We Hexed the Moon

by Mollyhall Seeley

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.

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Magical Realism, Fiction, Queer, Science Fiction, LGBT

224 pages, Paperback

First published June 9, 2026

Reviews

[Katie Colson · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Bunny meets The Craft' is the comp titles. And when I tell you it's TRUE!!!
Obsessed. Rereading it today, for my birthday, I liked it THAT much.

[Léa · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
This is such a hidden gem in the literary / 'weird girl' fiction space and the EXACT sort of magical realism blend I adore!!! Following a group of best friends the summer before they separate for college and all of the existentialism/girlhood/grief pairing with it, one night they decide to hex the moon... and she has now disappeared from the sky and is standing in their bedroom.

A coming of age pitched as blending The Secret History and Stranger Things this novella packs so much exploration of sapphic yearning, jealousy, grief and hunger. The premise of them desperately finding a new body for the moon to take over was so fun but balanced so brilliantly the blurring of camp/enjoyment/disbelief with raw depictions of what it is to be a young woman.

This felt sooo close to being a perfect book to me, it's not often I say that I wish a book was 200+ more pages!!! I would've loved more of the moon (always), to spend more time with each of the friends and a more detailed ending (though I can see why it ended the way it did)... honestly such a triumph of a novella, please please read it!

[Dee (in the Desert) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, that was quite the weird lil book... "fever dream" kinda thing - not sure I liked it, not sure I was supposed to, but I am very sure that I was not the target demographic for a story about 4 teens and the literal moon personified. (Edit - props to GR friend Jaime for putting it on my radar - knocked off several challenge prompts, lol)

[Alwynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Debut author Mollyhall Seeley’s unsettling, bittersweet coming-of-age piece has been described as Bunny meets The Craft. It was recommended for publication by Ali Smith as a result of her time selecting manuscripts for small publisher Weatherglass’s novella prize. Seeley’s narrative centres on four friends during what’s likely to be their last summer together - after finally finishing with school. Jen, Macey, Harding aka Helena and Goldie are so close it’s as if they bleed into each other. But they’re slowly recognising that they’ll soon be pulled apart, their complicated emotional reactions bound up with grief over the death of Goldie’s brother; and an awareness that they’re living in a state of permacrisis in which species are dying out and the world’s being ravaged by climate change. Together they decide to perform one last collective act, a desperate ritual that signals the possibility of an existence beyond the tarnished, mortal realm. Seeley’s characters were inspired by the notorious “baby” witches who, in 2020, claimed they were going to hex the moon. A boast that went viral, sparking unexpectedly widespread heated responses and debates. But where these real-life girls’ claims faded into obscurity, Seeley’s girls succeed. They somehow summon a deeply pissed-off moon down from the sky, a moon who then demands a sacrifice the friends could never have predicted.

Deliberately claustrophobic, Seeley’s novella often has a breathless intensity. It’s uneven but when it works it’s remarkably seductive: the imagery pleasing, the storytelling fluid. In part, Seeley offers up a zeitgeisty, microcosm of American society with its cultural clashes and frightening contradictions. She brings in references ranging from Elon Musk and the manosphere to ultra-conservative religious practices and their impact on individuals – Harding’s strict, Christian parents prevent her from fully embracing her queer identity. But, at the same time, Seeley constructs an intimate, searing portrait of the intricacies of girlhood, of gender and bonding - bonds which both liberate and constrain. I particularly liked the underlying message that in a reality in which the grotesque and the bizarre are increasingly becoming our everyday commonplace, the notion of magic seems almost mundane in comparison. Seeley’s direct, offbeat style reminded me a little of writers like Michelle Tea particularly her Black Wave. There are echoes too of retro, rites-of-passage stories like Mystic Pizza. Based in New York, Seeley’s currently working on a full-length version due out in 2026.

Rating: 3/3.5

[✿ · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh my god oh my GOD OH MY GOD SO INCREDIBLE. like how can you write something so equally hilarious, snappy, pitch perfect-esque gen z but not in a cringe way, as it is gut wrenching, dealing with life, loss, grief, crisis, existentialism, friendship and family I AM FLOORED. like im genuinely speechless rn and will be recommending this book to anyone and EVERYONE

[Brandy Leigh]

Fifteen years ago this would have altered my brain chemistry. Now I fear I’ve aged out of the Tumblr scene.

