Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my digital copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

Ever since watching Bewitched as a young girl, I have been fascinated by witches and everything about them. So when I saw a new series about teenage witches, I knew I had to give it a shot. I might be 50 years old but I still love young adult books and I still love stories about witches. I personally was not disappointed. Sideways Pike is one of the main characters and she is a teenage outsider who always happens to be a witch and a lesbian. When she is paid to do a magic gig at the party of the most popular girls at school, she has no idea it will literally change her entire life. Soon she has friends and a possible girlfriend...but she also has witch hunters and an inkstain within her skin that also happens to be a demon. Personally, I loved the girls in the book and I loved the storyline and all of the trouble they keep finding themselves in. I can see that many people do not agree and did not like it. I never go into a book expecting too much from it so I am almost never disappointed. Myself, I could personally see a movie coming from it and I would love to help cast it. These girls were something...

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for honest feedback.

Rating: 2

This book sounded amazing; I'm a sucker for witchy reads, however, I did not enjoy this book. I feel as though the first person point of view does not work for this book; I feel like with such a character driven book that third person would have been a better approach. The characters felt as though they needed to be more developed, which could have been done through the third person point of view. I did feel like the description of this book is amazing and it is great that the book is covering some lesbian characters.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This had witches and it had lesbians. It also had good female friendships. These are all things that I love in books. There was a ton of queer rep, even if just briefly mentioned, in this book. Unfortunately, it didn’t all come together for me in a way that made me love the book.


The Writing
I think one of the things I had the hardest time with was the writing. It wasn’t bad writing, but its style wasn’t for me. The best way I can describe the writing is jagged. There were sentences that weren’t sentences, and sometimes they didn’t make sense.


The Pacing
The pacing, like the writing, just didn’t work for me. The pacing felt all over the place. This book felt like it was supposed to be character driven, and yet, I think that the pacing of it was less that and more of an action oriented book. I don’t know. Something just didn’t sit well, the scenes didn’t mesh for me. I felt lost.


The Plot
See, I loved the plot. I think the plot was one of my favorite parts of this book. I think had the characters been fleshed out more, more time spent on certain aspects of the plot and character development, this could have easily been a three or four star read for me. Instead, we get a plot that I loved. The whole idea of it was great, and yet, it felt so little time was spent on it. So little that sometimes I forgot what the book was about! And I think that this also may have been character driven, but again, I think, sadly, the book fell down on that.


The Characters
I liked the characters, don’t get me wrong. I just felt that they were underdeveloped and as far as character development goes I felt that there was very little. When I did love were the relationships they had with each other. I think the friendship was written very well, and I enjoyed that aspect of it. But I felt they could have all used some more individual development as well. I will mention that these are flawed characters, and they are great because of that.

Overall, the lesbian relationship had a spot in this, and I liked the development of it. It was creative, and I liked that there was a lot of queer rep outside that in this book.


The Worldbuilding
The magic was a bit underwhelming. It was sort of explained and sort of not. This book had an overall dark tone and atmosphere to it, which was great. It really did have atmosphere.


Overall

This was a 2.5 star book for me. It was almost a three, but I just couldn’t find a way to honestly give it that when I felt like skimming or skipping pages in the book. I think some people will love this book and eat it up, but I just didn’t enjoy it overall. It was an okay book.

Hannah Abigail Clarke peered into my past to write this book just for teenage Robyn.

Eloise “Sideways” Pike (but always Sideways, never Eloise) is in high school and unapologetically gay and unabashadly a witch. Always ready to make a scene, Sideways jumps at the chance to publicly perform magic at a party by invitation from the intimidatingly cool trio of girls, Jing, Daisy and Yates. Then things get wild.

Clarke does a great job of jumping right into the action and meat of the story. Their prose are sketchy-lyrical, reminiscent of the spells muttered and cast in the pages of the book. Scapegracers is weird but delightful. If you ever had a The Craft phase, then do yourself a favor and pick up this book. (It gives you the occult sharpness without all the girl on girl infighting.)

This is not a YA book without edges; it is full of cursing and grit and brief mentions of sex, which I am very aware of as an adult thinking about reader advisory. However, I am also aware that this is exactly the sort of story I would have eaten up as a teenager! Scapegracers is about carving out space for yourself, finding your people and being accepted by them, for all your faults and peculiarities, not despite them.

