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The Curse of Hester Gardens by Tamika Thompson

The Curse of Hester Gardens by Tamika Thompson
Erewhon Books, 2026
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1645663195
Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook
Buy:  Amazon.com  |  Bookshop.org

 

Hester Gardens is a housing project cursed by a history of violence, especially gun violence, and the residents are haunted by its victims.

 

Nona believed she was living a law-abiding life, until ten years ago, when she stumbled on her husband pistol-whipping a drug-addicted teenager to death in an alleyway and helped him cover it up. Now her husband is in prison for drug-dealing, and her oldest son is dead, a victim of a gang shooting. Her youngest son, Lance, is just starting to join in the activities of the local gang.

 

If only there were a way to escape Hester Gardens. It is possible– Nona’s nephew Harlan, an investigative journalist, made it out, and nursing student Kiandra is only held there by her younger brother.

 

Nona’s second son, recent high school graduate Marcus, has a ticket out, with a full scholarship to Brown University in the fall… if he can only make it through the summer. But Marcus, always the “good kid”, has a lot of anger and grief over Kendall’s murder, and he can’t quite keep it under the surface anymore. Thompson creates a disorienting atmosphere in Nona’s apartment, which already has an unstable feeling to it ,due to the disturbing changes in Marcus. It is just haunted enough to make her and her sons uneasy… until it suddenly escalates into a life-and-death situation.

 

Thompson’s talent is not just in creating an uncanny atmosphere, but in bringing the neighborhood and characters to life. There are ghosts… maybe… in the alleyways, and a smart person keeps a sharp eye out. While mainly told from Nona’s point of view, we also occasionally get the point of view of other characters: Harlan, Nona’s nephew; Lance, her youngest son and Marcus’ brother; Gretchen, Marcus’ girlfriend and gang leader Peter’s baby mama; Donnell, a gang member; Kiandra; and police officer Sgt. Victoria Prager, who was in charge of Kendall’s case and is involved in the ending of the terrible, shocking, night where six young people were silently executed with a rifle.

 

Readers will grow to care about, cheer for, and fear for characters who could easily have been cardboard cutouts. Gretchen, for instance, as a point of view character, is shaped by the trauma of having her twin murdered in a drive-by shooting right next to her and the stress of raising a child in an unpredictable environment. She’s much more fleshed out than she would be if we were limited to only Nona’s judgmental mindset. We get to see Donnell’s regrets and terror because he did not stop the execution of a boy about to escape Hester Gardens for college, and now can’t escape his ghost.  In a “closed community” like Hester Gardens, lives are entangled because everyone knows everyone: the same kids who were friends with your own kids, could grow up to be the killers of someone you loved, and Thompson does a great job of revealing that complexity. Thompson convincingly creates a claustrophobic and terrifying atmosphere: to escape Hester Gardens, its history of violence, and tangled relationships, isn’t easy. It’s a place that doesn’t want its residents to leave alive.

 

There’s a lot packed into these pages, and I found myself going back to this more than once. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on March 31, 2026 by , Reply

Book Review: Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

Berkley, 2025

ISBN-13: 978-0593548981

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Buy:   Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

It’s 1970. Neva is 15, pregnant, and lost. Her father leaves her at the Wellwood Home in St. Augusta, Florida, a maternity facility for pregnant teens. Miss Wellwood, the proprietor, runs her home with strict rules and reprimands the girls about their loose morals and poor decisions. the adults in charge include Diane, a social worker who guides the girls through their time in the Home;  Dr. Vincent, a cold elderly man with traditional views on women’s healthcare, who prescribes restrictions and other cures for the girls, with a focus on the babies; Nurse Kent, who minds the girls at night and when needed; Hagar, a Black woman who runs the kitchen; and Hagar’s sister Miriam, who instructs the girls on their domestic roles, such as proper cleaning of the Home.

 

The adults are not the focus of the story, of course. It is the girls, renamed by Miss Wellwood as flowers, as though she is tending a special garden. Neva is renamed Fern. Rose, a radical hippie who wants to keep her baby Blossom, is a force to be reckoned with in the Home. Always on strike, she fears nothing and no one… until she does. Holly has been through terrible trauma in her short life, at the hands of a powerful member of the community. She’s wild, refusing to allow people to get close to her, and remaining mute until she finds her voice. Zinnia is a musician who loves the father of her baby, swears they will marry upon her return home, and tries to ignore what she was put through at the hands of her mother when her parents found out she was pregnant. There are other girls, and as one leaves, she is replaced by another flower.

 

One hot summer day, the local library’s bookmobile arrives with librarian Miss Parcae at the wheel. She presents Fern with a book called How to Be a Groovy Witch, a powerful tome that opens a new world for Fern, Holly, Rose, and Zinnia. There is something special about this book, and it reveals more to them the deeper they go as they form their own small coven and cast their first spell. The unassuming librarian is more than she seems. As Fern and the girls become more involved with witchcraft and the librarian, they find their newfound power comes at a painful price.

 

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls is powerful. I read the ARC, hardcover, and audiobook versions. Author Grady Hendrix opens the ARC with a letter to the reader, while the published version includes a statement in the acknowledgments, where he provides a brief history of these homes, and shares the experiences of his own family members. There are visceral depictions of body horror in terms of giving birth, which I had a difficult time getting through. Medical horror, especially regarding women’s health and trauma, is difficult for me to read.

 

Hendrix’s ability to write about and from the perspective of girls and women is incredibly effective and well-executed. Readers who enjoy this book may also enjoy his other books, especially The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, and We Sold Our Souls.  Highly recommended.

 

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on November 24, 2025 by , Reply

Book Review: The Madness by Dawn Kurtagich

cover art for The Madness by Dawn Kurtagich

The Madness

Dawn Kurtagich

Graydon House, 2024

ASIN: B0CKFHZTLR

Available: Hardcover; paperback; Kindle edition

Buy:  Bookshop.org  | Amazon.com

 

Mina is often called to the psychiatric facility where she cares for women suffering from extreme trauma. She has contempt for how male doctors treat female patients and persistently tries to understand the roots of the problems she confronts in her practice. She is also troubled by something that has happened in her past, something bad enough to cause OCD, a move from Wales to London, a break-up with a man she loves, and estrangement from her best friend and even her mother. But it isn’t until she is faced with the mysterious illness of her childhood friend Lucy that she begins to face her own demons and slowly reveals the horrific event that has shaped her.

 

Unfortunately, from Mina’s perspective, helping Lucy will require going back to her home town and seeing her mother, whose belief in the dark and bloody myths of Wales suddenly begins to seem like useful information instead of annoying old stories. As the search for the cause of Lucy’s quickly worsening symptoms continue, some characters’ names (linking this book to a classic that readers will quickly recognize) shed light on the  direction of the plot, as do other elements such as a creepy black car, a black business card, and an exclusively secret gentlemen’s club. Lucy is not the only one in trouble.

 

The author of The Madness, Dawn Kurtagich, delivers non-stop suspense as the action takes us from a small Welsh town and its most luxurious mansion, out to an ancient castle on the coast where there are evil monsters preying upon women. However, these violent killers soon become the target of the group of women who have figured out how to get rid of all of them.

 

The way this book begins with a very brief, cryptic scene and a nameless character immediately draws the reader into the action, which continues at a quick pace as the author seamlessly shifts between times, places, perspectives, and emotions. There are subtle plot twists sparked by the unexpected decisions some characters make along the way. The Madness stands at the supernatural intersection of horrible crimes known– but left unsolved– and Mina’s revelations about the mythic evil that exists in never taking the past for granted.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Posted on June 10, 2025 by , Reply
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