[quillnqueer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is if that one good scene in Bodies Bodies Bodies was a full length novel

[Kitty Golden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hot girl summer, more like oops we pissed off the moon and are now having an existential crisis but also am i gay girl summer. Just insane energy from the get go but i loved it.

[gabriela⛤ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why does the author use “&” instead of “and”
The writing style pmo but I liked it

[emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

hm. i've got mixed feelings on this one. overall, i'm glad that i read it, and there was a lot in it that i enjoyed, but there were a few things keeping it from being one that i loved.

initially, i haaaaated the choice to have no quotation marks on dialogue. i just do nOT get why people do this. to me, it doesn't feel stylistic or unique, it just feels annoying. that feeling never went away, though i did get used to it as the novella went on. each of the four girls were interesting and i liked the way the different povs were handled. i think where this one fell a bit short for me was with the moon, and the ending. i wanted more moon!!!!! (i'm always going to want more moon in everything in the world always). i found the ending... both abrupt, sad, dissapointing, but also... i kinda got it and why it happened at the same time. i think there are a lot of good things in this one, but i think as a personal preference, i wanted a few different things from it then it was giving me.

[Celine · Rating 4 out of 5]

WOW WOW WOW.

[Jade · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 ⭐️

Feels like I’m missing something here, maybe I have interpreted it too literally.

Did not like the writing style - once you get used to the total lack of quotation marks then the sentences start to get longer and more into stream-of-consciousness ramblings. Considered quitting at 80%, that’s how much it pissed me off.

I hoped the actual story would redeem it but it fell flat. Also the gals were low key mean to each other while calling it best friendship and that was not relatable to me.

[eva! · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved this so much! finally someone who knows how to write teenage girls properly. all of the characters were a little cliche but that’s lowkey what being a teenage girl is and it worked so well. beautifully written, some moments were so silly and then some were so poignant i cried. just the sheer unwavering love you have for your friends when you’re a teenage girl, so beautiful.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Weird books about weird girls going through something is going to hit for me every single time I fear. This follows four best friends right after high school graduation, on the few days in August when they hexed the moon and realize it actually worked. What does it mean for your friendship when you have to *find a new moon* before going away to college? I love every page of this, and just wish it was longer.

[Taylor Penn · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Not everyone can bear it, the intensity of feeling.”

We Hexed the Moon was the near-perfect coming-of-age, teenage-girl-apocalypse-coded story that I didn’t know I wanted. Compared to The Craft and Bunny, I actually felt like it was closer to Aquamarine, except instead of a love-struck mermaid, we have the moon, and she wants freedom from the sky.

Maysie, Jen, Goldie and Harding are standing at the edge of adulthood, trying to decide who they’ll become before the world decides for them. Jen is a future Yale girl, Harding is the closeted daughter of a pastor, Goldie is grieving the loss of her twin brother to addiction, and Maysie is untethered while everyone else speeds toward a future she can’t picture for herself. The four friends are wholly enmeshed in one another, and in an act of teenage rebellion, they perform a ritual to hex the moon so they can stay together forever.

The hex doesn’t work exactly, but the moon notices the girls. She disappears from the sky and shows up at their sleepover—asking them to find someone to take her place in the sky so she can live on earth in a human body… oh, and they have 12 hours to do it or the world will end.

I love a coming-of-age story, especially one centered around female friendships. What got me the most was watching these girls individually and privately consider sacrificing themselves to become the moon and save the other 3 friends. Not in a dramatic fantasy-novel sort of way but each girl has her own reasons for wanting to escape her life, and even more complicated reasons to stay. Becoming the moon starts to feel less like power and more like an escape, and Seeley writes the turmoil of an impossible decision so, so well.

