I liked the concept behind the book, but found it overall to be a bit juvenile and trying too hard to be woke. It is YA though, so it makes sense.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing this e-ARC. I am anticipating reading this soon and reviewing on my socials.

A good read.

While the pacing is inconsistent, and the ending isn't as strong as I'd like it to be, the experience of reading it as a whole is pretty good. I also LOVE that there is revenge.

3.5 but not strong enough to be rounded up so I rounded down.

Content warring for this book can and are heavy so please look into them before reading.
Going in I knew that this was a teen victims who wanted to get justice with a spell book. And knew that it was going to be a very emotional read and it really was, both heartbreaking and joyful.
The first half of this book is a story of girls using a spellbook and the second half of them dealing with the outcomes of the spellbook but mainly about the path of healing. Along with that, we do get some really hard-to-read scenes. With each girl, we do read about their assaults, which are some of the hardest things I've read. Elliot, Bea, Madeline, and Chloe are the main characters we read about, each are different from each other. Each deals with their own problems while also bounding out related issues.
The writing is powerful with the main themes of assault, regaining their power and recovery, friendship, & more. If you like 'We Can Be Heroes by Kyrie McCauley' then I feel like you would enjoy this, deals with similar heavy topics, a bit of 'magic', and a group of girls.
Older Young Adults about heavy hard-hitting topics, a dash of
magic with witches, and the journey of healing.

Four girls from a victim’s support group find a way to really make a difference in their abusers’ lives. But will it really make a difference for their emotional burdens?

This book really looked at whether revenge is what helps someone move on. When Elliott, Madeline, Chloe, and Bea join forces to become a coven that can exact revenge on those who hurt them and changed their lives forever, they’re willing to pay almost any price for the satisfaction of seeing their abusers suffer. But as their side effects get worse, and they see others paying the price owed by their abusers, they get a chance to look at not what they’re owed, but what might really make them feel better.

Each of the girls had her own backstory, coping mechanisms, and ideal concept of revenge. Their responses to how well their spells worked also made each of them more individual. It was easy to imagine many of their responses as realistic. The book was definitely worth 4 out of 5 stars, and the ending was not easily predictable. This would be an enjoyable read to those who like witchy stories, vigilante justice, and a little bit of family-style drama thrown in.

First and foremost it would probably go without saying, but trigger warnings that there is talk of sexual assault and other sensitive subjects and sometimes that talk is very raw and detailed. That being said, it was a great revenge story, a heavy story mixed with some supernatural hijinks, making the heavier side of the story easier to read. I would have liked a little more depth in the characters and their relationships with each other, but I understand why some things were more surface level when considering their trauma, revenge and healing in the story itself. The writing style made the story easy to consume and I felt there was a good balance overall between the heaviness of topics and the events in the story.

Well that was different! It gave me 'the Craft' vibes, but with a more modern feel. My full review appears on Weekend Notes.

Men violate women all the time and receive zero consequences for it—and Elliot D’Angelo-Brandt is done. So done that she decides to take matters into her own hands. If America’s judicial system won’t punish these monsters, she will. And how? By witchcraft, of course.

Together with three other sexual assault survivors, Elliot forms a coven with the goal to seek retribution from the boys who took advantage of them. And the spells they conjure are perfect—each more sinister and violent than the last. But as their powers grow stronger, their bodies begin to wither, leading the coven to question whether or not they should continue on their path for vengeance before it ultimately consumes them…
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This book was an absolute YES for me. Getting back at rapists by hexing them has to be one of the most delicious revenge concepts. I love DeRose’s ingenuity with the plot, with how it starts with four seemingly broken girls that go on a journey of feminine empowerment together, and ends with them giving into the battles with their demons. I also love that she got heavy with retributive justice and merged it with witchcraft—like if Immanuel Kant starred in The Craft. This was an absolute gem of a debut novel. I highly recommend it and look forward to reading future books by DeRose.

I LOVED For Girls Who Walk Through Fire! It is a beautiful and heartbreaking story that I truly feel many would be positively impacted from - including myself. There are trigger warnings in this one right away, but I will say this book allowed me to heal a bit from sexual assault when the justice system didn't help - I hope others are able to experience that help as well.

WOW! When I turned the last page of Kim DeRose’s For Girls Who Walk Through Fire, all I could think was: sweet mother of thrillers, well that was different! If you’re searching for a mesmerizing concoction of ‘The Craft’, ‘Mean Girls’ and ‘Yellowjackets’, search no more because this novel is all that and SO much more.

