When My Heart Was Wicked

by Tricia Stirling

Overview

"I used to be one of those girls. The kind who loved to deliver bad news . . . who'd flirt with your boyfriend. But now when I cast spells, they're always for good."

16-year-old Lacy believes that magic and science can work side by side. She's a botanist who knows how to harness the healing power of plants. So when her father dies, Lacy tries to stay with her step-mother in Chico, where her magic is good and healing. She fears the darkness that her real mother, Cheyenne, brings out, stripping away everything that is light and kind.Yet Cheyenne never stays away for long. Beautiful, bewitching, unstable Cheyenne who will stop at nothing, not even black magic, to keep control of her daughter's heart. She forces Lacy to accompany her to Sacramento, and before long, the "old" Lacy starts to resurface. But when Lacy survives a traumatic encounter, she finds herself faced with a choice. Will she use her powers to exact revenge and spiral into the darkness forever? Or will she find the strength to embrace the light?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780545695756
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	02/24/2015
Sold by:	Scholastic, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
Lexile:	690L (what's this?)
File size:	7 MB
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Tricia Stirling earned her M.A. in creative writing and has been published in Literary Mama, The Angler, and Syntax. She lives in Sacramento, California, with her family. WHEN MY HEART WAS WICKED is Tricia's first novel.

Read an Excerpt

I used to be one of those girls. The kind who loved to deliver bad news. I stole my stepmother's lipstick and mashed it up to make fake potions that I fed to my dolls. I put sugar syrup in her perfume so she'd be followed by bees and wasps. When I colored my hair, I imagined it seeping into my scalp, black dye pooling into my veins. If I could, I would've scribbled black all over my face, like I used to do to pretty girls in my picture books. Princesses with scraped-out eyes. But that was the old Lacy. Now, when I cast spells, they are always for good.

Editorial Reviews

11/01/2014
Gr 9 Up—Debut novelist Stirling has written a delightfully dark and twisty story for those who never quite outgrew fairy tales. Removed from the custody of her abusive, dysfunctional mother when she was 13 years old, Lacy has spent the past three years with her loving father and free-spirited stepmother. But following the death of her father to prostate cancer, her mother, Cheyenne, insists that Lacy leaves her stepmother's home in Chico and moves to Sacramento with her. Adding to the stress of going to a new school and making new friends, Lacy grows increasingly aware that something is very wrong with her mother and that she, herself, is being pulled into darkness. This enigmatic novel will keep readers guessing from the first page to the last. Are there supernatural forces at work or is Cheyenne delusional and psychotic? Does Lacy have the ability to cause the accident that put her would-be seducer in the hospital or was he just drinking too much that night? Was Lacy's heartlessness actual or metaphysical? No clear answers will frustrate and delight readers. Stirling is an author to watch.—Jane Henriksen Baird, Anchorage Public Library, AK

School Library Journal

12/08/2014
Is Lacy Fin a witch or not? Midway through her junior year of high school, this question isn’t on her radar. Her father has just died, and she is bracing to return to school under the gentle aegis of her stepmother, Anna. No sooner does Lacy negotiate the potential land mines of a first day back than Cheyenne, her birth mother, reappears three years after abandoning Lacy, demanding custody again. Memories quickly resurface—of strange “dreams,” spell-casting, confusion, and suffering. Fearing the rage and hate that marked her earlier life, Lacy tries to make space for “the light” she learned from her stepmother, but Cheyenne’s erratic, domineering behavior leaves Lacy questioning everything. Compact and intense, it’s a bravura examination of neglect, abuse, and survival, though first-time novelist Stirling struggles to resolve the “and then she woke up” moment. The shift in register is softened by her choice to forgo a conventional plot arc, and even if the ending is slightly off-key, the accomplishment of the story as a whole is impressive. Ages 14–up. Agent: Molly Ker Hawn, Bent Agency. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

2014-11-04
A mix of the mundane and the magical permeates this slender portrait of a girl in pain. After a childhood bouncing between her mother, possibly a witch and probably unstable, and her father, whose presence made it possible for Lacy to see magic and beauty everywhere, Lacy's mother, Cheyenne, disappeared. Her mother's influence gone, Lacy's darkness blossomed into light and kindness. But her father has died, and although stepmother Anna wants to keep her, Cheyenne returns to drag Lacy back to Sacramento. Lacy narrates in lush, almost magical prose: "Smoke billows out and bits of glowing ember consume the creases of the paper like growing things, red mushrooms in a sped-up video." This lyricism exists side by side with gritty realism: slut-shaming and mean girls, childhood abuse suffered by classmate Martin, and the nonstop emotional and physical neglect and abuse Lacy endures from her own mother. Sometimes horrifying and sometimes charming, this is a powerful if uneven novel. Lacy sees herself as a battleground between light and dark, and she must find her own way even as she deals with levels of grief and pain she's almost unable to face; readers may be left uncomfortable when that way seems to forgive her mother, but they will rejoice in the confirmation that we are what we make ourselves, regardless of the darkness that surrounds. Unexpected, uncanny, unforgettable. (Magical realism. 14 & up)

Kirkus Reviews