Overall, I loved it. Hannah Abigail Clarke and I share sun and rising signs, so is it really a surprise?

This is my honest review of The Scapegracers novel. I was able to be able to read an advanced copy of this novel from the publisher, Erewhon Books, via an ebook through NetGalley. 

Magic, friendship, and betrayal.

This book follows a group of young girls Sideways, Jing, Yates, and Daisy on their adventure of becoming witches and friends. The story is told in first person and works to build the magic system as the main character, sideways, learns it. I think this helps to add mystery to how magic works in this world, where it comes from, and how it is used. There are some other interesting characters you come to learn about such as witch hunters, spell books, devils, and other covens. There is also a few small romances and betrayals throughout this book which play into the main plot. 

I enjoyed reading this story and although I skimmed through some parts, I did enjoy it overall. I would have liked to see more with the witch hunters and other covens. However, I am hoping to see more of that in the second book. I am intrigued enough to find out is they get back what was stolen, how Mr. Scratches comes into play, and how the other coven will react to their new bond with the Scratches at the end. I think the second book already has great promise to be exiting and a worth wile read. I think this book would make a good CW show- as it is along that type of vibe. 

Although, one of the very first things I noticed about this novel was the grammar and writing. Although, it appears it gets better in later chapters, the first few pages of chapter one needs work. I am hoping, as this is an ARC, the grammar and writing will be very polished upon release. I think the cover will make people pick it up but the grammar may have people putting it back if not polished.

Thank you Netgalley and Erewhon Books for the ARC

let's begin with the few positive things I liked about this book.
I asked for this title because it sounded exactly what I was looking for: a teen lesbian witch with her coven and possibly a sapphic love story. I thought this was going to be similar to These Witches Don't Burn and I was going to have a great time.

What I got of that? The representation and the girls friendship/coven. That was the best part of the book.

Now.
I apologize in advance if this will look more like a rant than anything else, but I can't change what I feel.

The plot is inexistent. I don't know if it's the writing or the confusing story, but I found myself not understanding what was happening 99% of the time.
The characters were really static and superficial, I didn't connect with any of them, I didn't care about any of them. 
The writing was really confusing and not really of my liking. There were some choices of words or conversations that felt completely unrealistic and bland.

The premise was "portrays a mercilessly supportive clique of diverse and vivid characters" and even if it's true that we do see supportive friendships in this book, I doubt the vivid characters part is truly in it.

The sapphic relationship was treated terribly. We had two scenes and we didn't see any growth between the characters, it was just to add more pages and I. just. didn't. care.

I really feel like this author used the lesbian representation to get hype for this book and then didn't care about the story or the actual characterization of any of the characters.

It definitely was a miss for me, I don't plan to continue with the series.

So. . . I don't know if this is me? I know it's not because my friends Giulia and Nina are reading this too and feel the exact same was as me. . . Please don't take my thoughts as gospel, try this out for yourself but. . .

What the heck?

Let's start with the. . . positive? I liked the idea, the idea of a lesbian witch coven sold me immediately. And the characters were. . . decent.

But that was it.

I was *so* confused reading this. It didn't feel like it was going anywhere? And sometimes the writing just. . . felt so off. 

<blockquote>"You look killer."</blockquote>

I just. . . I don't know. Dialogue like that threw me off and it was littered through the book. The pacing felt off and . . . *sigh*.

I wanted to like this, really badly. But I didn't.

I loved this! It was a fun, fast paced story about a group of witches. Our main character, Sideways, does magic for a clique of popular girls and they end up forming a coven. This then results in a crazy, action packed weekend. I have to say I really liked how even though this is a YA book there wasn’t too much romance just enough to keep you intrigued. Also, I thought all our characters were enjoyable to read about, they were flawed but relatable.  I can’t wait to see where the series goes from here.

LOOK at that cover! It is seriously beautiful and what drew me to the book when I saw it on NetGalley, along with the promise of a teenage lesbian witch. That’s all it took to draw me in and put in a request.

This book was quite interesting in the way it handles witches, covens, and spellcraft but it was centered so much around Sideways (our main character) and her new friends/coven (Jing, Yates, and Daisy) that I don’t think it really got to dive deep into the magic aspect of it. I’m hoping with the way this book ended the next one in the series will give more of that.