Set against the sun-kissed backdrop of Santa Barbara, the author has painted a vivid canvas dripping with themes of trauma, sexual assault, friendships, and witchcraft. This is not just any story; it’s a heady mix of suspense, emotion, and dark magic that holds you captive and refuses to let go. The ambiance overall was filled with both promises and threats and it times, I got the heebie jeebies.

What truly set this novel apart for me was the intricate use of multiple POV’s. The beauty of this tool is in allowing readers to delve deep into the minds of various characters, understanding their internal struggles and motivations. And boy, does the author use it effectively! Every chapter adds a new layer to the story, making it a rich tapestry of intertwined tales.

The theme of blurred lines is incredibly prominent throughout the narrative. The distinction between friend and foe, right and wrong, and even reality and magic, are constantly in flux. It’s a beautiful chaos that the author orchestrates with the precision of a maestro.

As someone who is deeply entrenched in the crime genre, both as a reader and a writer, I adore when authors can blend chilling suspense with raw human emotion. The exploration of trauma and sexual assault in the book isn’t just a backdrop – it’s a powerful driver of the narrative. It’s visceral, raw, and real. The way friendships are tested, formed, and broken in the wake of these events is both heartbreaking and authentic.

Now, as much as I enjoyed this book, I must admit, there were moments where I felt like a fish out of water. Some references slipped past me, making me wonder if perhaps I’m not the target audience, age-wise. It’s not exactly pure YA, but definitely balances on that beam, as those slightly younger (ahem!) than me, might find a deeper connection. They would likely catch and appreciate nuances that went over my head.

However, this in no way detracted from my overall enjoyment. For Girls Who Walk Through Fire is, at its core, a bewitching tale of resilience, revenge, and the power that lies within every woman. It’s about standing tall, even when the world tries to burn you down.

Would I recommend this book? It’s a double double toil and trouble hell yes from me! (See what I did there?! Also shows my age 😂) Kim DeRose’s debut offering is a fierce reminder of why stepping out of one’s comfort zone can be so rewarding. Whether you’re a die-hard #crimebookjunkie or someone seeking a story with depth, emotion, and a touch of the supernatural, For Girls Who Walk Through Fire is an absolute must-read.

My thanks to Grace Fell for an ARC.

Nowhere Girls meets The Craft. I loved this (not the topic, don't be that person lol), I love bad ass feminism with mistakes and reckoning and growth. I love that girls/women/people can have books like this to heal, learn, cope - whatever with the crazy world and things that happen in it. 10/10 recommend.

Teen girls, sick of an unjust society, form a coven to seek revenge. They learn about the power of friendship and the dangers of vengeance.

I just struggled to get into this one. I liked the premise, but the writing style wasn’t my favorite.

Every week Elliott attends a sexual assault support group for teenage girls. Every week Elliott hears the stories of the other girls in the group. Every week Elliott becomes more and more certain that nothing is changing.

Elliott is sick of talk. She’s sick of the perpetrators not being held to account for their actions.

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I think it’s time we take matters into our own hands.”

Elliott is ready to do something new and she thinks The Book of Reflection could hold the answers. Now all she needs is a coven.

“For when brought together with a coven - and only with a coven - will the spell most suited to the conjuring witch be summoned. Those who would suppress and destroy you stand not a chance when confronted with the power that lies within these pages.”

Going into this read, I thought I’d be entirely on board with a story of revenge, where victims take back their power while dealing a dose of ‘let the punishment fit the crime’ to those who have violated them. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that, while I’m big on fairness and justice, revenge is actually not something that motivates me.

The more I read, the more uncomfortable I became with the results of the revenge. By spending so much time focused on the perpetrators, the girls weren’t learning ways to manage the impacts of their trauma.

The way the revenge took place left the girls in a passive role. The book, rather than the girls, chose the spell for each perpetrator and until it was cast the girls didn’t know what the result would be. While the girls each decided they wanted revenge, not having agency in deciding its form didn’t feel like an especially trauma informed way of going about it.

I appreciated that this book clearly shows that sexualised violence takes many forms. Those who have experienced it come from all walks of life, as do those who choose to commit those crimes. The short and long term impacts look different from survivor to survivor and healing is most certainly not one size fits all.

Please be aware going into this read that it includes descriptions of sexualised violence. I didn’t find them especially graphic (although your threshold may be different than mine) but at no time was I unclear about what the girls had experienced. Victim blaming also takes place but this is challenged. Self harm is mentioned.

While revenge definitely plays a significant role in this book, connection and healing are also explored so while you may walk through the fire with these girls, there’s also hope.

“Because here was the truth of walking through fire: it was excruciating, and it burned, and it turned you to ash. But flames did more than burn. Flames also brought light.”

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Union Square & Co for the opportunity to read this book. I’m rounding up from 3.5 stars.