The prose is lush and dreamy and spiraling and emotional in a way that reminded me of reading On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel. Every thought the girls have is feverish and poetic without losing their humor, charm, and self-awareness. The novel blends magical realism, horror, and fantasy in a way that raises the emotional stakes and makes the love that the girls share feel truer than true. Jojo and Emma Roberts could never, actually lol. My ONLY complaint is the lack of quotation marks, which occasionally had me fighting for my life trying to figure out who was speaking and what counted as internal versus external dialogue. But by the end, I was so emotionally worn-out that I barely even cared.

Thank you so, so much to Saga Press for sending the advanced copy in exchange for a review! <3

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the Weatherglass Novella Prize 2024

That's what being best friends felt like, that's what being a girl and having best friends felt like, cannibalism, all of you at the feast and of the feast, all of you taking parts of each other without even realizing it, becoming each other as you became yourself, jealous of the pieces of yourself the others took but proud of them too, proud that they'd been deemed worthy and edible, proud when you were closer to being fully consumed than anyone else but also furious that anyone else would dare to take any piece of you, the pieces you'd grown so painstakingly, that you'd put together from all the things you stole from everybody else, you were only you as long as nobody else was but of course everybody was everybody when you were best friends like this, there was no you, there was no them, there was only GoldieMaycieHardingJen, one person, one entity, breathing.

We Hexed the Moon by Mollyhall Seeley was shortlisted for the Weatherglass Novella Prize 2024, and one of three books from the shortlist, after the two joint winners Astraea and Aerth, which Weatherglass have gone on to publish.

Prize judge Ali Smith said of the book:

“Some teenage girls have – yes – performed a spell and hexed the moon. Now the moon, smooth-skinned, street-smart, dryly witty, seductive, powerful beyond belief, is literally hanging out in one of their bedrooms.

Pitch Perfect gone cosmic: in stylish sleight of hand and with pleasurable bravado this pop song of a novella reveals the huge issues, importances, losses, survivals, impotence and potencies in the everyday existence of a group of best friends and their families. Full of young-adult wisdom, braiding dark and light together, it’s a charmer.”

The hexing of the moon is, apparently, a reference to an odd social media story in 2020 on WitchTok (yes that's apparently a real sub-community) where some teenage witches attempted exactly that - see e.g. here.

The novel centres around four friends in the time between high school and university: Jen, highly organised and on her way to Yale; beautiful (and she knows it) Goldie, off to the College of Charleston and secretly sleeping with Jen's brother; Harding (first names Helen Ruth), a natural leader (taking her cue from the biblical Ruth) and from a strictly religious family, off to Liberty University; and Maycie, who has decided to skip college for now, Maycie and Harding beginning a relationship, oblivious to how obvious this is to the other two friends. It opens the day after their attempt to cast the curse, with Maycie climbing through Jen's window, to tell her, improbably that they seem to have succeeded and the moon has vanished from the sky:

We hexed the moon, Maycie says.

Her hair is plastered to her face & drips onto Jen's floor as she climbs gracelessly through the window. It has been raining for days, a monsoon, the wettest August on record. Everything has been the -est on record. Hottest, coldest, wettest, driest, climate officially changed. Jen has spent all summer lost in social media timelines talking about dwindling glaciers, water wars are coming, who cares, it's hopeless, we've fucked it, we deserve whatever comes next. People throwing soup on art, like that'll do anything, why are we more upset about art than the ruined planet, blah & etc. Twitter is crumbling, fittingly, into a timeline of what are no longer called Tweets, now called Xs. Twitter is dead & so is nature, probably. Jen's never having kids. That's what Jen's college application essay was about, framed through a lens of climate grief, 'the sense of loss that arises from experiencing or learning about environmental destruction or climate change. Jen's college counselor thought grief was a very powerful word. She said Why say grief and not sadness & Jen said Sadness is local, grief is cosmic. Global heating. Universal heating, maybe, who knows. So Jen's not having kids but she is going to Yale.

Jen at first doesn't belief here, but soon the internet is ablaze with speculation on what has happened to earth's satellite, and what is all means. And suddenly, the moon manifests in Jen's room, in the form of a young woman, not exactly happy.

