This was Not For Me.

This is a literary fiction look at motherhood. It felt very "MFA, author lives in Brooklyn", just like the mother main character who never gets a name.

The author was good at evoking the horror of the stultifying boredom and isolation that always terrified me when I thought about motherhood. The body horror too. But I ended up not liking that kind of horror any more than I like most horror.

There are violently dead bunnies and kitties if that's a no-go for you as it is for me. Didn't make me like the characters any better either.

A Kafkaesque fever dream of a novel -- stressful, heartbreaking and hilarious.

I had no idea what was going on at *any* point of this book, and I enjoyed every second of it. It's either satirical, or it's playing a trick on the reader, or it's a metaphor, or it's magical realism, or it's somehow all of the above, but most especially it's -- as Kate Baer said it better than I can -- a "primal scream" of a book.

Readers are best off going into this book with as little knowledge about it as possible, which is good considering I wouldn't even know how to describe it. But any woman, mother or not, will see themselves in this story, bizarre as it is. I can't wait to see the Hulu adaptation (with Amy Adams, of course).

“How many generations of women had delayed their greatness only to have time extinguish it completely? How many women had run out of time while the men didn’t know what to do with theirs? And what a mean trick to call such things holy or selfless. How evil to praise women for giving up each and every dream.”

A feral fever dream of a book about motherhood, equal parts unhinged and insightful. NIGHTBITCH chronicles the transformation of an unnamed white woman - a mother, a wife, an artist - from her trapped beginnings to her liberatory denouement. Her metamorphosis happens on several levels (physical, emotional, philosophical, existential), and I loved how rooted in her actual animal shift into a dog the narrative was; it was delightfully absurd with a realistic edge. The representation of her relationship with her toddler son was so raw and tender, as well as the dynamics shown between the main character and other mothers, including her own. I just love when constrained, suppressed women unleash the full depths of their feelings and desires, both beautiful and terrible. There’s more here too, about the essentiality of art, the power of maternity, and naturally, the uselessness of men. This didn’t fully land for me but goddamn I was entertained. Thanks Doubleday Books for the review copy!

Content warnings: gore, body horror, animal injury/death, sexism, gaslighting

Hilarious has got more than it's due as I believe it's being adapted, something I want to read and watch and splendor in as I enter an era where my body is betraying me and everyone is telling me it's all very normal.

Kate Baer called this book a "primal scream," and honestly, truer words have never been spoken. This spoke to me on a cellular level, peeling back the messy layers of motherhood and postpartum and raising a toddler and patriarchy and emotional labor and rage, rage, rage in a way that somehow felt artful and delicate even as it twisted at its core. Highly, highly recommend.

Unsettling and absolutely worth it. meditative thriller on motherhood and femininity. you can see why this was such an instant hit. incredible

Wow. I mean… wow.

I received the ebook ARC for this one but wasn't in the right frame of mind whenever I thought about actually reading it. So when I saw it on Audible a while back, I bought it. And Cassandra Campbell is a great narrator.

I finally started listening yesterday and just got sucked right in. I'm certain I've never read anything quite like Nightbitch. Also, I fucking love the name of the book and how the main character (and only POV character) refers to herself as Nightbitch.

The first at least half of the book struck me as a call out for the importance of birth control for heterosexual females. It still makes me feel incredibly grateful that our son was raised in a two-mom household. But as the book moved on, and Nightbitch discovered her own power and strength, it's much less about how shitty parenthood can be for women.

I will absolutely read this one again. Just to catch the small things I missed the first time. There were lots of laughs mixed in with the gruesomeness, too. And lots of howling. Such beautiful howling!

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for bringing this interesting, smart, and unique book to my attention.

This was a stressful and anxiety inducing story of a mother who believes she is turning into a dog. It honestly put another nail in the coffin on my child free future. I imagine this book would be well appreciated by people who see themselves in the story, but for me, it was just very stressful and experimental.

This was a wild read, and I foresee a polarizing response to this. A mother’s life revolves around her young son as her husband works out of town all week, leaving her alone to care for their child. Her days are filled with toddler-wrangling, story time, and inner turmoil over her choice of motherhood over her art career. And then she starts to transform into a dog at night.

This was the kind of boundary pushing read that people tend to love or hate. It’s at times very uneventful and then swings wildly towards violence and chaos, and back to the daily grind of childrearing. The central concept could have been twisted into a joke, but the transformation is taken seriously, creating a visceral take on motherhood. If you’re intrigued by the concept and appreciate the untraditional and unhinged, you’ll probably love it! If you’re on the fence, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Another warning with spoilers- there is animal violence and the cat dies.