“Because here was the truth of walking through fire: it was excruciating, and it burned, and it turned you to ash. But flames did more than burn. Flames also brought light. And witches, Elliott had decided, were like the mystical Phoenix bird. Witches weren’t only meant to burn—witches were meant to rise.”
Elliot wants revenge. In the aftermath of the assault that has drastically altered the course of her life, she is tired of just talking and wants to take action into her own hands. To do this, Elliot decides to team up with three other girls from her survivor support group: Madeline, Chloe, and Bea. Seeing a similar spirit in these girls, Elliot forms a coven with them, aided by a mysterious spell book she discovered in her late mother’s possession. The girls each take turns using the book to hex their assailants and acquire justice. However, as their magic progresses, they must deal with the ramifications that come with seeking revenge.

For Girls Who Walk Through Fire is a moving and emotional portrait of trauma, healing, and girlhood. DeRose’s book highlights the power of female relationships, and the connection forged between Chloe, Bea, Madeline, and Elliot is made all the more powerful by the diversity of their perspectives. Initially seeming to have very little in common, these girls forge a bond ignited by their collective rage and desire for justice. While this bond is created in the spirit of revenge, it is strengthened and maintained by their vulnerability with one another.

Bound together by a magical spellbook, each girl sets out to curse the man who has assaulted them. I was hesitant to embrace the vigilante spirit that underpins the beginning of the novel, concerned about the message that Elliot promotes: revenge through violence is the only way to heal from trauma. However, as the novel progresses, Elliot and the rest of her “coven” undergo beautiful character development that transforms how they view healing.

In a story at times so bleak, some things I found incredibly heartwarming were the relationships between characters. Elliot’s relationship with her father provides particularly emotional and touching moments in the novel as well. The girls’ resolutions are ongoing but satisfying, as each of them show progress in their paths to healing. I appreciated the parallels that the end of the novel drew to the beginning, especially with Elliot back in the support group but having shed her bitterness in favor of a desire to do good.

I would recommend this book to all young adult readers, as it offers an important and moving portrayal of the struggles and power inherent in being a woman and the strength it takes to heal.

(Pine Reads Review would like to thank NetGalley, SparkPoint Studio, and Union Square & Co. for sending us an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Any quotes are taken from an advanced copy and may be subject to change before final publication.)

this was a great book, very intriguing, kept me interested all throughout. Great fun read. I really enjoyed the story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Union Square & Co for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

While this book deals with very heavy subjects, I truly enjoyed the female empowerment and nuanced characters. I got involved into each of theirs stories and rooted for them to achieve their aims! I also was glad that the author not only focused on the men, but also showed how women contribute to misogyny and abuse culture.

4.5/5

Thank you to NetGalley and Union Square & Co. for giving me an e-ARC in exchange for my thoughts.

Before I get into my review, a warning to rape and sexual assault survivors: there are several graphic assault scenes. The book has a pattern of the girls meeting up to get the ingredients for a spell, they go to perform the spell, but before they do there's a flashback to an assault scene, then they carry out the spell, they experience blowback, and then the cycle repeats.

Every now and then, I come across a book I wish I could've beta-read because it has so much potential, but ultimately misses the mark. I wanted to love this book. It's an important topic, and these stories are told mainly from white girls' perspectives. I appreciate that this book tried to not only tackle a serious topic but did so from viewpoints that aren't often told. However, I had a few issues with it ranging from pacing to substantive.

The pacing and plotting of this book is off. For instance, there's no inciting incident. The book simply starts and meanders its way through until Elliot has a sudden epiphany near the end. This would've been a stronger opening: Elliot could've still been having a rough time in group therapy, feeling like it wasn't helping, which could've caused her to wish that her mom was still been alive to help her through this, an emotion compounded by the fact that the group therapy leader was her mom's friend. Missing her mom that much could've made Elliot decide to go through some of her mom's old belongings to feel closer to her, where she then could've found the box, thus creating an inciting incident.

Another issue is that magic is used as a plot device rather than a developed system. The girls all have a shocked reaction to witchcraft being real, and then they just go with it without asking any questions. Who gets to be a witch? How does magic work in this world? Can anyone become a witch? Are they special? Instead of developing a system, it's used as a plot device for the girls to enact revenge.

Stylistically, too much attention is given to details that are inconsequential, like what street the girls are driving on, and what cardinal direction they're going in. I don't need to know if a street is a one-way street unless there's an important reason. The author is from Santa Barbara, but most readers won't be. Instead of grounding me in a scene, it distracted me. I also don't need a detailed description of what each girl is wearing every time we see them. A few times can add characterization, but too much starts to seem like wasted space. Instead, I wish more space had been given to deepening the characters. There are several POVs and storylines, and there wasn't enough space given to each girl, which then caused their endings to feel rushed. It might've even been a good idea to have one less girl in order to give each girl a good amount of attention. In the end, it seemed like the girls had sudden epiphanies because the author was running out of space instead of earned realizations.