The Moon looks like - a woman, sort of. Almost. It looks like a woman the way a shadow does: Jen knows, in her brain, that it is a woman, it has the shape of a woman, but a woman lit up from the inside with a thin, pale light.

Looking at her is somehow both soothing & unsettling, like when you take a selfie & the camera reverses your image. A camera filter that makes you old or young or a cartoon or Italian.

Holy shit you're The Moon, Maycie blubbers. Holy shit.
Holy shit. The Moon. Holy shit.

Hm, says The Moon, her voices a lilt, the lilt a shiver down Jen's neck. The Moon steps more fully into the room, running her fingertips along the edge of Jen's dresser, scaring up dust.

How interesting of you to use the word 'holy, now that I'm here in your bedroom, when yesterday I was - what was the phrase? - a fat old lady'.

This is Jen's bedroom, actually, Maycie tells The Moon, because Maycie is a spineless traitor. It's not her fault. Maycies emotional. That's why she needs Jen so much, to be logical, the voice of reason. So Jen lets it go even though it actually is very messed up.

I know that, I'm the fucking moon, The Moon snaps at her.

The Moon informs that their spell failed but she is annoyed that they attempted it, and it's final tipped her over the edge in terms of wanting to me the moon - so the four friends have twelve hours to find someone who will replace her as The Moon, while she will take over their body.

The publisher's blurb has this as 'The Secret History meets Stranger Things' which is an accurate description, but not one that would, were I not a Weatherglass subscriber, have me naturally reaching for the book - and I'd have preferred to have heard more from The Moon and less of the teenage-friendship angst.

[Shannon Miz · Rating 4 out of 5]

So the first thing you need to know is that yeah, this does require some suspension of disbelief. I mean, the actual moon anthropomorphized is hanging out in a teenager’s bedroom, so. But once you get past that, it really is quite the enjoyable coming of age tale of four friends navigating their friendships, relationships, family issues, and next steps. But also, they (as the title suggests) hexed the moon, and now they have to fix it.

We get a lot of insight into their foursome, and anyone who has been through the inevitable change that comes with leaving high school and hometowns and childhood friends can certainly appreciate what the characters are going through. The characters are imperfect and at times even unlikable, but they are always deeply loved by each other, and I really appreciated that, because we are all, at times, hard to like, but hopefully loved regardless. The story wraps up in a satisfactory way, and it fits the story even if I didn’t wholly love it. I do have to wonder what the deal is with the choice to not have quotation marks. I know this happens sometimes in books, but it takes me out of the story a bit. But alas, that is a minor gripe in an otherwise engaging story.

[tayler · Rating 4 out of 5]

what a surprise of a book. bunny is one of my favorite books of all time, and when a novel is comp’d to it, i almost always know it will let me down — this one did NOT !!! alert the press !!! very high praise from me, indeed.
a group of teenage girls hex the moon out of the sky during their last summer together? oh, the premise alone. immaculate and unique in equal measure. i loved how the author managed to squeeze in fantastic commentary on girlhood, grief, and climate change + the fear that comes with it. we’re all on a ticking clock, and the author knew it too. i devoured the last 150 pages in one sitting -sitting in the heat- because i didn’t want to get up. highly recommend!

[Jasmine Nicholson · Rating 4 out of 5]

“They’d loved eachother so much it went cosmic”

I knew I was going to love this one just from the description. A group of girls, about to go off to college/travelling/gap year etc hex the moon one night. The next day the moon has disappeared from the sky and is stood in Jen’s bedroom, in the form of an abrasive woman.

Girlhood, female friendships, coming of age, sapphic and deals with grief, religion, sexuality and all the feelings that come with finishing high school and becoming an adult. All topics dealt with in this story as well as you know finding a body for the moon to take over! I really enjoyed this story, all 4 girls had interesting (and different) backgrounds and issues going on and all were realistic issue 17/18 year old girls would be having. All girl were both unlikeable and the sort of characters you can’t help but love.

I particularly loved the female friendship in this novel. I felt it perfectly captured how friendship feels in High school, how intense these friendships are and how female friendships do see you being so intertwined together. It felt like such an interesting way to touch on these topics, with the moon as an actual character. Honestly this is one you just have to read and I would really recommend. Such a unique and interesting way to do a coming of age story and potentially a new favourite of mine.

