#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!

DNFing this one. I just can’t keep going. An unreliable narrator is taken too far. So far the main character Grace is having a lot of weird dreams and the story moves so slowly. I just getting annoyed and bored, unfortunately.

It's the pandemic and Grace's mother, Jackie, moves in with her. Grace knows it is going to be uncomfortable. She and her mother don't have the best relationship and Grace enjoys her privacy. But the mortgage must be paid, and relationships need to be mended.

Grace is having vivid nightmares about her sister, Hope, and she also has some online habits that her mother does not approve of. As the past and present collide.

This book was a slow burn which I do not care for. I struggled with this one. I finished this just to see how it was doing to end. There is also a HUGE element of “is this real?”. Is this a dream/nightmare? I know exactly what this is - Bizarre.

This one just didn't light my fire. Too slow and not enough to fully win me over. [book:Baby Teeth|35410511] was a 3 star book for me and this I enjoyed less. Perhaps I am not the reader for her books.

Other readers are enjoying this book and I encourage you to read their reviews as well.

2.5 stars

Zoje Stage is a favorite writer and Getaway remains one of my favorite books of all time but Mothered just hit differently. I think it’s because I never knew exactly what was going on with Grace, like the song Bohemian Rhapsody - Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? I felt a bit confused throughout and the constant quessing took away a lot of the enjoyment for me. Plus there were some plot aspects that I found confusing and not sure how they fit into the story.

As I said before, Zoje’s books are some of my favorites but Mothered won’t be making that list. I’ll still be looking forward to whatever she does next.

This author has quickly become one of my favorites and I've only read a couple so far. However of the ones I've read, this one seriously blew my mind.

The blurb did nothing to prepare me for the rollercoaster ride I was going to be taken on. I didn't even bother trying to figure out what was going to happen because I would have been completely wrong.

And just when I didn't think I couldn't be any more shocked, boom, that ending proved me wrong

No one can push your buttons quite like family. Set in the middle of the pandemic, Mothered finds Grace (who has a really odd/creepy hobby) reluctantly allowing her recently widowed mother to move in with her. She’s not thrilled with the idea, as they don’t have the best relationship, but she could use the help with her bills. Seems like a simple enough premise, right? Well there is nothing simple about this one. This is one wild twisted story, a tense slow burn descent into madness. Honestly the less you know going into the better. I’d like to thank Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an eARC of Mothered.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R2NPSWDFXW8YFU/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

Just as we have come to expect from Stage, this blew my mind. It was creepy, unsettling, and got all the way under my skin. I was hooked from page one until the end and will continue to read everything this woman pushes out!

REVIEW

I'm going to be honest: there's not a lot in Mothered that I particularly enjoyed. The pacing, story, prose, and characters were not at all what I want from a horror book. There were exactly two characters I liked seeing on the page (which is stretching it, since one of them is a cat) and one horror moment that I found to be memorably creepy. While it was a fast read, if I hadn't gotten this book through Netgalley I almost certainly would have DNF'd it pretty quickly (and that is if I had picked it up at all, since it would have failed the page 99 test).

STRUCTURE AND PROSE

As it opens and ends the story, I may as well discuss the prologue and epilogue. These two follow a therapist named Silas, who claims he is excited to work with an unnamed patient due to the brutality of the murder she committed. It's obfuscated which of the two women, Jackie or Grace, committed homicide. (Keep a pin in this as we'll be returning to it.) As the prologue concludes, we are told that “[Silas’s] job, as it often was, would be to filter the drop of truth from a waterfall of magical thinking” (13). This setup, with Silas being directly indicated to be a character who would engage with the narrative about to be told, indicates that the main bulk of the narrative would be in a narrative frame. Grace would speak to Silas to confess her life story and convince him of her point of view (a la Frankenstein, the reason why I love a good frame narrative). This is not the case. Rather than being nested, the narrative is delivered by a close third person narrator, with Grace’s story bookended by Silas’s. The prologue and epilogue might as well have not been there; they add little to nothing to the narrative. All that was achieved was disappointment.

