I'm conflicted about how I feel about this book. It reminds me of my relationship with my mother and was hard to read at times especially with the nostalgia of early 2020. Some of the imagery in the book is hard to stomach but it's a fast read.

This is a strange book. Familiar parts of mundane life interweave with something darker, the knots getting ever tighter. Very much gothic in tone, it gets difficult to cope with in places and yet you can't put it down for long.

From the very first pages of the book, you know that Mothered, written by Zoje Stage, is going to end with murder. A violent murder. A 91 stab wounds inflicted with four different knives murder. What could possibly provoke this level of rage? A mother and daughter isolating together during the Covid pandemic.

This premise does make a certain relatable sense.

Granted, the majority of (well, hopefully all) readers would never literally relate to such violence. But there is an aspect of the mother-daughter relationship that is universal. Mothers and daughters emotionally provoke each other in a unique way. Much of this is unintentional annoyance, which can lead to a constant, but harmless, grating on each other's nerves.

In some cases, however, the provocation is intentional. Targeted. Used to manipulate. It’s easy to envision how such a relationship can create a powder keg of anger and resentment, possibly leading to murder.

I was immediately drawn to this book by its premise, which didn’t disappoint. It felt a bit light on character development, but the lightly sketched personalities allow for more mystery when the psychological drama unfolds. The reader never really knows if they can trust the daughter’s point of view. And we know even less about the mother, her history and motivations.

If you need your books to include likeable characters, this one may not be for you. But I enjoyed the trippy psychological descent that plays out in this story. An opinion I will not be sharing with my own mother.

Zoje Stage has done it again! Mothered is yet another great psychological horror, filled with dread and suspense. Zoje Stage has become a master of character examinations through the lens of horror. Exploring Grace's character was addictive. Her life has become a mess, and she is forced to live in isolation with her estranged mother. There are so many tense moments in this book. Moments where Grace is unsure of what is real and what is fiction. The paranoia in this book is palpable and uncomfortable, and I could not put this book down! Lots of great reveals and cathartic moments in this book. It'll make for a fun reread whenever I want to dive deep into a disturbing, depressing, and strangely rewarding read. Zoje Stage is an excellent writer and her books deserve more attention!

Grace finally has the house she's worked so hard for, but 6 weeks after signing her mortgage a pandemic has arrived. As a hairdresser with unreliable income in face of lockdowns and social distancing, Grace warms up to her newly widowed Mother's idea of letting her move in to the spare bedroom and contribute financially.

They've always had a turbulent relationship, but Grace is an adult now, this is her house & her rules. Who knows, maybe they can finally form a healthy mother/daughter relationship?

With simmering resentments between them, new nightmares haunting Grace's dreams, and a quarantine that has them locked in together, everything from the past comes to a boil.

This book was psychological and had me questioning what was real. The nightmare scenes take you into Grace's subconscious and I emotionally felt her anxiety and frustration as nightmares and confrontations kept building.

My favorite character was Miguel. I felt like he was the singular person who tethered Grace into sanity, and [no spoilers] becomes the downfall in the charade between mother/daughter.

🌈 PS: I loved this book had LGBTQIA representation in the characters (gay, asexual)

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC. I did not understand this novel at all. I don’t know if the main character is dreaming, insane or being gaslighted. Nothing made sense. I can’t even tell you how it ended because I truly don’t know. It kept going and going. Not a fan.

Like many of us during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, author Zoje Stage found herself isolated at home, waiting for the world to reopen. Days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months. It quickly became apparent that COVID was here to stay. Like other authors, the pandemic heavily influenced Stage, inspiring her to write her latest novel Mothered. In an unfortunate act of serendipity, I found myself isolated at home after a positive COVID test earlier this week. I've suffered through the last couple of days with a sore throat and no voice at all, but I'm thankful that my symptoms haven't worsened. With all this time at home, I managed to read Stage's new book. It has added another layer to this already fascinating novel.

The early days of the pandemic impacted different people in different ways. Yes, there was uncertainty about the situation. What was this strange disease? Were we all in danger of getting it? Beyond the mechanics of the illness, though, arose real questions about how it would impact people's livelihoods. Grace is one such person facing these uncertainties. As a hairdresser, she relies on being in close contact with other people to make a living. You can't cut someone's hair when you are supposed to be social distancing. The owner of the salon where Grace works has decided to use the temporary shutdown as an opportunity to liquidate the business and take early retirement. This, of course, leaves Grace out in the cold.

