Ainslie Hogarth won me over with Motherthing, and I will read anything she writes! Hilarious, dark, slightly menacing, this was a slower burn than Motherthing, but just as satisfying. Hogarth is a master of weaving horror into the mundanity of women's experiences and I absolutely love her for it!

Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC!

This book left me even more confused than Motherthing. Like I get it, but I also don't. Definitely another one for the weird girlies.

I'm a fan of Hogarth's debut novel, "Motherthing" but unfortunately, her upcoming novel, "Normal Women" left me feeling frustrated. Hogarth is a good writer, but this novel was slow-moving and distracting. Hogarth tries to cram in too many subplots. It's like she lacks focus when it comes to fleshing out her characters and storylines. I liked the main character, but towards the end, she become so one-dimensional and delusional. Bascially the overall story was boring and forgettable. Here's hoping her next novel will be better because Hogarth does have talent.

There's some great observational moments and satire throughout this, but as it kept going on, I kept waiting for the actual plot to kick in, and it never really did. This picks up in the second half once a major plot point starts connecting some dots, but by then I was kind of checked out.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

My Selling Pitch:
For the first 90% of this book-the Barbie movie, but make it mommy horror. An absolute banger. Unmissable for my femme horror girlies.
The ending-throw the book away bad

Pre-reading:
I LOVED Motherthing last year, and I about shat myself when they said you can have her next book early too. I’m so excited. Both covers are gorgeous.

Thick of it:
A banger of an opening line.

Literally, pregnancy is horror, and I don’t know why we don’t treat it as such.

God, life is shit for women.

Gross and graphic, but also not exploitive. (Looking at you, Family Lore)

For someone who hates children with every fiber of her being, I’ve read a lot of mommy horror, and I usually enjoy it.

I love Kristin Bell.

pyloric

stenosis

I don’t know what an Epstein pearl is, and I’m terrified to Google it. (Oh my god, that is disgusting. Also, I knew babies didn’t have teeth for a hot minute, but I don’t think I ever knew what that looked like, which, again, just ew.)

cyanotic

Good god, I love this author.

Girlypops just fundamentally understands femme horror.

Alexa play too much labour. (Look, I know that the song is technically just labour, but-If everyone can keep calling it THE Fourth Wing-)

Borborygmi. What book introduced me to this word? Was it her last book? Because I hate that I know this word.

Unhinged women is my favorite genre

It’s funny because up here in Mass I’ve encountered a lot more obnoxiously religious young men than women. (Although probably a biased sample because I’m not seeking out women, but I am forced to endure the horror that is straight men’s dating app bios). I think women try to convert other people to their ideas more often and convince other people of their opinions, but men you have to believe what they believe or you are not worth their time, you are fundamentally wrong.

He’s just Ken.

The fashion in this book is spot on.

This is what Rouge by Mona Awad wishes it was.

I can’t not see the name Bunny as an homage to Mona with how fucking popular that book is.

I don’t see comparing birth and rape going down well with most people. It goes down well with me because I am horrified by pregnancy and I do see relevant similarities, but also I do not think the moms are gonna like that.

Thankful to this book because I can pitch it to people as extreme girl math. A woman’s husband’s coworker gets rectal cancer, so obviously she has to become a prostitute and the men are like how do you make that leap? And the girlies are already doing the mental gymnastics and are like we agree, that makes perfect sense.

I gagged at that sound. I have such a weird aversion to licking sounds. I hate them more than anything.

corpuscle

That really nailed the liberal woman’s struggle making friends nowadays.

Oh, this is insidious. I love it.

Also, it’s lowkey the Barbie movie.

I think Hogarth is a genius.

Oh, I like that little aside that’s sort of getting ahead of the critics. She’s like sexual healing is an old idea. Men are trash is an old idea. This isn’t some new wave feminist liberal bullshit tirade. It’s always been present in people.

These restaurants sound so fun. Like American Psycho’s, but bougie, hipstery, Instagram lensed.

I read that study too. That’s funny. And I was a Dani.

Good god, this book is making me crave food

fascia

The language is so good at being purposely uncomfortable and coupling things together. Like she’s such a good writer.

Oh my god, literally they expect to be praised for not raping people. It’s so annoying.

Alexa play Take Me to Church.

syncopated

Keegler Elves is so funny.

cervine

Oh my god, yeah, that’s a very real dating anxiety. Everyone’s doing it. No, you heard one girl lie to you. That doesn’t mean other girls are doing it. You’re not required to do what other girls are doing. Ugh, I hate that pressure to conform.

I feel like this book is going to make a lot of men angry, and to that I say die mad, buddy.

henge

Jesus christ, poor Bunny.

