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Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
624 pages
A sweltering, blood-soaked slice of 1970s feminist horror where desperate girls turn to dark magic to reclaim their stolen futures.
What it feels like
Reading this feels like being trapped in the suffocating, humid heat of a 1970s Florida summer, where the true monsters are the adults enforcing societal shame. The atmosphere is intensely claustrophobic and dread-soaked, building a slow-burn tension that eventually explodes into visceral, pulpy horror. It is a deeply empathetic exploration of female rage and bodily autonomy, wrapped in the trappings of an occult thriller. The prose is sharp and propulsive, pulling you through the girls' terrifying transformation from helpless victims of institutional abuse to dangerous wielders of dark magic. It will thoroughly delight readers who love fierce sisterhoods, retro aesthetics, and the bloody, righteous catharsis of watching marginalized women burn their cages to the ground.
- Mood
- sweltering
- claustrophobic
- dread-soaked
- rebellious
- Tone
- righteous
- gritty
- empathetic
- suspenseful
- darkly comedic
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- bodily autonomy · female rage · institutional abuse · sisterhood in trauma · reclaiming power
- The writing
- Visceral, pulpy, and sharply observant, balancing B-movie horror aesthetics with deep, empathetic character work.
- The arc
- The journey moves from suffocating helplessness and shame into a terrifying, blood-soaked, and fiercely cathartic reclamation of agency.
- Who it's for
- Fans of feminist horror who crave stories about marginalized women burning down oppressive systems with dark magic.
Content notes
- teen pregnancy
- institutional abuse
- forced adoption
- gore
- misogyny
- body horror
About the book
‘I did an evil thing to be put in here, and I’m going to have to do an evil thing to get out.’
They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, 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. There, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to keep her baby and escape to a commune. Zinnia, a budding musician who plans to marry her baby’s father. And Holly, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.
Every moment of their waking day 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.
Description from Open Library.
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