With her job prospects on ice, Grace is desperate to find any means of income possible. Right before the pandemic began, she purchased her first home. At the time, she was excited to have made this huge life step, but now she's saddled with a mortgage that she's unsure she'll be able to pay. With no other choices, Grace turns to the one person she never thought she would ask for help. She asks her recently widowed mother Jackie to move in.

There's a history between mother and daughter that caused a rift in their relationship. Grace optimistically looks at their cohabitation as an opportunity to mend that gap. Soon, however, good intentions turn bad, and their troubled past resurfaces. Grace begins to have nightmares that eerily blend reality and fiction. She dreams of her deceased sister, who despite her own physical challenges always found a way to be cruel to Grace. Things worsen from there, forcing Grace to grapple with the one person she has never been able to fully understand. . . her mother.

This was my first experience reading Zoje Stage's work. I was especially eager to accept this publisher-provided copy of Mothered based on how many of my book reading buddies adored her debut novel Baby Teeth. I found her writing to be compulsively readable. Much of the narrative momentum of the novel is driven by the characters, both of whom are fully fleshed-out versions of people grappling with different aspects of the pandemic. Stage daringly allows her characters to venture into their own paranoia, urging the readers to peek around the corner with them, veering closer and closer to the gruesome and taboo. There is no shortage of disturbing violence, especially as the novel crescendos to its climax. Stage balances this by grounding her characters in a reality that we all recently lived through. Mothered is a unique domestic thriller grounded by strong characters. It is the most inventive and captivating thriller I've read so far this year.

This was my first Zoje Stage book and I think I will read from her again. I was really invested in the first half of this book like fully immersed. I enjoyed the flashbacks we got of Grace’s childhood and seeing her relationship with her mom and sister. But after the halfway mark the book dragged for me. I found myself getting bored and I didn’t care about what was happening. The ending was good but nothing spectacular to me. I was a little bit let down be the twist, I wanted something more interesting. I did enjoy the epilogue at the end which is something I don’t see a lot in mystery/thrillers. Overall it was a fine read nothing amazing.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishers for an arc in exchange for an honest review!

One of the words in the description of this story really stuck out for me as being the perfect adjective for this story - claustrophobic. This novel was almost uncomfortable to read at times, you could feel the tension and suffocation creeping in. Whatever the story, if it evokes feelings this strongly, I consider that a win.

The nitty-gritty: Zoje Stage's latest should have worked, but too many disconnected elements made for an overall confusing and lackluster thriller.

I had high hopes for Mothered, since I’ve had such good experiences with Stage’s other books, but unfortunately this didn’t completely work for me. The premise is great: a woman struggling to pay her bills due to Covid lock-downs agrees to let her mother move in with her. Both women are mentally unstable in different ways, so the story should have worked. But although there was plenty of potential, the execution fell flat at times.

Grace has just purchased her first house when the Covid-19 pandemic hits, and when her employer decides to retire, Grace suddenly finds herself without a paycheck. Luckily, her estranged mother Jackie has a great idea: Jackie’s husband has just died and she doesn’t want to live alone. Why not move in with Grace and help her pay the bills? It seems like the perfect solution, but is Grace really equipped to cohabitate with her mother? As the pandemic drags on, Grace begins to experience terrifying nightmares, many of them having to do with her sister Hope, who died when Grace was a teenager. The tension between Grace and Jackie mounts, and Grace’s nightmares worsen. Are they real? Or is she losing her mind?

Let’s start with the positive, because there were things I liked about this book. First, Stage has created a creepy, claustrophobic atmosphere that leaves the reader feeling very uncomfortable. There is a sense of unease permeating the story, and even lighter moments are overshadowed by the feeling that things just aren’t quite right. And for a thriller, that’s a good thing. The Covid-19 element adds a lot to this unease (although I have more to say about the pandemic theme later in this review), and the author really captures the fears and uncertainties of those first few weeks of the pandemic, when no one really knew what was happening.

A lot of the story deals with Grace having weird nightmares, and while this device started to get old after a while, it was effective at first. The dreams were described in such a way that it was hard to figure out whether they were real or not. Sometimes Grace appeared to be having a conversation with someone, and then it would devolve into a bloody nightmare. I found myself making notes like “WTF” quite a bit, these sections were so weird and shocking. If the author was trying to keep the reader off balance, then she succeeded.