The completely normal third person narration was. A Choice. Look, I’m a fan of close third person. It works fine, but it was a disappointing choice, espcecially after that prologue setup. Grace as a character does have interesting elements to her that I feel would have been far more interesting to me as a reader had we navigated the narrative directly through her eyes.

Speaking of characters, wasted potential is the name of the game in Mothered. Characters have features and traits, but aren’t well-rounded. Part of that issue is with the dialogue; it is middling at best, and stilted, awkward, or shallow at worst. Additionally, there's not as much of it as one would think for a story about a toxic mother-daughter relationship stuck in close quarters.

The standout issue with the characters for me is that they are their role in the story before they are a character. Silas is not a character who is a therapist, he is the therapist character (and, upon a re-read of the prologue, is I think supposed to be some sort of reader stand-in? Which I also am not a fan of). Miguel isn’t a character who is the main character’s best friend; he is the best friend character (worse, he falls into the gay best friend trope). Jackie isn’t a character who is Grace’s mother; she is the mother character. Grace, by virtue of being the protagonist, somewhat escapes this issue, but still is not well-rounded or developed by any means. She’s supposed to be an unreliable narrator, something I normally love, but in her found to be unengaging.

Grace as a protagonist could have been interesting; she has a lot of childhood trauma, but does genuinely try to help those around her. She’s kind towards her friend Miguel and drops everything to help him when he gets sick. While has the bizarre hobby of catfishing women (which she calls damsels) online, she describes it as intentionally trying to help build these women’s self esteem and help them improve their lives. The interesting elements of her, however, aren't really fleshed out enough. The damsels plotline especially had a lot of very interesting potential that’s completely unfulfilled. It really only exists so that Grace has something to feel guilty about and hide from her mother.

The pacing. God, the pacing. The pacing was strange, due to the fact that a bulk of the narrative is dream sequences. The narrative jumps forward in time rather suddenly in order to dump the reader into a dream without indication. Not only does this make the pacing feel jerky and inconcistant, it also means that the dream segments are also far less effective. While suddenly jumping from reality to a dream can be a valuable strategy because it puts both the reader and the character into a state of uncertain reality, most of the time it did not work in Mothered. The only time I did find it effective and memorable was the first; after that, since I knew what the author was trying to pull, the strategy was ineffective because I knew it was a dream, even if Grace did not.

The pacing during the non-dream segments was jerky as well. It often felt like the narrative was just trying to hurry to the next dream sequence. For example, chapter fourteen ends with Grace texting her best friend Miguel; chapter fifteen jumps to her having been hired by her old boss and visiting the new salon space. From that first paragraph, it's obvious that it's a dream. As a result, the non-horror section of the dream dragged on for far too long (since the conversation the characters was having was not only not real but also completely banal) while the horror section of it was not horrifying (as the physical danger, social rejection, and reality break Grace was experiencing was obviously just a dream). During most dream sections, especially during the second half of the book, I was bored.

For a mystery/thriller novel, Mothered is not very mysterious or thrilling. While there is certainly a hidden past tragedy that is eventually revealed, the actual reveal is... kind of boring. The narrative takes, in my opinion, the most uninteresting route. In the prologue, Silas muses that the case is “a good puzzle… one that look[s] on the surface like the gory movies he still so loved” (13). But this isn’t a puzzle. All the answers are spoonfed to the reader, and if the narrative makes an attempt to hide it, it does a terrible job.

One example of a very unmysterious mystery is the intentional obfuscation of who killed who in the prologue. My thought process during the first half of the novel was this:

A) Because the narrative follows Grace in close third person and

B) never follows Jackie,

that would normally indicate to me that

C) Grace, as the POV character, will be the surviving party.

However, because the identity of the patient in the first chapter is intentionally and carefully obfuscated from the reader, then

A + B might not equal C, but instead equal either

D) an upset of expectations (for example, Jackie killing Grace)

or

E) a third act twist revealing a previously unknown actor or plot element that reveals that the killer, the victim, Grace, and Jackie are in a more complicated configuration than first presented.