Ohhhhh, I cannot express in words just how much this book fucked me up. In the best ways. As soon as I finished, I handed it off to my own mother, who devoured it in one sitting. Both a very realistic and completely unhinged tale of motherhood and all of its mundane and terrible intricacies — Nightbitch does what so many try to do and fail — put the monstrous wonders and terrors of motherhood into a succinct, fascinating, at times gruesome, and altogether unlike any other novel.

“Nightbitch” perfectly encapsulates the tightrope that women are forced to walk between mother and other.

Uniquely written in a way that will leave you wondering what is real or not. it's an interesting view on new motherhood and the toll it may take on someone.

I want to give this to every mother of a young child. It captures so well the surreal limbo that life is during that time and lends it such a hilarious ferocity. This was a one-of-a-kind reading experience. Beautiful and bizarre.

A stay at home mother finds herself slowly turning into a dog. Instead of promptly seeking medical attention as she so desperately needs, she instead embraces it. She buys copious amounts of meats and treats her young son as a mother would treat her pup.

I found myself many times say “what am I reading!” Honestly, I think my biggest problem with this book is that I am a cat person… and prone to logical thinking. I’m sure many mothers will connect with this mother, Nightbitch. She is losing herself in her marriage and the fact that she gave up her career to stay home with her child. Embracing her transformation strengthens both her bond with her child and her marriage. I think all of us can learn from our narrator, finding something that you are passionate about and use that newfound joy to improve our quality of life. I personally will not be choosing the “turn into a dog” route.

Where the market seems saturated with motherhood narratives, Nightbitch makes it fresh again all the while saying the thing that needs to be said the most; mothers are people too. A work full of anger yet so much hope.

I don’t know what I expected going into this book but it was interesting to say the least. It was a very unique take on motherhood and while it provoked some interesting thoughts it was ultimately not for me. This book was a bumpy ride of dark humor, feminism, and magical realism. Honestly the dark humor is what kept me going throughout this journey. I found myself alternating with really resonating with the main character and feeling completely out of touch with how she felt. But if there is one thing this book has succeeded in doing it is reminding me why I have chosen not to have children. I’ll continue to enjoy my freedom in that aspect and enjoying being the cool aunt instead.

Rachel Yoder does an amazing job of articulating the modern woman’s struggle of motherhood, feminism, and identity. Everything I’ve ever feared about motherhood was put into this book and personified.

This should have been a short story. I can’t sit here and say that Nightbitch is an entirely unsuccessful project, because I think it does in fact accomplish exactly what it sets out to do — I just found my patience for it wearing thin the longer I spent with it.

I’ve expressed my personal disinterest in books about motherhood before, so I always knew this book was going to be a bit of a gamble for me, but I had hopes that it would be a bit more “disaster woman who happens to be a mother,” rather than “mother who happens to be a disaster.” That wasn’t a problem, in and of itself — when it became clear to me how little my own vision for this novel overlapped with Rachel Yoder’s, I course-corrected my expectations as best I could. And I actually came to appreciate the relentless, brutally honest depiction of a young woman’s inability to cope with the demands of motherhood. This book is visceral and furious, and Yoder gets her claws into the reader.

But the longer it goes on, and the more the magical realism slant starts to take over, the more its impact starts to wane. For something so graphic and carnal, this book ironically has very little meat on its bones; it never justifies its length, its metaphors all wear themselves out — it says absolutely everything it has to say, and then it keeps going. And going. And going. It’s not even a very long book, only around 250 pages, but it isn’t able to sustain even that. Any appreciation I had for this book’s themes became eclipsed by my frustration at Yoder’s insistence at presenting this to the world as a novel, instead of what I think could have been a punchy and memorable piece of short fiction. Instead, I haven’t thought about this book once since I finished it.

Thank you to Netgalley and Doubleday for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.

totally unexpected! this odd premise made for a funny, engaging story that i enjoyed. i would absolutely read more from this author.

This almost feels like an unrateable book, but I have to say that I loved the process of reading it so much. There's something very special about experiencing a woman pared down to her most untethered state. This book reminded me of the same surreal magic that shows up in Milk Fed and A Touch of Jen, vicious and commonplace and entirely alien all at the same time. It's an unpredictable ride with a beautiful view of art and womanhood!