The characters were a lot of fun and this group of popular girls could totally be a caricature of Mean Girls, but they’re actually not that bad when you get to know them. Daisy is insane, Yates is the sweet fluffy girl, and Jing is definitely the HBIC. Sideways isn’t super interesting without them and there’s just a hint of LBTQ+ going on that I was a little disappointed there wasn’t a great knife to cut through all the sexual tension that was going on.

There’s a subplot that is fairly predictable, but the main action wasn’t something I predicted. The prose is lovely but gets a little bogged down in that first novel kind of way, but luckily doesn’t cram too much in there that it could save for a second book. The ending was not something I expected and I think I want to check out the second book now so I can find out what this baby coven is going to do!

Scapegracers comes out on May 12th and you should definitely add it to your quarantine reading stack! 3.5/5 stars!

I recieved this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thoughts:
The first 20% of the novel was fast paced and very witchy. Then everything slowed way down and I was just bored. I felt like this was a cheaper version of The Craft and Mean Girls. Outcast invited to hang out with the cool girl group only to learn that her magic becomes more powerful.

I did keep reading but by 75% I was finding myself wanting to pick up anything else but my kindle to finish. Normally I would have forced myself to push on but I couldn`t. I was not invested in Sideways or any other character. 

Just because this novel wasn't for me doesn't mean you won`t enjoy it. It has representation that YA books need and if you haven't seen The Craft or even AHS Coven then maybe you won't notice the similarities. 

TTFN,
Ashley

Sideways is a lesbian, a witch, and an outcast. When Jing, Yates, and Daisy, the most popular girls in school, invite her to do some magic at their Halloween party, it’s her chance to show off and be cool. But something goes wrong that brings the girls together.
The way the girls take Sideways into her group is one of the sweetest examples of friendship between girls I’ve ever seen in fiction. All four girls have interesting and distinct personalities that made me wish I had friends like that in school. I loved seeing them together.
In their quest to learn more about magic, the girls learn about other covens and sentient magic books. The world of magic is much bigger than they thought. It feels like we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg and we’ll have a lot to unveil in the sequels.
The characters and the worldbuilding are the best things about this novel, while the plot is a bit of mess with a slow pace. Witchfinders learn about the girls and are now after them. They show up early on and they’re super scary, but then they become this vague threat looming in the background. Getting Sideways a girlfriend and planning a party become more important than the guys trying to kill them. It’s like they forgot their lives are in danger, and doing spells at a party is a really stupid way of getting the witchfinders’ attention. The girls need to sort out their priorities.

The queer rep here is amazing: besides Sideways, Jing is bi, Yates is questioning, Sideways has two dads, and there’s a nonbinary background character that uses they/them pronouns.

I really wanted to love this book. "Feral teenage coven" is something I have aspirations for every book I encounter in my life to be described as. Most of my problem with this book was the POV. First person, while leaving you directly with the character, instantly made the story harder to delve into and made the book suffer from a lot of cringe-y this isn't how teenagers speak or internalize moments. The friendships and representation in this book were INCREDIBLE. The premise and the plot, were also really great ideas. But the execution and the manner in which the story was presented lacked a lot for me.

*First of all i want to thank Netgalley and Erewhon books for this arc*

The cover of this book is adorable and that was my main reason to get this book.
The story line of this book goes about Sideways (a witch) who was invited by a group of popular girls to perform spells at a party. when the girls sat together to perform the magic, an unexpected thing happened, kind of an unique disaster. Daisy, Yates, jing and sideways soon become great friends with a strong bond, despite of their different characters. I like the attitude, anger and moody sides of the girls. Sideways is actually not the type of person who makes friends easy. she is a lesbian and often gets into fights. More complex things happens, the more they dive into their identities.

Overall it was a great book, but i expected a bit more. I wanted it to be a bit more darker.

I'm looking forward to the next book. And YOU, yes you if you like witchy, a bit dark magic and true friendship books the grab this one for sure.

#TheScapegracers #Netgalley

The Scapegracers is the story of Eloise 'Sideways' Pike, a lesbian witch who lives with her two adoptive dads in a small town full of magic and secrets. Sideways, an outcast both by virtue of her sexuality and her prickly attitude towards her classmates, is invited to a Halloween party by the three most popular girls in her year: Yates, the sweetheart; Daisy, the loose cannon; Jing, the protector. What begins as a party trick becomes a fierce friendship, and soon Sideways and her new friends find themselves in pursuit of magical objects, hotly pursued themselves by witch hunters, rival covens, and other manner of supernatural beasts.

