Grady Hendrix is surprisingly mean

I started Witchcraft for Wayward Girls today.

The covers kinda slap

 First off, big book is big. Kind of keep settling into weird positions on the couch or bed and hold it up with only my wrists and gives me a bit of a soreness. I have delicate wrists for I am a delicate lady.

Anyways, instead of showering, I read this book for most of today. It's my first real Grady Hendrix book, I think I started the Final Girl Support Group (or whatever it's called, I think it's a bit funnier if I don't look up the title and go with something slightly wrong nvm I just looked it up and it's exactly what I guessed so that's less funny) but I only got maybe 30 pages in. It's not that it didn't interest me, I think I was just less intense about reading and it was due back at the library, so I just never picked it up again to finish off the other 322 pages.

Truthfully, I was in a bookstore and I picked up this book and was so nearly close to buying it. The first sentence is so funny. (She didn't think things could get any worse, then she saw the sign. Welcome to Florida, it read.) I barely managed to resist once I saw the library had a copy. And this morning, I had five unstarted library books so I rolled a random number generator and got this one (which is good because I secretly wanted to start this one today). It's definitely cutting the line quite a bit, but the rules are different on a snow day/weekend. Welcome to the Thunderdome.

The first scene of gore is shocking. I guess I wasn't familiar with Hendrix so I didn't think he'd necessarily go there, but as they say, don't read a horror book centered around a lot of pregnancy if you aren't ready for some pregnancy-related horror, so I suppose that's my bad for ignoring that common phrase.

Then there's an entire two pages in Chapter 22 just describing a character's pain. Two entire pages. The descriptions are visceral and unique. It starts with: The thing in her stomach picked her up and dragged her into the pain room. Her entire body was made of pain. (I really would like to write more of the quotes but I think it might be quite a lot.) What a blunt way to start it though. It really catches the attention if you ask me. I'd love if someone asked me one day. God, I'm lonely.

In another scene, a character pays the "sixpence" of a spell. I preface my reaction by saying I've read a good amount of horror and gore (Bat Eater, Play Nice, and The Eyes Are the Best Part most recently). This wasn't even a horror scene in that sense and I almost couldn't read the whole thing. As it was, I had to skim over it, take a break to cringe and curl up in a ball and feel every feeling like electricity down my nerves, and then skim over the rest super fast like ripping off a visual band-aid. I have to imagine it's the kind of phantom pain men feel when they watch those "funny" compilation videos of other men getting kicked in the balls.

Except with fingers.

You look into that eye and try to tell it that its gore gave me a false sense of security of what level of gore I could handle

Although the sixpence scene was probably objectively the worst, there is also a medical scene that made my hands shake so bad. I do think it was supposed to be horrible, but I don't know if it was supposed to send the reader away sobbing. Which I didn't do right away, I read another 40 pages before my bf came to check on me, which broke my reading trance and then I started sobbing.

The dedication page was so silly that it really put me in a false sense of ease

I'm a bit impressed with Hendrix though. He isn't afraid to take the wheel and go straight off a horror cliff, or more accurately, teeter the car dangerously close to the horror cliff while his passengers scream, squirm, and cringe in sympathetic pain. I guess I thought since he's a bit more of a known name that the book would be a little more "mainstream", which can also kind of go hand-in-hand with "safe" and "tame". If you want something truly horrific, surely they would not sell it on the front table of BookPeople. That's just out where everyone could see it, including kids aged under 5, grandmothers with pearls, and a really cool dog on a skateboard that one time.

This preconception was my mistake. Grady Hendrix is one of those mean authors that isn't afraid to toss his characters in a fire to keep him warm and has a poetic charm for scary gory pain. BookPeople's entrance table has (as the kid's say) "hands".

Btw this is the man I'm complimenting and this is also his author photo in the book

'To become a witch, one traditionally meets a dark figure in a remote place and pledges their loyalty. I am that dark figure, this is that remote place, and now I require each of you who wishes to leave man's world behind, each of you who wishes to embrace her power and turn your back on God, to pledge yourself to me.' -Quote I liked from the book that I don't have to censor because it isn't about pain or pregnancy medical horror.