As I continued reading, it became clear to me that the narrative was not going to pull anything that interested. Despite this, I held out hope that the final chapters would have some kind of twist. That hope was futile. That setup of not knowing who dies is never cashed out. It just follows the most basic, obvious route: Grace is the protagonist, and because she is a protagonist, she can’t die so she has to be the murderer. Why bother to intentionally hide who kills who and then just not do something interesting? Especially when that problem is directly presented as being a puzzle!

Speaking of basic, the prose in general was boring. It’s all very direct and blunt, which can sometimes be a fantastic way to write a horror/thriller, but it just didn’t work for me here. The prose relies so heavily on telling over showing I felt as though the narrative was spoonfeeding me. Look, I don’t always need purple-literary-Romantic-big-words-long-sentences prose to enjoy a novel, but I do need something to chew on. If I’m not finding that in the structure, characters, horror elements, or central mystery, then by god at least give me some chewy prose.

THE DREAMS

I love dreams in horror. Exploring unreality, watching the line between waking and dreaming blur, having one encroach into the other. I love it all. Therefore, believe me when I say that the premise of incorporating horrible nightmares into a horror story isn't the issue. The issue with Mothered’s dreams was the execution.

First off: the horror elements were almost completely restricted to dreams. Although there were one or two moments of horror that I found genuinely intriguing, memorable, or creepy (for example, the "Mona needs a calfskin bag" dream), most of the rest of them were tropey, predictable, or overdone. While I bought that these dreams were upsetting for the character, they were not particularly upsetting to me. At some point it just got old. The use of dream horror is, to me, something that has to be done subtly, carefully, and sparingly, especially when we have a protagonist presented as unreliable. It's none of those things in Mothered.

The few horrifying elements outside of dreams are hallucinations. Grace dismisses them as such pretty quickly, and the hallucinations themselves fail to be credible from the get-go because they aren’t believably slotted into Grace’s reality. Horror-wise they aren't even good ones; they're even more tropey than the dreams. Even the horror of Grace and Jackie’s toxic relationship and the childhood trauma was restricted to these dreams as well; while there were some good moments of toxicity, gaslighting, or emotional manipulation in the waking world (such as Jackie letting Coco outside), almost all the detail and nuance we get about their history is dreamed.

Even the dreamed details about their past that do carry over into the real world aren’t fully fleshed. For example, during a dream, we are introduced to the paper dolls that Hope and her sister Grace used to play with. Later, while rummaging through her mother’s things, Grace finds her sister’s doll but not her own. While the doll imagery comes back in later dreams, that doll as a symbol of her mother’s favoritism and her relationship with Grace never beomes a point of conflict between the two. There isn’t ever a conflict about it, even when those dolls get brought up in conversation. I wanted a blow-out fight about those dolls; I wanted those dolls as an element of gaslighting; I wanted those dolls to be something that lead to a direct conflict that further develops Grace and Jackie’s current day relationship. But they don’t, and neither does much else.

The book’s summary claims that moving in together makes “old wounds fester” and “new ones open.” Sure, old wounds get re-opened, but calling what happens “festering” is a bit of a stretch. Grace is reasonably stressed about her mother being a bad roommate at times and Jackie occasionally apologizes for being a bad mother to her (though those conversations are rather surface level and nowhere near as toxic as they could have been). The only “new wounds” that open are are the ones that kill Jackie, with nary a new psychological wound in sight. As a result, the level of intensity between the two never quite reaches the fever pitch needed to make that final snap believable, narratively satisfying, and sharp.

One final complaint about the dreams I couldn’t shoehorn in elsewhere, so I’m shoehorning it in here. Sometimes (typically during dreams where Grace is reliving a childhood memory), Grace calls Jackie “Mommy.” I get why—as a child, she certainly did not call her mother by her first name—but it really did not work for me. Grace was a child forced to grow up too soon; I could buy her calling Jackie mom, maybe, but mommy? I certainly can’t see an overworked, exhausted Jackie referring to herself as “mommy” to her children. It was just weird and off-putting and out of place because it was so infantile, and, to be honest, came off as funny and unserious.