I'm normally not a fan of first person POV, and the first few chapters were initially difficult to understand and read. However, once I grew used to the voice, and once I'd spent a little more time with Sideways, she started to grow on me. More importantly, I absolutely adored the relationships between Sideways and her friends: ride-or-die female friendships has always been one of my favorite tropes, and adding witchcraft into the mix just made the story more engaging. Clarke writes friendships so beautifully, and with so much tenderness and importance. Clarke grants friendships the importance they deserve, which is a sadly unique position in the world of young adult literature. 

The selling point of this book is obviously the witchcraft element. I liked the take on magic in this book - namely, how normal the fantastic appears. Sideways and her friends react to witchcraft with the excitement of finding a copy of a rare book at a secondhand store. This is such a unique view on the role of magic in "non-magical" society, and I really loved reading about the interaction between witches and non-witches in such a relaxed environment.  On the whole, this book is everything I would've loved to read as a teenager, and I'm so happy that today's queer girls have such a fantastic, effortlessly diverse, and engaging book to read.


the good: Characters are engaging and developed; the plot is interesting and greatly picks up as the story unfolds; the voice of the narrator (Sideways) is engaging.

the bad: The plot was initially slow, but picked up as the story went on; the writing style took some getting used to initially.

the ugly: I didn't love that the queer love interest was revealed to be using Sideways and we didn't get any healthy wlw rep in this book. Hopefully, some to come in book two!

(Link will go live on my blog on April 12th)

An e-ARC was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange of an honest review. This does not effect my opinion in any way.

The Scapegracers is a story about a lesbian witch bonding with the three most popular girls in her high school after she did some witch stuff during a Halloween party.

To be perfectly honest, I’m still not sure about my rating. I gave the book 3* but I may lower it to 2.5* because even though I like some part of the story, it was still really boring. Enjoyable because the author wrote an absolute amazing witchy atmosphere. I’m not really into witch stuff — and maybe that’s why the book wasn’t more enjoyable to me — so I don’t know for sure if it was well done but The Scapegracers has such an incredible vibe. Reading the book is like walking in the street in the dark and then you start hearing stuff, whispers. You start having goosebumps, you feel like someone or something is watching you.

The Scapegracers is the perfect formula for someone like me who didn’t know much about witch craft. Sideways is a witch and knows a lot of stuff about it but Jing, Yates and Daisy were pretty much new to all of this so them discovering witch craft felt like I was also the one discovering it too, you know?

    "Magic doesn’t do well with being cut off early."

The idea of coven — e.g when several witches form a group — was also one of my favorite parts. I liked the idea of witches joining each other to do magic together. I always had this one presumption: the fact that being a witch is a lonely occupation. I don’t know why but this is how I’ve always pictured them.

The Scapegracers is definitely a character driven story. I liked all the girls: Sideways the witch who likes nothing more than witch stuff and girls. Jing, the strong asian-american bisexual girl the coven could rely on. Daisy who would fight anybody who dare to bother one of her girls and Yates, the softest but fiercest of them all.

I liked how they were all supportive and protective of each other. The story was set up to have those three popular girls hating on the weird girl doing witch craft — as we all saw in other books — but instead, what I got was girls loving and supporting each other and I loved that. I loved how the three popular girls didn’t care about all those weird rumors about Sideways and instead, just went for it. I liked how into magic they were.

   " Blood is truly thicker than water, is it not? We spilled some blood between us with that glass."

Honestly the best parts of the book were when they did magic together. Those scenes had something special to them — gayness, i guess — and I absolutely loved them. Four girls cursing and hating on disgusting boys? Sign me up, I want to join the coven too. Reading the book, you can feel how much these girls love each other. Sideways joined them much later but immediately, the three other girls would have done anything for her.

    "Don’t do that. Never do that. Don’t ever say you’re not beautiful, not ever, okay? Girls are just beautiful. That’s the way they are."