It’s so cult. They're using you. Girlypop, you’re in trouble. (sigh.)

Detritus sin

I don’t think that’s misogyny. I think that’s extremely sus. When somebody goes missing, regardless of their gender, I jump immediately to murder.

I have so many red flag alarm bells going off. I don’t know what kind of horror this is, but it’s horror.

Girl, that coffee maker is gross. Get a new one.

Again, you would have a hard time convincing me that this isn’t an homage to Mona.

I don’t think Clark killed her. I hope to god Clark didn’t kill her. (Why is this awful ending still preferable to the one we do get though.)

Man, what the fuck is going on?

This had better not be how this book ends.

glabrous

Oh my god, it is how it ends. I fucking HATE this ending!

Post-reading:
Honestly, ruined my day.

Until the 90% mark, this is a five-star banger of a mommy horror book. I want to rave about it to all my femme horror girlies.

But the ending? The ending. It’s horrible. Like throw the book away horrible. So now I’m like what the fuck do I rate it? A three-star? That seems unfair because it’s written way better than some of the four stars I’ve read this year, but the ending might put it on my worst books of the year list.

This is the Barbie movie, but make it mommy horror. And it should’ve just been that.

Here’s what bothers me so much about the ending. You include all these snarky little asides, all this deliciously toxic passive aggressiveness about how men think they’re helping when they’re really not, and how they’re emotionally stunted, and how they can be manipulated, but with these brilliant little glimmers of they’re trying their best in a rigged system AND you couple that with commentary about how being a woman is an endless contradiction, but no matter what you choose to do you're doing it wrong in society’s eyes.

But then the ending is it’s women’s job to clean up men’s mess? No. No. So unbelievably no.

That undoes all the phenomenal work and heavy lifting that the entire rest of this novel did. Why?

Why is the ending not that it’s an evil, brainwashing cult? That’s what it should be. Using sex to manipulate men is not the answer. That’s completely toxic. And if it’s supposed to be a horrific ending in that she’s lost to the cult and brainwashed, it’s not exaggerated enough to make that obvious. Instead, the ending makes it wrap up like a silly little domestic drama. I don’t think enough people are going to recognize the ending as a bad thing. I think they’re going to see it as a happily ever after.

And yet I hold out hope for the book that Hogarth sees the ending as the real psychological horror story because of her hellish prophecy foreshadowing. But if that is what she intended, then it doesn’t push it far enough.

What I would have rather seen from this book, is another 200 or so pages where the story is free to devolve into fully unhinged woman territory. I wanted bodies on the floor. I wanted it to circle the drain and get steadily darker, and darker, and darker, and more paranoid, and more mentally ill, but instead, it felt like it got wrapped up oh so tidily. It felt like it got a happily ever after, and that was not the right choice.

I think it’s trying so hard to be like sex work is real work and a choice and it’s actually helpful, but I don’t think it has the right basis for that claim. Because it ends up reading like women do sex work to save men, and that is no bueno. That is garbage. You have so many avenues to go down with insidiously sexual suburban horror. Like where are the psychedelic lubes, and the sex toy Tupperware parties, and the carpool spreadsheet mixed up with the swingers’ black book? If you’re going down the mommy influencer route, where are the online pedophiles and the child exploitation?

And it’s frustrating because there’s so much that this book does right. I will literally read anything Ainsley Hogarth ever writes. Her style is phenomenal. She’s great at doing the femme anxiety spiral. It has a phenomenal girl math moment where the delulu girlies are going to get it right away: your husband‘s coworker has cancer, so you have to become a prostitute. If that tracks, if that makes sense to you, then this is a book for you, but that energy doesn’t carry over to the ending. But that energy is what is going to make people love this book, so if you ruin their love for the book with the ending, you ruin the book for them.

It’s so quotable. It has so much good social commentary. I think the plot line with her parents isn’t developed nearly enough. It’s almost like too much is going on in the book and she needed more pages to accomplish everything that she wanted to, but she got lost trying to prioritize everything, so now nothing feels like a complete thought.

It’s just so frustrating because this could be so good. This could be so unbelievably good. And it’s not that it feels like a rough draft, but it feels disjointed, and it feels unfinished. It feels like it needed an editor to rein it in and give it a more concrete plot and recognize that this book is so firmly meant to be horror. And for fuck’s sake market it that way.

There are only a few other reviews for this book right now, most of which complain about the pacing. I didn’t have an issue with the pacing at any point. I devoured this book. I love satirical social commentary though. The commentary is the book. You’re not getting much plot. You don’t need it.

