While ‘spooky season’ is quickly approaching us, I had the inclination to re-read one of my favorite books from highschool called, How to Hang A Witch by Adrianna Mather. This book is one of the best books for young adults to read during the Halloween season, especially if you enjoy magic and ghosts, because this book has all of that.
The story begins with a girl who goes by the name of Sam Mather, who moves to the small town of Salem, Massachusetts with her step mother. Sam, being the new girl in town, is immediately targeted by a group of girls who call themselves the Descendants. If it wasn’t easy enough for you to guess, the Descendants are related to the late witches of the Salem Witch Trials, and their reason for targeting Samantha is because she is a descendant of the late Cotton Mather, a man partially responsible for the trials.
As Sam is the new girl in town, it’s easy to assume that she does not have many friends, therefore she keeps to herself and stays home most days wondering the halls of her deceased grandmother’s house by herself. While she wonders, she comes across the library, tucked away in the back of the house. Upon her discovery, she also uncovers an old passageway into an attic-like room, connected to the library.
What she finds in the loft is a pile of letters written to and from someone by the name of Elijah. As she is rummaging through these letters, she comes face to face with Elijah from the letters himself, who is angry with her for touching his things. As her and Elijah quickly become friends, they are challenged with the hurdle of a new Salem curse, which affects anyone and everyone who has any connections to the trials. As history begins to repeat itself, Sam and Elijah are in a hurry to stop the curse and return things back to normal before the town falls on misfortune, yet again.
I don’t want to give away any of the major details of the book, but this is one of the best witch-focussed books I have read in awhile. As Seventeen Magazine describes it, “it’s like Mean Girls meets history class in the best possible way.” which is no exaggeration. Adrianna Mather does an excellent job at sprinkling the real life history of what happened in Salem in the late 1600’s with every bit of truth she can. The book is a small history lesson with a fictional storyline for the mind to grasp.