Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars | 2,465 ratings

Price: 19.69

Last update: 03-04-2025


About this item

There’s power in a book…

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who plans to marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid...and it’s usually paid in blood.

In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master” (NPR).


Top reviews from the United States

  • Michael W. Rich
    5.0 out of 5 stars Hendrix’s Best Work
    Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2025
    I’m a 50-year-old guy. I live a life of immense privilege. For a few hundred pages, Hendrix made me feel the terror and helplessness of what it must have been like to be 15, pregnant, and unmarried in the South in 1970.

    May we be forgiven for what we did and do now to those we judge unworthy of our compassion.
  • nikkyireads
    4.0 out of 5 stars 4/5⭐️
    Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2025
    For girls like us, down there at the Home, the devil turned out to be our only friend.

    *Que the goosebumps*

    This was a very slow burn and it took me a minute to get into into it, but its worth the wait. It's about 24% before they get to the library and the first mention of witchcraft. And the witchcraft is more minimal than I would have liked, but still packed a punch.

    This had a lot of trauma followed by more trauma, and I certainly didn't expect to be emotional reading this. I've never been more thankful for not being alive in this time period, and also for being child free. I think the true horror aspect of this is the history of how girls/woman were treated in the past, and how chilling it is that reproductive rights are being contested now.

    After everything she’d been through, after she’d created life, after they had taken her child, did they really think she was scared of something as small as God?
    Customer image
    nikkyireads
    4.0 out of 5 stars 4/5⭐️
    Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2025
    For girls like us, down there at the Home, the devil turned out to be our only friend.

    *Que the goosebumps*

    This was a very slow burn and it took me a minute to get into into it, but its worth the wait. It's about 24% before they get to the library and the first mention of witchcraft. And the witchcraft is more minimal than I would have liked, but still packed a punch.

    This had a lot of trauma followed by more trauma, and I certainly didn't expect to be emotional reading this. I've never been more thankful for not being alive in this time period, and also for being child free. I think the true horror aspect of this is the history of how girls/woman were treated in the past, and how chilling it is that reproductive rights are being contested now.

    After everything she’d been through, after she’d created life, after they had taken her child, did they really think she was scared of something as small as God?
    Images in this review
    Customer image
  • Mary Brandon
    5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing
    Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2025
    Grady Hendrix never fails to disappoint!! This books, as all of his other have been, was mine blowing, through provoking and beautiful. As well as spooky and creepy and fun. My grandmother was an unwed mother in 1963. While she was never sent to a home, and her baby was never taken from her(my mother) in my mind, Fern was my Grandmother.
  • Sue Bingham
    5.0 out of 5 stars Wowza!
    Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2025
    A guy wrote this??? Hard to believe.
    I remember the bad old days when everybody lied. And I fully believe that our immediate future could be more of the same. Maybe we need witches now more than ever -- since reason and rationality are apparently in painfully short supply.
  • Kindle Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing
    Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2025
    A story about 4 powerless girls in a precarious situation taking their power back the only way they can. As usual, Hendrix manages to make me love each of these girls and care so much about them.
  • Pope Mel
    4.0 out of 5 stars Paying the Price
    Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2025
    Responsibility.

    Whether an unwanted pregnancy is the result of rape or a night of consensual pleasure . . . it always seems to be the woman's fault. Why didn't she just say no? Why didn't she use birth control? Why didn't she keep her legs crossed? For centuries, men have walked away scot-free while women face the consequences. (Just ask Hester Prynne.)

    In Hendrix's latest, we meet a gang of girls destined to pay the price for their . . . indiscretions. Some of them will pay a heavier price than others.

    "In this world there is one truth: everything has a price, and every price must be paid. Perhaps you will not pay it today, maybe you can put it off until tomorrow, but one day there will be a knock at your door in the middle of the night, a voice in the darkness beside your bed, a letter laid upon the table when you believe yourself to be alone, and it will contain a bill that must be paid, and you will pay it in blood."

    This is a different fit for our Grady. As he admits in his fine afterward, teen pregnancy is a strange choice for a childless, middle-aged man. I suspect many of his fans will bemoan the lack of extreme horror. And, true, this is not as terrifying as some of his earlier stuff. I loved it, though; the characters had me hooked. The ending is, dare I say, touching, and more than a little sad. What these girls endured, even the ones who didn't dabble in witchcraft, is the true sin.

    How sad that over half the country seems in a hurry to venture back to those dark, dark days.
  • lg99
    5.0 out of 5 stars What an excellent and timely book!
    Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2025
    I was expecting a horror novel about witches, but what I got was so much better. What a beautiful book of friendship, motherhood and the power of the female spirit!
  • ranmont77
    5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put it down
    Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2025
    Grady does it again, I love this book so much.

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