[lena · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was always going to love this, but exceeded expectations. I will revisit this again.

[Jules · Rating 5 out of 5]

when i am struggling to feel something, i can always think about them. it is the only hurt that hasn’t healed; the only pain that’s gotten worse with time. my friends, i miss you, and i know it can never be different than what it is now. because i just had to go and make myself the moon 🌑

this hit me really hard for many reasons. quite possibly the worst (complimentary) depiction of teenage doomed lesbian summer disaster relationship i’ve ever read. YEOWTCH!!! made me reflect (ha) on a lot. whether i regret certain things, whether it would’ve been worth it to do things differently. all i know is this: my girlhood is fiercely and devoutly guarded. i will carry the pieces of the girls i loved in my adolescence to my grave. this book was a firm reminder of where i came from and what i will never escape, as long as the moon continues to shine.

[Chanel Chapters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Turns out the moon is a bit of a cunt

4.5 - it would have been 5⭐️ if they had used FUCKING QUOTATION MARKS!

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely entertaining.

This is bizarre and interesting and weird. I love weird girl books. Always. It’s also intense.

The structure this book was written in takes some getting used to. It’s not my favorite but as I read I understood the stylistic choice more.

[Trixie · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh, this was excellent.

recommended for anyone who:

• likes books that have an attention to prose and image ("sunlight flashed on the channel's surface like teeth") and do interesting things with punctuation
• experienced girlhood as a visceral, living, breathing thing
• loved We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry
• wants a book that treats young characters with the same complexity and nuance as adult ones
• thinks the moon is hot and/or a bitch

[Rosemary Loiacono · Rating 5 out of 5]

definitely got the Bunny vibe, I loved this quick but funny and magical story!!

[Talia Pearce · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 stars

I really wanted to LOVE this book! The description was right up my alley but this book was a slow read for me. The lack of quotation marks for dialogue I found to be distracting and over all I felt the book was very repetitive, leading me to pick it up and put it down again in short bursts hoping each time I picked it back up it would get better but instead it just took me forever to finish and left me feeling disappointed in what felt like a lot of wasted potential. There were parts I liked and the concept was great but this one fell flat for me.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

[Nathaniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nobody is more surprised at this being a new favourite than I am.

[unstable.books · Rating 4 out of 5]

We Hexed The Moon is a feverish, emotionally raw novel that captures the terrifying liminal space between adolescence and adulthood with a real sharpness. Blending occult horror and surreal satire with the aching drama that accompanies coming of age, Seeley introduces us to four girls clinging desperately to one another during their final summer together. What begins as a silly, reckless ritual born from uncertainty spirals into something far stranger and much more dangerous, forcing them all to confront the fractures that are already forming within their friendship. Seeley excels at depicting the intensity of girlhood. The way intimacy can feel all-consuming and volatile, almost impossible to separate from ones own identity. The relationships between Jen, Macey, Harding, and Goldie pulse with affection, jealousy, grief, and resentment. Their conversations feel messy and authentic, carrying a sort of manic energy of teenagers trying to outrun both the future and themselves. We Hexed The Moon's surreal premise does not overshadow its emotional core. Beneath the bizarre humor and apocalyptic atmosphere lies a deeply anxious story about climate dread, repression, queer identity, and the fear of being left behind. At times chaotic and intentionally absurd, We Hexed The Moon feels hypnotic and unnervingly honest about the fragile magic of friendship that may be on the brink of collapse. Thank you Saga Press Books for the review copy! You can give this a read when it publishes June 09, 2026.

[Clare Hutchinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Whatever; if the Moon wants to die in the water wars that's her business." incredible, yes, excellent, love, obsessed. girlhood and change and climate grief and being in your 17-year-old mini-galaxy.

(ALSO THAT'S MY GIRL!!!!!!) smugly: I know the author actually

[amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

I really enjoyed this once the writing found its pace, but had to deduct some points for the waffle at the start