All that said, the dream scenes were far better written than the scenes that took place in reality. If they'd had better connective tissue and were more subtly handled, they could have been very effective. As it is, they're disappointing.
REALITY

From the premise, title, and setup of Mothered, I expected a book about a toxic mother-daughter relationship. I expected the narrative to explore that relationship in-depth and push the tension of it to its very limits. I wanted to watch them try to navigate an enclosed space. I wanted overtures of forgiveness turning nasty. I wanted conversations about Grace's childhood! I wanted them to have small disagreements that balloon out of control! I wanted a slow build of tension and complex hatred! I wanted gaslighting, damn it!

There were a few times—for example, the dinner party with Miguel—where there was subtle friction between actions and intention between Grace and her mother. Grace questions who her mother is now and how she relates to the woman who raised her. Jackie is the traditional boomer parent and brings up grandchildren. Miguel and Grace share the occasional bemused glance. It was a good early scene, which I thought would lead into later, complex, more dramatic scenes. For the most part, though, Grace and Jackie’s interactions were not all that complex, did not have subtextual implications, and were so direct and unnuanced it just was never all that interesting. While Grace certainly had reasons to doubt the reality around her, as a reader, I did not have any reason to believe what she was being told by her mother was untrue.

As mentioned earlier, most elements of the novel’s central mystery—what happened to Grace’s twin sister—were introduced in dreams, then (maybe) introdced into the waking world. The only piece evidence that emerged from a direct confrontation between Jackie and Grace was the box. While what it revealed wasn’t particularly funny, I couldn’t take the contents seriously because it just gave me Assassin’s Creed 2 flashbacks.

Anyway.

On all accounts, even down to the title, Mothered is supposed to be about a toxic mother-daughter relationship. It's also about:

The pandemic (which didn't really work for me. If it had been a book set during the pandemic, it might have worked. The difference between the two is a bit difficult to explain, but it's something that made a huge difference)

Her career as a hairdresser

Growing up being the primary caretaker to a disabled sibling

A weird disease that causes nightmares and turns you vegan

An ace woman’s relationship with her sexuality and desire to be a mother herself (complete with guilt over telling a teenager to have an abortion so her life wasn’t ruined!)

The close friendship between two queer people

That same woman’s hobby catfishing other women, pretending to be a man so that she can help them improve their self-confidence

The book just tries to juggle too much in the 300-ish pages it has. While a novel of that length certainly can incorporate that many or even more plot points, Mothered just doesn’t pull off weaving them together as cleanly as it could have. As a result, the narrative becomes muddled and shallow, with the titular mother-daughter crowded out by the rest.

Before I close out, I just want to complain about the whole mystery illness plot point. It's another unnecessary, underdeveloped plot element that muddies the narrative waters even further. The final hook it provides in the epilogue (the therapist is like "oh no I'm having nightmares... just like Grace did!!!") was so cheesy I actually laughed out loud. It became doubly funny when I realized one of the symptoms of the disease is becoming a vegan. I'm sorry, but I genuinely cannot take the narrative seriously enough to be thrilled or frightened.

FINAL THOUGHTS

In writing this review, I had the opportunity to sit with the novel’s themes and really consider: what are they saying? What do they mean? It’s interesting to me that initially I read this book as (at least attempting to be) feminist. Yet after ruminating on how the book handles themes such as abortion and birth, motherhood, disability, and childhood trauma, it surprised me how shallow and at times contradictory it all ended up being.

While I can see why other folks enjoyed this novel, it's absolutely not to my taste when it comes to horror, thriller, or adult fiction. Further, in my opinion, I think it's ineffective in its exploration of mother-daughter toxcicity and childhood trauma. I requested Mothered because I always heard such great things about Baby Teeth; unfortunately, I think this has indicated she's not an author for me.

Thank you again to Thomas & Mercer for providing a digital advance review copy through Netgalley.

Thank you, Netgally and Amazon Publishing, for the ARC in return for an honest review.