I also really enjoyed the flashbacks with Grace and Hope as children, and I actually found these sections to be much more interesting than the interactions between Grace and Jackie. Hope was born with cerebral palsy and used a wheelchair to get around. She wasn't able to speak very well, but Grace understood everything she said, as they had a strong sister bond between them. Hope was smart and did well in school, and Jackie never missed an opportunity to let Grace know that Hope was her favorite daughter. It was heartbreaking to read about their weird dynamic, which is even weirder because it turns out Hope was a horrible person. She was mean and manipulative and went out of her way to hurt Grace whenever she could, and even though Hope is dead, Grace still feels haunted by the awful things Hope did to her. One of the things the girls did together as children was to make paper dolls and elaborate paper outfits for them, which leads to one of the more shocking events in the story. There’s also a twist where Jackie reveals something to Grace that makes her question her memories and sanity. In short, I enjoyed everything surrounding Hope’s storyline.

But now for the elements that didn’t work for me. Oddly enough, the author introduced a side plot where Grace has taken on multiple online male personas and is catfishing unsuspecting women. It was just—weird. She calls these women her “damsels” and offers them relationship advice, and in order to keep them all straight, she has a detailed notebook with each of her persona’s names and who they are “helping.” The only reason I could think of for including this was to add drama to Grace’s and Jackie’s relationship (Jackie eventually finds out her secret), but otherwise it was just a distraction that didn’t do anything for the plot.

When I started reading, I thought I was going to get a horror/thriller story revolving around Grace and her mother, but honestly, most of their scenes together were pretty boring. Grace bends over backwards to make her mother welcome, even though Jackie is clearly gaslighting her. Things don’t get interesting until almost the end of the book, and by that time my head was spinning with everything going on: Covid, nightmares, Grace’s catfishing scheme, a weird scene in a beauty salon (where Grace has just started a new job) that had nothing to do with the rest of the story, and the side plot with Miguel. A burst of violence at the end should have added excitement, but it felt more confusing that thrilling, unfortunately. Plus, I was disappointed that the scissors on the cover of the book didn’t play a bigger role in the story. There was definitely a missed opportunity at the end, which I can’t go into because of spoilers, but it would have made the whole thing more cohesive.

Finally, the elephant in the room, the Covid storyline. Sigh. I understand that Stage wrote Mothered at the beginning of the pandemic, but three years later I’m sort of over reading about it. I felt as if I were reliving those early months, especially when Grace’s best friend Miguel gets Covid and winds up in the hospital on a ventilator. I just didn’t see the need for that storyline, and to be honest, Miguel was such an annoying character and the book would have been better without him.

Bottom line, it’s hard for me to recommend Mothered. I’d rather point you in the direction of a couple of Zoje Stage’s other books that I loved, Wonderland and Getaway (I haven’t yet read Baby Teeth but it’s on my list). Despite my complaints, though, I will always pick up a new book by Zoje Stage.

With thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

That was a very interesting book! I don't know what to say about it, except the main character was definitely unreliable. I really liked the ending, it will make me think about what actually happened for a while.

I thought this book was very reflective of the time it was written (during the pandemic) and captured the feelings that many of us had - hopelessness, despair, cut-off from our support systems, fear of the unknown, and that "groundhog day" syndrome.

The book was filled with flashbacks and dreams and dreams that were flashbacks of real or imagined situations, but it read like stream of consciousness in many parts. At times we don't know whether the mother or daughter has lost touch with reality or if they are experiencing a shared altered reality. According to Grace, all her troubles started when her mother came to live with her (and was so much nicer than she remembered her).

While I loved Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage, this book, while maintaining Stage's grasp of quirky and odd behavior, was not as enjoyable to me. But I think it accomplished what the author set out to do, to capture the feelings of a moment in time. I feel like there were definitely points the author was making that went right over my head! I am appreciative to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for an advance reader's copy.

✂️ 𝗥𝗘𝗩𝗜𝗘𝗪 ✂️

𝗠𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱
𝗕𝘆 𝗭𝗼𝗷𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲
𝟯𝟭𝟳 𝗽𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀
𝗣𝘂𝗯: 𝟯/𝟭/𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯

• 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿 • 𝗦𝘂𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗲 • 𝗛𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗼𝗿 •

📖 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸: Mothered is a claustrophobic, psychological thriller about one woman’s nightmarish spiral while quarantined with her mother.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Grace risks losing her newly mortgaged home after the loss of her job. As a solution, she moves her mother, Jackie, into her spare room to help make ends meet.

