Book Review of ‘Hexed: Don’t Get Mad, Get Power’ by Julia Tuffs

I’ll be honest with you, when I first started reading this teen novel, I found the premise laughably daft… a girl moves to the Isle of Wight, gets her period, and starts to have magical powers. And wow, does it go on about periods!

However, when I got further into the novel, I enjoyed the strong characterisation of females in this teen novel. Jessie is not just a witch, but is also being bullied, is also dealing with moving to a new school, is also dealing with mean girls. Plenty of girls will relate to her and find the novel’s ending, which celebrates female unity, rather empowering. Jessie’s sister, mum and grandmother are equally endearing. If anything, I think that there’s plenty of scope for a sequel in this witchy coven – I can see readers enjoying finding out what may happen as Jessie grows up and grows into her powers.

The boys in this novel are all a bit wet and pathetic, but that seems to be pretty deliberate and I think that teenage girls will enjoy the contrast. And whilst I don’t believe in shelving books by their intended genre, I really do think that this is one for the girls (unless any male readers are particularly enthralled by drawn out passages describing tampons, blood leakage and period pains.

Overall, this novel has a really good ‘heart’ to it. I think that girls from 11 to 13 would particularly enjoy this one, as would all fans of ‘Mean Girls’ and ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch’.

‘Hexed’ will be published on 8th July 2021. Thank you to NetGalley UK and the publisher for this ARC in return for my honest review.

Buy Hexed: Don’t Get Mad, Get Powers.

I haven’t seen any other reviews of Hexed yet – if you’re writing about it, feel free to add a link to your review here. I’d love to hear what everyone else thinks of it.