Picture it, pandemic 2020. The world is on lockdown.
Grace has just closed on her new home when the world became plagued by the pandemic. She lost her job, like many others, and she asked her mother, Jackie, to move in to help with the finances. Grace knew it was a bad idea, but her stepfather had just passed. Her mom wouldn't be alone, and Grace would keep her house.
Immediately after moving in, Jackie started changing the house to suit her needs. She also puts up pictures of Hope, Grace's dead twin sister. Grace has spent many years trying to block her traumatic childhood. How is Grace going to survive the pandemic with her mother?
I put this book off for so long. It hits too close to home. I invited my ailing mother into my home during the pandemic because that's what a good daughter would do. Even though she's narcissistic, I wanted to help. Eventually, I put her into a home. Read Mothered to find out Jackie's outcome.

Mothered by Zoje Stage is set during the start of the pandemic. Grace has lost her job as a hairstylist and is compelled to live with her recently widowed mother, Jackie when she moves into Grace's house. Their relationship is strained because Grace's twin, Hope was born of cerebral palsy and died when they were kids. Jackie begins to tell terrible things about Grace that Grace does not believe or understand. She starts having nightmares and begins to lose her mind as everything starts falling apart in quarantine.

I loved Zoje's debut novel Baby Teeth and this one has the same creepy vibes.
The author in her note calls her book 'batshit crazy' and that is what it was but in a good way. The scenes where Grace has vivid nightmares were grotesque and felt terrifyingly real. Zoje really has great talent at writing the creepy, unsettling events but sometimes it was difficult to tell the difference between a dream and reality. The plot was fully driven by Grace who was an interesting, complex and a flawed main character.

To add to it we also get to relive the horrific moments of feeling trapped, stressed and alone during the pandemic. Overall, a nerve-wrackingly tense and creepy psychological thriller with a twisted ending.

3.5 stars rounded down. "Mothered" is an interesting and contemporary premise, with an unemployed home-owner daughter and her elderly mother quarantined together due to COVID. But there's a lot to unpack here with family of origin issues and PTSD due to childhood trauma, which I personally can relate to. But for me the supernatural elements just made it a bit too over-the-top. I also had trouble following many of the "dream sequences" - too many - is it live or Memorex, LOL. Perhaps this author is just not for me, and that's okay. My sincere thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the complimentary advanced digital review copy. All opinions are my own

Not at all what I expected! Loved Baby Teeth but this one was a little much for me.

I was SO excited to read this intriguing new horror novel from the author of Baby Teeth (a fantastic book by the way). I don’t shy away from books set during the pandemic and this claustrophobic story kept me guessing right until the end.

Grace is certainly not a lovable protagonist and she is definitely an unreliable narrator! Once her mother Jackie moves in with her, things really start to get weird and Grace begins to have very strange dreams. This is a chilling psychological thriller with a very twisted ending. Reality is blurred and the truth is not clear. Overall, an uber-creepy story that will appeal to horror fans.

Thanks to Thomas Mercer @amazonpublishing for the advanced reading copy! All opinions are my own.

Another great story by Zoje Stage. From chapter one we are on Grace's side and wondering what's going to happen to get her. Always thinking her mother is hiding things from her, especially when it comes to her sister Hope.
Yes, this is another story set during the pandemic, which I honestly do enjoy reading books set during that time period.
I can't wait until Zoje Stages next book come out. I really love this author and get books.

In the prologue, a woman is admitted to a forensic psychiatric hospital for stabbing someone 91 times and living in the house with the body for 2 weeks until she turned herself in. From there we flashback and learn that Grace just bought her first house a week before the pandemic struck and she also lost her job as a hair stylist. Her estranged mom, Jackie, offered to stay with her to help afford the mortgage.

Grace and Jackie have a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship and constantly get on each other's nerves, especially when they are forced to isolate for two weeks following an exposure. Grace is an unreliable narrator to the reader, with flashbacks to her childhood memories with her disabled twin sister who died when she was 11, and the lines between reality and dreams are blurred as Grace spirals mentally. As the dreaded ending nears, there is more chaos and the scenes get wilder and wilder. I couldn't stop turning the page but I also was like ⁉️ Some scenes were really descriptive and thrilling. In the end, I still had too many unanswered questions and I would have liked certain things explained more.