Here we go. As much as I liked the main characters and the side characters (gosh I loved Sideways’ dads), the plot and pacing almost ruined it for me. The book started strongly : girls doing magic at a party and the next morning they found dead deer in a pool and then they put a curse on a boy. I couldn’t have ask for better. But then, the author lost me in their book. I didn’t understand what they were going for, I didn’t understand what was the point of most of the stuff which had happened. As much as I liked Sideways, I’m sad to say I didn’t care that much about her internal monologue. More precisely, I guess I’d have cared more if they weren’t that long. You just read line after line about her feelings and if I liked it at first, it just got tiring and boring.

I feel like the author wanted to put too much stuff in the first book. You pretty much jump from one plot point to another and sometimes it didn’t make sense for me. I didn’t understand how something was linked to the other thing. Also, I believe the book didn’t need to be that long. 400 pages isn’t that big when it comes to fantasy book but when the fantasy book is set in our world I guess it starts to become long. I also read that there will be a second and a third book so I guess the author could have split some of the stuff which happened in the first book to put it in the other ones.

I don’t know if I’ll read the second book. I liked the characters and the last part of the book was quite great too so I’m curious about what will happen next. I just hope the two next books will not be that long.

ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!

I give this book a thumbs up for the queer girls, lesbian mc, and witches! Other than that, I struggled to really get invested in the book.

Scapegracers follows a teenage lesbian witch named Sideways (I kept wanting to say Sabrina the Teenage Witch), and through her preforming magic, she gradually finds friendship and builds her own coven. 

I'm not sure why, but I had a hard time settling into Clarke's 1st person POV writing style. Maybe it was the attempt at edgy writing to convey Sideways' teenage attitude? It's hard to explain, but I didn't really settle into the story until about a little over the halfway point. The beginning blasted off at a fast pace that kind of dwindled as it went on, but the story was intriguing enough that I wanted to keep reading.

What I enjoyed with this book was the character development with a mainly lady cast and their friendships. The friendships were wholesome and realistic, and I loved the connection they all maintained that went beyond just being a part of the coven. Although the beginning does kind of start in the middle of it all, it's refreshing to see a strong connection between the group of girls and not have any stereotypical teenage girl drama for the sake of conflict.

I enjoyed it enough that I am interested for book two, so I will more than likely pick it up out of curiosity.

The Scapegracers is a book about friendship and supporting eachother, being able to accept yourself and lots and lots of badassery and girlpower. These witch girls hit tick all the stereotype boxes, but the twist is: in this book I love them for it. The story is fastpaced, the characters are enjoyable and the magic system feels pretty unique and interesting. I devoured this book in no time and I cannot wait to read the second book.

A really fun mean girls with witches story. I really liked the main characters and the plot was well done. I'm really glad I got to read this book!

This book is... visceral, in terms of language and story. I admit it seemed a bit much at first, the description of organs and feeling things in a strange way in strange parts of the human body, but as the book progressed it began to make sense. The magic in this book is visceral and requires the use of descriptive and at times uncomfortable language to describe how it affects the characters and the world they inhabit. For the first few chapters the book reminded me a quite a bit of Foul is Fair by Hannah Capin, in the sense that it was a group of teenage girls coming into magic and using it to exact revenge on a  boy that had done them wrong. However, the further in you go the more the author continues to build up and expand her world until the story of these particular girls takes on a life of its own. I was about 80% in when it hit me that this is definitely the first book in  a series, because there was way too much still to be explained and sorted out in only 20% of a book. It leaves on a definite cliffhanger of sorts that compels you to wait around for the next one to find out how these strange, feral, powerful girls will come into their own and eventually fix all their problems. This was a very interesting read and I recommend it for anyone looking for an interesting world full of very unique characters and a yet to be fully explored magic system.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange of an honest review and all the opinions are my own.

I was attracted by the cover of this book, because it's really cool and the plot sounded interesting! I wasn't disappointed!

Sideways is a witch, a lesbian and an outsider, having hard times to make friends, but when three popular girls pay her to cast a spell, she becomes part of their group. Together they are a powerful coven, bent to cast curses on boys, having fun, plannning parties and so on.

I really liked this book and I loved the characters! I like the way Sideways become part of the group and starts a friendship with Jing, Daisy and Yates. They are well written and, above all, Sideways is great! The magic is really captivating and the plot is thrilling, dealing with magic, friendship, love, with LGBT rep, characters that are brimming with life and rage. 
The scapegracers is the first of a trilogy and I can't wait to know more about this world!