Published: June 9, 2026
Publisher: Saga Press
Series: N/A
Genre: Fantasy, Magical Realism
Pages: 224 (Kindle)
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis:
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.
Once I stumbled across We Hexed the Moon I literally couldn’t stop thinking about it, despite the fact that it’s pretty different from what I usually go for. It’s described as Bunny meets The Craft, which honestly means nothing to me as I’ve read neither. What it is is a wildly nostalgic feeling book set in 2014 following four friends both longing for and fearing the ending of a last summer together before they go their separate ways.
We Hexed the Moon is basically the epitome of that joke about girl sleepovers vs. boy sleepovers, except the girls really are conducting blood rites under the moon while getting drunk in this book. It’s written in a strange yet captivating stream of consciousness style that helped capture the feeling of desperate, young hunger. This book is a witch’s cauldron full of feelings – unrequited lusts, unbelonging, fear of the future, fear of the past, and so, so many secrets.
The characters are a little bit cliche in their personalities – obstinate academic, tragic rich girl, closeted religious girl, girl with the absent parents – but it felt right. Each is both frustrating and likable and they have complex relationships with one another and they aren’t always nice girls. And let’s be real, I feel like most teenage girls are hormones and rage. These four, Jen, Maycie, Goldie, and Harding, decide in a fit of boredom and possibly desperation for one last memorable moment to hex the moon. Unbeknownst to them it works and the following night the moon disappears from the sky and shows up in Jen’s room. Now they have to figure out how to fix this problem before bad things (the tides!) happen. Can they convince the moon to return? Will they have to offer a substitute? Do they need to kill someone??
I actually really liked this for a multitude of reasons. It’s strange and clever, it reminded me of the feeling of being that young, and I like both the style and content of the story. These actually felt like teenage characters. I loved the fraught, panicky feeling of the girls trying to workshop this HUGE world-ending situation. I also loved the slow realization that each of them was considering herself to be the moon replacement for their own reasons. If you’re looking for some strange and wonderful magical realism, I’d definitely recommend We Hexed the Moon.
Powder & Page 
I love the sound of this, especially if the comparison to The Craft is correct, since it’s one of my favorite teen movies!
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