Thank you to NetGalley, Thomas Mercer, and the author for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Stage started out with such promise with baby teeth, but never quite delivered after that. Mothered continues this trend of disappointing reads, but it does show some of the glimmers seen with the debut.

What works for this book is the claustrophobic atmosphere stage invokes, successfully using the early stages of the pandemic to maximum effect. Jackie and grace are forced back together due to the pandemic shut downs and anyone who remembers this early Covid days well will relate easily to the paranoia that seeps into the household and the relationship between these two.

Honestly though, aside from the masterful use of tone and atmosphere-not much else worked for me. The characters weren’t likable (I am not sure they were supposed to be though) and it takes a while for the plot to kick into gear. The twists are predictable and the plot is just…odd.

Some may enjoy this-I was not one unfortunately. I still thank the publisher for the arc via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is set during the Covid pandemic. Grace moved into her first home and the pandemic struck and she lost her job. Fast forward and things are starting to reopen. She’s working part-time and her savings is dwindling. Her estranged mother Jackie becomes a widow and suggests she move in with Grace. They decide to give it a go and after her mother moves in Jackie starts having horrible nightmares. Is her mother’s presence bringing up a lot of bad memories from her past, especially about Grace’s disabled twin Hope, who passed away right before their 12th birthday. Plus Grace has a peculiar hobby of catfishing women online. Then Jackie lays out a bombshell which further spirals Grace into madness.

What I loved about this book was the claustrophobic feeling of lockdown it gave. I think we can all relate to being cooped up with someone for weeks and months on end. The nightmares Grace had were super creepy and I loved them. I loved the flashbacks to when Grace & Hope were children. Plus Grace is an unreliable narrator and that’s one of my favorite tropes. What I didn’t like was it started getting repetitive. Which is kind of expected with a book set during lockdown, but I thought it could have been done better. I expected the catfishing to be a major plot point in the book and I wish it had been. I’m honestly perplexed after reading the book why it was included at all. Overall I enjoyed this psychological thriller, just not as much as Baby Teeth.

Thank you to Netgalley, and Thomas & Mercer for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.

Mothered by Zoje Stage is pretty indeed pretty "batshit crazy", as mentioned in the acknowledgments. That's not a bad thing, no. Certainly, definitely not. A lot of the books and movies I love are no less so. But here, in Mothered, we're being masterfully guided by Stage, walking the tightrope of that which is and that which never was. Delusional? Or, cunning? Which is she, Grace?

If you're looking for a book that keeps you on that tightrope, keeps you guessing, never really knowing the way out until you've made I through, well, Mothered is the book for you.

Having your judgmental, passive aggressive mother move in with you could be just about everyone’s nightmare. Add in the fact that Jackie and Grace have a tumultuous relationship at best and neither are what could pass as good people, it’s gonna make for an interesting story. We follow two time lines : the current where Jackie and Grace have moved in together and the past where Grace is left to care for her sister, Hope.

There are genuinely creepy scenes. Not knowing what’s real and what’s a dream will always remind me of when I struggled with severe night terrors. I also love when author’s are able to take their grief and turn it into something else. I firmly believe that horror and thrillers are the best genres to get one’s grief out into the world and truly explore it. There were moments that I didn’t enjoy or didn’t care for, but there were others that kept me intrigued and left me wanting to grab the book again and again. Definitely recommend if you’re already a fan of the author, find the pandemic lockdown stories intriguing, or genuinely enjoy a ‘batshit’ story - as the author describes it herself. Probably not meant for you if you like all of the answers at any given time or if Covid Lockdowns are still a touchy subject.

Oof this left such a creepy crawly vibe every time I read it, and it made me shiver with dread! Imagine yourself in a sensory deprivation tank and you may understand the feeling it gives you.

I found this book to be quite disturbing as well as confusing. Much of the narrative was in the form of the main character’s dreams and it was not always clear what was reality and what was a dream.

The story takes place in the early part of the Covid 19 pandemic and recreates that universal anxiety of those times. Grace, a hair stylist, loses her job and then her mother moves in with her. While parts of it were interesting, this just wasn’t the book for me.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and Thomas & Mercer for an advanced digital copy of the book.