Grace and her mom have always had a tumultuous relationship. Grace was one half of twins, with her sister, Hope, having special needs. Hope was coddled and cared for, while Grace was often the brunt of her mother's wrath and emotional abuse. So Grace is less than thrilled with having her mother move in (especially because Grace has some very peculiar hobbies) but she's out of options and refuses to lose her new house.

With the new living situation, combined with the stress, isolation, and claustrophobia of the COVID-19 lockdown, Grace's grasp on reality begins slipping. She's losing chunks of time, having lucid dreams, hallucinating... She and her mother are both becoming unhinged. Grace (and the reader) can't quite figure out what's real and what's not.

💭 𝗧𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀: This was a wholy original mash-up of psychological thriller / claustrophobic thriller / suspenseful horror. It has great pacing and held my interest for all 317 pages. It does require the reader to suspend reality - so if you're able to do that, and enjoy more obscure, abstract horror / thrillers, this is definitely for you!

📍Note: Like Baby Teeth, this book is very dark and contains some disturbing content. Check TWs.

Thank you Thomas & Mercer and @netgalley for the gifted eARC.

✨This is currently available on Kindle Unlimited.

Rating: 3.5 rounded to 4 stars

This is my third Zoje Stage novel, and I have had nothing but praise for the first two books I read by her. I loved Baby Teeth and Getaway, and I recommended them to everyone I see (I still share a link with all of my reader friends when Baby Teeth is on sale.) Her latest book, Mothered, is a pandemic book, and I realized quickly that books about Covid-19 and isolation are going to irritate and anger me.

The story starts in the middle of the shutdown, with Grace losing her job and spending most of her time talking to her friend, Miguel, and a group of girls that she is catfishing on the internet, using male avatars to make these girls feel attached to her. (She has also skewed her thinking that she is doing these girls a favor by catfishing them because all she is being charming and trying to help them with their lives.) When Grace’s mother, Jackie, convinces her that she can move in to help with the house while Grace is unemployed in the middle of a lockdown, things quickly turn. There are memories of Grace’s childhood, and her twin sister, Hope, and the reason why Jackie has been distance from Grace since Hope’s death.

Zoje Stage has written another Mother/Daughter/Sisters codependency book. This is okay, but the setting is what bothered me the most, the actions that Grace in particular takes. I know that the lockdown was difficult for almost everyone, and many people struggled. Getting outside did not bother me. Them sitting on the porch is a nice way to get out of the house. Even walking around the neighborhood as long as Grace avoided contact with someone. These are solutions that could help Grace cope with the things she was feeling. When Grace thinks about calling an ambulance and checking herself into the hospital or having her mother go to the hospital just to get away from her, this is when I have my biggest problems with her. There are times when she is supposed to be quarantined because she is exposed but wants to go to the grocery or the drugstore to get something. Even though Stage has written Grace as someone who is careful about spreading Covid, there are moments when it feels like she is not very careful at all. The passages about her contemplating going to the hospital as a solution to her problems made me want to throw the book across the room. I am a frontline health care worker who watched hundreds of people slowly die on ventilators and throughout the hospital. The hospital is never a place she would ever want to be, especially because she is fighting with her mother.

I did not like these characters. I did not like the situation. I did not understand the point of the throwaway prologue and epilogue, but I still like Zoje Stage and her novels. Maybe this one hit too close to me, and I tried very hard not to nitpick about the character’s pandemic behavior, but I found myself growing more and more irritated with Grace and her life decisions as the book progressed.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book hit me really hard because I feel like the insanity & cabin fever we all felt during pandemic, compounded with the fear & heartbreak of people dying around us from COVID (and other things intensified by it) could lead any of us down a dark path. It was realistically haunting & morbidly tragic. The main character falls apart in front of your eyes but you also don't know if you can fully believe in her perspective as the narrator. I was thoroughly enthralled and was still questioning things as I finished the last page of the book.

I was so disappointed with MOTHERED after having quite liked BABY TEETH, Stage's debut. While there are several truly horrifying moments in the novel (the 'calfskin bag' dream comes to mind!), I ultimately wasn't compelled by the plot, which got muddier by the chapter. I really liked the exploration of an ace woman's very tender relationship with her gay best friend, and I found Grace's catfishing hobby to be an interesting plot point. Unfortunately, the central tension of the book seems like it was meant to be Grace and Jackie's dysfunctional relationship, but I struggled to care (and similarly struggled to follow the disease, which was sometimes metaphorical and sometimes not?). The framing device was unsatisfying, and the repeated dream sequences lost their punch after the first.

