern. Like Zinnia. Like Rose.”

“We were girls: girls in trouble; unsocialized girls, fast girls, loose girls, emotionally immature girls, wayward girls. Whatever you wanted to call us, we were children.”

⭐⭐⭐⭐✨
CW: Traumatic Birth, Sexual Abuse, Child Abuse, Racist Language

What I Liked
1) There were small moments of humour in such a dark book (as per usual with Grady Hendrix).

2) I definitely wasn't expecting what this book was but I was happily surprised by how well teen pregnancy in the 70s was explored and all the social stigma that came with it. This book was definitely more literary than his other work's and I'd say pick this up if you want a coming of age story with a sprinkle of horror towards the end.

3) I loved how much Fern's frustration with how society treats her for being a teen mum comes across and I truly felt for her. For instance, when the family finds out she's pregnant and has a meeting without her about it.

4) I loved how Rose was constantly being criticised for being such a performative activist because it was so obvious she was a rich girl trying to go against the establishment to seem edgy, rather than because she truly cared.

5) I loved the discussions of how the girls weren't educated on protection or how being pregnant and giving birth actually is. This is still a major problem in the US today and I think it's really important to talk about.

6) I loved how much of a focus female friendship was.

7) The horror towards the end was truly disturbing and made me so uncomfortable (birth is described in a very gory way so avoid this book if you can't handle that).

8) The end truly broke me. I got so emotional and actually cried this book was so moving. I loved how it talked about the nuance of saying a teen mum is better off giving up the baby and how that's not always true.

What I Disliked
1) I just want to highlight that racist language is used by a white author and I've seen some reviews say they feel he is tokenising black people. When this book gets released, I will definitely be seeking more opinions on this from black reviewers as this is the reason I can't give this book 5 stars because I also picked up on it throughout the book.

2) Some of the spells they would perform would become really longwinded and unnecessary.

Overall, I would suggest you read this if you like emotional, coming-of-age stories with a focus on friendship with a bit of horror and magic (I don't think the witchcraft is as big of a part of this book than I thought going in).

Thank you to Netgalley, Pan Macmillian and Grady Hendrix for this eARC in exchange for an honest review

I am always down for a book where people fight the patriarchy, and I'm also always down for a book where shit gets weird because people get mixed up in powers beyond their comprehension. Grady Hendrix took these two things and mashed them together in a successful and complicated way in this book.

I immediately found it hard to put this book down. There's a lot of characters to get to grips with straight away but it's interesting enough right off the bat that you want to get to know them. And they turn out to be fascinatingly complex individuals - fully fleshed out in their own right despite their introductions as "just another unwed teenage girl". I cannot fault the characterisation in this book at all, because even when characters were acting in awful ways I still felt pity for them, and for their lack of power over the situation they were in.

The pacing was a little off in the middle, with long periods of not much happening where the girls were mostly going back and forth on whether or not they wanted to do witchcraft. The tense parts where witchcraft was happening, however, were so so well done. Those pages really flew by.

The long page count, however, means that my frustration over how the girls were treated waned a little out of sheer boredom. When I think about it in hindsight, the way that the girls were told nothing about giving birth, the way that keeping their babies was never a real option, the invasive medical examinations they had to endure - these things really piss me off, but the book wasn't punchy enough to maintain this, so it just became a passing fury that only came up every 50 pages or so.

I enjoyed this book quite a lot but it didn't seem to be fully sure of what it wanted to achieve in the end - were witches a supernatural horror or were they the necessary evil needed to fight injustice? Was the true horror of the story the part at the end or was it the way that adults treat teenage girls? I think I'll be thinking about this book for a while.