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Book: “We Hexed the Moon” by Mollyhall Seeley
Publishing Info: Saga Press, June 2026
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publisher
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: Bunny meets The Craft in this speculative debut about four best friends who perform a ritual on the moon in a last-ditch attempt to hold onto one another but are forced to reckon with the consequences.
It is the summer after high school graduation, and four island-grown best friends are about to be forced apart by their Plans for the Future. Rather than process the world of expectations bearing down on them or the secrets they’ve kept hidden even from one another, they perform a ritual on the moon in an impulsive fit of teen bravado.
They don’t expect it to actually work.
But suddenly the moon is gone from the sky and at their sleepover, and she’s not interested in going back where she came from. As the balmy August night unfolds, the girls scramble to find a human sacrifice to replace the moon before their world is plunged into chaos.
Equally tender and biting, We Hexed the Moon is coming-of-age at its best, cutting to the very quick of girlhood to reveal hilarious and brutally honest insights about friendship, gender, and desire.
Review: Thank you to Saga Press for sending me an ARC of this novel!
I love seeing stories about tight knit girl friend groups, especially if they are coming of age, in part because I never really got to experience that during my formative teenage years. Yes, I had two other girl friends I was close to and people saw us as a trio, but I was always VERY clearly the odd one out when it came down to it, and my true best friend in high school was a guy. I didn’t really find that solid girls friend group until I was well into college (we called ourselves “The Clever Girls” because of “Jurassic Park” and we were tight and I’m still friends with them all to this day, even if it’s in different capacities due to life), and by that time I was very clear about who I was as a person. But these stories still speak to me as a woman with close girl friendships and who knows how wonderful (and complicated) they can be. “We Hexed the Moon” by Mollyhall Seeley takes on this kind of girl friend group bildungsroman tale and throws in some witch shit and a dark fantasy magical realism bent. Suffice to say, it’s my kinda jam.
Jen, Goldie, Maycie, and Harding are best friends about to go their separate ways after high school. With personal baggage, an existential dread of the next steps and the climate crisis, as well as constant doom and gloom feelings to the life they are inheriting, they decide to hex the moon just for funsies as one last bonding experience. Unfortunately, it works, and the moon not only disappears from the sky, threatening to throw the world into chaos and death, it shows up in the form of a woman who tells them that they need to sacrifice someone to become the new Moon, or else everyone dies. The concept is creative and interesting, and it feels a bit more dark fantasy than horror to me (human sacrifice and end of the world notwithstanding). Seeley splits the story into two timelines, the day before where the friends are clinging to their friendship because they feel it falling apart (be it because of the upcoming change in location or their own baggage with each other), and then the time after they hexed the moon and are having to confront their choices AND the cracks in their friend group. I liked seeing the story unfold and the build up to what choice they were going to make, and found it suspenseful and more tense as time runs closer to running out. I think that it petered out a little bit by the end, but the journey there was still incredibly enjoyable.
But what I enjoyed most about this book were the four girls themselves, and how Seeley explores all of their messiness and complexities and draws out who they are and why they are the way they are. There could have been four girls who fit into obvious stereotypes (Goldie the self centered mean girl, Jen the pretentious stick in the mud, Harding the repressed prude, and Maycie the wholesome naive one), but Seeley takes care to give us perspectives from all of them to see their reasons for their complexities. We have girls who have suffered great loss, like Goldie losing her twin, or a fractured family life, like Jen and her broken relationship with half brother Max as he dives deeper into red pill content, or religious trauma for Harding whose family is repressive, or having to grow up with a lack of structured guidance, like Maycie whose parents all but checked out. There were moments I wanted to shake all of them, but I also felt for all of them too. It shows the way they cling to each other bur resent each other too as they grow apart and change. It’s messy girlhood. It’s heart wrenching at times.
“We Hexed the Moon” is a bittersweet coming of age witchy book. It’s relatable and dreamy, and I think that if you like coming of age girlhood tales it will work for you.
Rating 8: A witchy story about girlhood, anticipated loss, desperation, and coming of age, “We Hexed the Moon” is a magical realism dark fantasy that captures girlhood on the edge of becoming an adult and all the complicated feelings that come with it.
Reader’s Advisory:
“We Hexed the Moon” is included on the Goodreads list “The 52 Book Club 2026: #44: Literary Device- Personification”.
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