REVIEW: How to Kill a Witch

By Denise @ Life With No Plot on June 18, 2026 • ( 0 )

About the Book

Title: How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy’s Guide to Silencing Women

Authors: Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell

Series: none

Genre: Nonfiction, History, Feminism

Pages: 320

Edition Read: Library eBook

Dates Read: March 16 – 19, 2026

Challenge: GoodReads Choice Awards 2025, Best History/Biography

Blurb: Nothing brings people together like a common enemy, and witches were the greatest enemy of all.

Scotland, 1563: Crops failed. People starved. And the Devil’s influence was stronger than ever—at least, that’s what everyone believed. If you were a woman living in Scotland during this turbulent time, there was a very good chance that you, or someone you knew, would be tried as a witch.

During the chaos of the Reformation, violence against women was codified for the first time in the Witchcraft Act—a tool of theocratic control with one chilling to root out witches and rid the land of evil. What followed was a dark and misogynistic chapter in history that fanned the flames of witch hunts across the globe, including in the United States and beyond.

In How to Kill a Witch, Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell, hosts of the popular Witches of Scotland podcast, unravel the grim yet absurdly bureaucratic process of identifying, accusing, trying, and executing women as witches. With sharp wit and keen feminist insight, they reveal the inner workings of a patriarchal system designed to weaponize fear and oppress women.

This captivating (and often infuriating) account, which weaves a rich tapestry of trial transcripts, witness accounts, and the documents that set the legal grounds for the witch hunts, exposes how this violent period of history mirrors today’s struggles for justice and equality. How to Kill a Witch is a powerful, darkly humorous reminder of the dangers of superstition, bias, and ignorance, and a warning to never forget the past… while raising the question of whether it could ever happen again.

Review

For a book that deals with such a dark and disturbing subject, this was actually really fun to read. I never read much nonfiction, mostly because I would always find nonfiction to be a dry recital of facts that reminded me too much of stuffy teachers. What I have appreciated with my recent nonfiction reads (The Bookshop by Evan Friss and The Radium Girls by Kate Moore come to mind) is that there is a deeply human element to them. Yes, these are historical facts and events, but they happened to real people, with the same emotions and needs that we all have. For me to enjoy a book, I need to feel a connection with the characters, and that is still true with nonfiction, more so since they are real, actual people.

In How to Kill a Witch, there were a lot of stories that I had heard before, either in history classes or in my own reading. When you hear about witch trials, you immediately think of Salem, Massachusetts, but there were so many more places where this had happened. There was a time period where any woman who stood out for any reason, whether because of her intelligence or her strong personality, needed to be silenced. Strong, intelligent women really scare the menfolk, y’all! The sad part of all of this was the lengths that they would go to in order to extract confessions – torture, of course, but also manipulating women to turn on each other.

Venditozzi and Moore have a really good way of telling these stories, even occasionally injecting humor into them – with dark subject matter like this, you need a little bit of levity. The authors are able to do this without detracting from how terrible these events were, which I really appreciated. It makes me want to check out their podcast! If it’s anything like this book, I’m sure it will be informative and entertaining. Plus, who doesn’t love hearing more about witches!

GoodReads rating: 5 stars