51 pages • 1-hour read
Hexed
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, death by suicide, graphic violence, and death.
The Effects of Toxic Family Legacies
The characters in Hexed are violent and unprincipled, with a habit of betraying one another to suit their own convenience. Though these traits are unconventional, at least in protagonists, the novel suggests that they are understandable given the environments in which the characters were raised, in which crime, abuse, and addiction were normalized.
The novel’s father figures are universally corrupt, selfish, and cruel. Even though Trent dotes on Aria, his love for her is possessive in the extreme. He would be willing to implicate her in a murder to make sure she doesn’t stray from his control. He treats Venesa even worse; for instance, he originally intended to shift the blame for Enzo’s murder onto her. He treats his nephew Bastian with little more than contempt. Carlos is no better. Like Trent, Carlos castigates both his sons and frames them as failures: If he can succeed in making Giuseppe and Enzo feel inadequate, they will represent less of a challenge to his authority. However, his paranoia makes even their conciliatory behavior seem like betrayal. In the end, he arranges the murder of both sons. Moreover, Trent and Enzo’s abuse of their children occurs within the context of their broader criminal activity, into which their children are initiated early in life. This is itself a form of abuse that further shapes the younger generation’s characters.
Enzo and Trent’s abuse extends to their wives, which has the dual effect of eliminating any positive parental influence and shaping their children’s view of romantic relationships. Carlos’s philandering pushes his wife into alcohol and drug addiction. Ultimately, his neglect drives her to suicide. After witnessing his parents’ dysfunctional marriage, Enzo concludes that true love doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, Venesa’s mother works so hard to placate an abusive husband that she neglects her daughter. Ultimately, she is removed from Venesa’s life when her brother has her murdered.
Without any mature adult support, both Enzo and Venesa grow up seeking approval from father figures who are incapable of giving it. Trent, for instance, expresses disappointment in Venesa and Bastian to keep them feeling guilty, submissive, and amenable to his control, locking them further into violent and destructive behavior. Even Aria isn’t immune to this family pattern. At one point, Venesa says of Aria, “Despite her being the bane of my existence, I truly believe she’s the unfortunate outcome of parenting, and really, can I blame someone for how they were raised? She’s a byproduct of toxicity, the same as the rest of us” (489). As Aria’s behavior, like that of Venesa herself, demonstrates, being a byproduct of toxicity has lethal consequences for the rest of the world.
Love Versus Duty
Both Enzo and Venesa are initially motivated by a sense of loyalty to their respective families. They feel an obligation to follow the code that was instilled in them by the men who raised them. This leads to conflict as the pair fall in love, as their relationship flouts Trent and Carlos’s wishes.
Venesa and Enzo are particularly invested in their families because their lives are spent serving their family businesses. That those businesses operate outside the law makes their position even more singular, as they have no one to depend on but their next of kin. Thus, the approval or disapproval of Trent and Carlos weighs quite heavily on them, shaping their behavior. In Enzo’s case, loyalty means following his father’s orders without question, even if those orders involve killing people. Venesa behaves similarly but draws the line at cheating with her cousin’s fiancé, unwilling to violate the bonds of family: When Venesa first feels attracted to Enzo, she tells him, “In this life, I’m a lot of things, Enzo. But I’m not a cheat” (185).
This loyalty, however, is rooted in a sense of obligation rather than love. Enzo, for instance, feels compelled to Aria after she claims to have saved his life, thinking, “Guilt worms its way through me when I remember I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for Aria. I owe her my life. Marrying her is the least I can do” (20-21). Enzo thus sees his marriage as canceling a debt he owes Aria. His duty to his father is similarly transactional: “This marriage is nothing more than a business deal. One that gives her what she wants and appeases my father. I owe them both” (21).
This framing of loyalty ultimately provides the characters with a way out of their predicament, as an erosion of trust toward their respective families drives Venesa and Enzo into each other’s arms. It takes the realization that his own father might have orchestrated his attempted murder to turn Enzo away from his family. Similarly, Venesa feels betrayed when Trent gives her beloved trident painting to Aria as a way of punishing Venesa after endangering her life: “Maybe it’s time I truly put myself first and go after the things that I want. Starting with my cousin’s fiancé” (295). By breaking the terms of their “agreements” with Venesa and Enzo, Trent and Carlos effectively free them to pursue one another, and it is this, rather than the notion that love conquers all, that resolves the conflict between love and duty.
The Unrealistic Nature of Fairy Tales
The behavior of the characters in Hexed isn’t simply the result of the criminal world they inhabit. Rather, the author has made a deliberate choice to play with the fairy tale archetypes that engendered her novel, exposing these archetypes as unrealistic in the process.
Much of McIntire’s critique of traditional fairy tales centers on the binary moral framework they often embrace. Hexed’s choice of protagonist itself reflects this idea: Venesa is largely inspired by the sea witch Ursula but also contains elements of the mermaid Ariel, blurring the lines between heroine and villain. Moreover, the author celebrates Venesa’s violent streak and attributes it to a bad upbringing rather than innate evil, contributing to the novel’s moral ambiguity and flexibility. Similarly, Enzo isn’t the clean-cut prince who rescues the damsel. He has his own dark side and enjoys violence just as much as Venesa does, which the novel likewise attributes to toxic family dynamics. Meanwhile, the character who comes closest to the archetype of the princess is Aria. She is the golden child who can do no wrong in her father’s eyes, yet she demonstrates gratuitous cruelty and selfishness, making her a villainous figure rather than a heroine.
The behavior of these characters reflects the larger world in which they operate. Rather than a fairytale kingdom where a strong and wise king rules his subjects justly, the novel gives readers two power-hungry men intent on expanding their criminal empires. Bribery, corruption, torture, and murder are all tactics they employ to dominate and control others. Trent and Carlos are antagonistic characters, but the framing of them as villains is complicated by the fact that Venesa and Enzo inherit their criminal kingdoms in the conclusion, continuing to operate outside the law. Venesa even gains the nickname of “Sea Witch,” implying she’s more feared than loved. This suggests that it is not virtue that prevails, as in many fairy tales, but cunning and ruthlessness.
The subversion of the meaning of “happily ever after” underscores this point. The book’s epilogue begins with a sweet marriage proposal between the protagonists, as is typical of a romance novel. However, it concludes with Venesa about to torture and murder two of her enemies, underlining the amoral nature of the narrative world.
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