Mothered by Zoje Stage

Grace isn’t exactly thrilled when her newly widowed mother, Jackie, asks to move in with her. They’ve never had a great relationship, and Grace likes her space—especially now that she’s stuck at home during a pandemic. Then again, she needs help with the mortgage after losing her job. And maybe it’ll be a chance for them to bond—or at least give each other a hand.

But living with Mother isn’t for everyone. Good intentions turn bad soon after Jackie moves in. Old wounds fester; new ones open. Grace starts having nightmares about her disabled twin sister, who died when they were kids. And Jackie discovers that Grace secretly catfishes people online—a hobby Jackie thinks is unforgivable.

When Jackie makes an earth-shattering accusation against her, Grace sees it as an act of revenge, and it sends her spiraling into a sleep-deprived madness. As the walls close in, the ghosts of Grace’s past collide with a new but familiar threat: Mom.

Zoje is a master of writing creepy family/ suspense drama books. Did you read Baby Teeth? That remains my favorite Zoje Stage book.

March 1

This is a 2.5 rounded up. I struggled a lot with how the story was presented, current timeline mixed with both flashbacks and dreams. Frankly, I got lost. I know it would have ruined the element of surprise when the reader first comes across a dream sequence, but I think maybe a different font to indicate it is a dream versus a flashback would have made it a more enjoyable read. And while the story takes place during the height of Covid, I wish we had gotten to know Grace before so we knew her before her mother moved in and all the nightmares, etc. It was hard to see how she was falling apart since we didn't know what she was like beforehand. And finally, I am not opposed to strong language and swearing, but it seemed incredibly excessive throughout this book and I was startled with how frequently Grace and her mom cursed at each other. I think Ms Stage just may not be the author for me.

ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

I found lots of aspects of this story disturbing yet also fascinating! The story takes place in the early days of the pandemic and a woman has to have her mother move in with her to make ends meet after recently purchasing her first home. I really enjoyed all the flashbacks/dream parts where her twin sister is really discussed in depth and the brutality of young children is shown. I’m sure there’s quite a few trigger warnings in here for those sensitive to certain subjects but it doesn’t really affect me or my opinion of the story. If you like disturbed psych thrillers with unreliable narrators, be sure to check it out!

#happypubday to @zoje.stage_author & her newest, horrifying psychological thriller!

Grace is thrilled to have just purchased a new home—unfortunately, she buys it just in time to be stuck in it, as the COVID-19 pandemic enters the world. while struggling to find consistent work as a hairdresser during a time when people are staying 6 feet apart, she reluctantly agrees to let her mother move in & help with the expenses.

as soon as her mother moves in, the atmosphere in Grace’s home changes; not only is their relationship rocky from the start, but she comes bearing the many memories of Grace’s disabled twin sister, who died when they were children.

Grace begins to feel an overwhelming sense of unresolved nostalgia, & her sleep becomes disrupted, filled with constant nightmares of her past that are so realistic, they begin to blend with the present & leave her in a constant state of apprehension & disarray. this, on top of a global pandemic, is enough to make anyone suffer from complete hysterics, threatening to wreak havoc on this mother-daughter duo.

so this book….was absolutely insane lol. i felt like I was in one big, effed up lucid dream. as a reader, I was always questioning whether Grace was in a dream-like state of mind, or in her current reality. the whole tone of this book was so dark & dreary, which was due in part to the pandemic content, but also bc it was based in Pittsburgh (waddddup 412!!) ((pam beesly voice, IYKYK 🤙🏽))

that being said, it was soooo weird & fun reading about places I’ve been to or resided in myself (s/o to Pamela’s, University of Pittsburgh, & Mt. Washington)!!

but what was even more bizarre was reading about the pandemic as it takes place in this book. being 3 years past the mass hysterics, it felt like some real sadistic nostalgia reading about the way we lived with such restrictions just a few short years ago. I remember the feeling of impending doom quite well, & thinking that we would never really go back to normal; this book did a great job of bringing back all those feels.

for lovers of horror, psychological thrillers, repressed memories, & trippy nostalgia! thanks @netgalley for the #arc!