Consensual Hex

Harlowe’s debut offers a sinister if diffuse take on campus date rape. Leisl is ambivalent about a lot of things—her sexuality, her career aspirations, even her desire to attend college in the first place—as she arrives at Smith College for her first year. She attends a meeting of Smithies Against Sexual Violence, where she meets Tripp, a self-described male ally from Amherst—who proceeds to invite her on a date, get her drunk, and take advantage of her in a public restroom. Confused, lonely, and initially unwilling to report the assault as she comes to realize she was raped, Leisl joins the Gender, Power, and Witchcraft seminar, which turns out to be a front for the practice of witchcraft itself. Tripp, meanwhile, is not only a serial rapist but also a warlock, along with his frat buddies. A revenge plot and a love triangle play out in tandem among Leisl and the other members of her seminar’s coven, and as their freshman year devolves into an increasingly surreal and gory fever dream, readers are left to discern what of Leisl’s story is real, what is imagined, and what is a metaphor for sexual violence and its aftermath. Given the recent glut of novels that cast witchcraft as a potent representation of women’s power and rage, this one feels underpowered. Lucy Cleland, Kneerim & Williams. (Oct.)