My biggest issue is that this story's handling of rape and sexual assault is frustrating. I think the author went well, but there are parts that are messed up. For instance, rapists are repeatedly referred to as "victims." No. Rapists aren't victims. They can be targets of the girls' revenge or, as the book later calls them, marks. But saying that rapists are victims is nauseating. Next, the girls experience blowback for casting spells against their rapists, and yet, the guys and an adult man (!) would never have experienced any consequences if the girls hadn't enacted revenge spells. So, girls have to be held accountable while boys and men don't? That's messed up. It reminds me of people who think there's a such thing as "mutual abuse" when it's really DARVO. Another problem is that the book is too sympathetic to rapists, who chose to be rapists. Some of the girls begin to regret what they're doing because rapists have loved ones who might be affected by rapists facing retribution. The one girl who stays glad that she got justice is also the only girl who doesn't get a happy ending. This leads me to my next problem - this book's entire message is that getting justice won't change anything or make you feel better. I'm a rape survivor who did get justice when my rapist was expelled from school, and it felt great and gave me closure. Not every survivor gets to have that and not every survivor's healing journey will be based on that, but to say justice can't help? It made me so angry. Things also clean up too quickly at the end and it feels like the book minimizes a complex issue from the "just tell your parents and everything will start to get better" message (as if some parents can't be problematic) to "just ask your school to educate people about rape because if boys simply are told not to rape they won't!" Yes, messaging shouldn't be focused on teaching girls "how to not get raped," but the solution isn't as simplistic as the author makes it seem. Also, I don't for a second believe that schools would be able to do this without some parents pushing back.

Lastly, a few minor things. I didn't care for the religious moments. Also, some of the names were too similar and confusing. For instance, there was a Madeline and a Madison. Also, I get that it has witchcraft, but the Harry Potter reference was awkward. HP is millennial culture and is pretty dated now due to its TERF-y ties, whereas these girls are Gen-Z, an age group that often makes fun of HP. Also, I'm not sure where this book was in the editing process when I read it since it's an e-ARC, but there was a reference to Wednesday Addams, which would be fitting given the Netflix show, except it was misspelled as Adams.

**This YA book should definitely come with a trigger warning for sexual assault, as there are descriptions of what exactly happened to each girl. **I enjoyed DeRose's debut novel about four girls who join a coven to seek revenge on their assailants. I liked the overall themes of friendship, forgiveness, justice, and fate which were present from beginning to end. The story is mostly told from Elliot's point of view with snippets of the other girls (Madeline, Chloe, and Bea) every now and then. Because the book was written in third person on top of the four points of views, I didn't feel much attachment to the characters. There was ample telling instead of showing but then again, it is difficult to show when there are four points of views in a little over 300 pages.

**This YA book should definitely come with a trigger warning for sexual assault, as there are descriptions of what exactly happened to each girl. **

Elliott, Madeline, Chloe, and Bea meet at a support group for sexual assault survivors. Elliott is frustrated with the fact that these girls are forced to deal with their trauma day after day, while oftentimes the perpetrators get away with a slap on the wrist or with no punishment at all. When she finds an old spell book, she asks the other girls to form a coven with her and get revenge on the boys and men who have done them wrong.

This was such a unique tale of witchcraft, focused on feminism, female rage, and fighting misogyny. It was a powerful story about the emotions that survivors of SA hide inside, and all of the questions they may continue to ask themselves months or years later. The girls are so full of frustration over the fact that nothing ever happens to the men, that girls are forced to think about things like how they dress and what they say when really boys should learn how not to be rapists. It really made me think about how the media shows these cases, about the me too movement, and about our broken system. My heart hurts for anyone who has been a victim of this type of assault.

The four girls were great main characters with such differing personalities. I found it interesting that the girl filled with the most rage was the girl who looks the most buttoned up on the outside, with a huge contrast to her inner personality. The coven really needed all four of these personalities - the skeptic, the one who goes all in on witchcraft, the one pulsing with anger, and the one who had the idea and organizes it all. The bond between the girls grows as they slowly become more than a coven, as they become friends.

The witchcraft aspect brought me The Craft vibes, with these girls unsure what their powers would be and unsure what would happen. I could see this book making a fantastic movie with its heroines that you feel so much sympathy for and the incredible and dramatic tale of revenge. This was a great debut and I will absolutely read whatever the author writes next!

Thank you to NetGalley and Union Square & Co for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.