I just feel so let down by it. I think it’s gonna be four stars because I can’t deny the brilliance of the vast majority of this book, and it is something I want to reread and analyze more. It has such interesting, overlapping themes. It just doesn’t feel done. And I don’t understand how anyone read this book and then read that ending and wasn’t like throw it out and redo it.

Who should read this:
Mommy horror fans
Barbie movie fans
Feminists
Social commentary fans

Do I want to reread this:
Yes

Similar books:
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder-mommy horror, magical realism
Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth-campy, femme horror
Bunny by Mona Awad-femme, psychological horror
Rouge by Mona Awad-magical realism, fairytale retelling, femme horror, mommy issues
American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis-psychological horror, social commentary
The Secret History by Donna Tart-dark academia, magical realism, culty, social commentary
Shark Heart by Emily Habeck-dementia horror, magical realism, mommy issues
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh-OG angry, sad girl book

I had high hopes for this but it went sideways for me early on. Dani is back in her home town where she feels like she's let everyone down because she's a stay at home mom with a philosophy degree being supported by her husband. But what if he dies? So she takes herself off to the Temple- and this was where the impossibilities started, Hogarth has some important things to say about women and work and so on but this frame didn't work, Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A miss from me but other might enjoy,

Thanks to NetGalley for an eARC of this book!

This was my first exposure to Ainslie Hogarth. I discovered the news about this new book through mutual bookstagram folks. I wasn't sure what to expect since Ainslie's writing was new to me but I heard a lot of amazing things about Motherthing, which I still need to read.

When I first started reading this book, I wasn't sure where the story was going and it was a bit slow for me, but the book took a turn and picked right up. I enjoyed reading this book and I'll definitely be going back to reading Ainslie's other book, Motherthing.

A story about how women's work isn't as valued told in a satirical lens. I appreciate the meaning and idea here, but the writing style wasn't for me. I found it to be much slower than Motherthing.

Dani needs a distraction. Trying her hand at being a stay-at-home mom to her daughter Lotte is not the deeply fulfilling experience she had planned on. She is constantly overwhelmed with thoughts of her husband dropping dead. Not because she hates him, not yet anyway, but because if he dies, they will be left destitute.

Then she discovers the Temple. Ostensibly a yoga center but possibly a house of ill repute, Dani might have found a side hustle she is good at. Only time will tell.

Hogarth has proved herself a master at writing dark and unsettling satiric fiction that will give pause to our thinking, whether we are prepared for it or not.

So, I'm stuck here. I love love lovedddd Ainslie Hogarth's debut novel, Motherthing, for its absurd and gorey horror aspects, but this one fell short for me. I am still very thankful to our wonderful author, PRH Audio, Vintage Anchor Books, and Netgalley for granting me advanced digital and audio access to this read before it hits shelves on October 10, 2023.

Dani, a brand-new mother, is feeling hopeless in her life, and very much dependent on her husband to bring home the bacon, but when reminded of his mortality, she throws herself into a panic of all sorts. Realizing she has virtually zero professionalism skills to help her find a real job in the real world, she stumbles into "The Temple" a hush-hush brothel that teaches its customers about the wisdoms and practices they can acquire to better suit their bodies for sexual completion. Don't worry, she definitely just tells her husband that she's taking night classes to explain her absence.

When the owner of The Temple goes missing though, Dani plays detective in a way that leaves her abandoning her friends, her young daughter, and her husband as she searches for answers. But what she finds clues her in on how small her town really is, and how everyone knows everyone's business.

I enjoyed the book, but I think I wanted it to include more horror or mystery aspects that knit it together, coming off the high of Motherthing, but all-in-all, it was a good read for me.

This is the second book from this author that I have read, and it is another darkly humorous tale. This book is about gender and motherhood in the main, and at times it is quite upsetting, even with the humour. I have to be honest and say that while I didn't exactly dislike this book it wasn't really to my taste and I also found some of the pacing in the writing a little distracting. The author's previous book 'Motherthing' was outstandingly brilliant, in my opinion, and so I feel that this new novel had an awful lot to live up to and ultimately didn't really hit the spot for me. I will still continue to read this author's work and look forward to her next book.

I am so sad about this one. I loved Motherthing. I love the dark humor and social critic brought from both Motherthing and Normal Women. However, this one did not keep up with her previous work. I loved the social critic a LOT though.

Normal Women wasn't what I thought it would be and I don't mean that in a good way. It really pains me to give this book 2.5 stars or less because I ADORE motherthing. However, this book fell flat in so many different ways for me that I couldn't rate it any higher. I really wish this book was not marketed as a mystery novel and in fact, I wish it didn't have any mystery elements at all. They weren't included until about 80% through the story and then amounted to nothing in the end. The mystery was a waste of time. The space it occupied could've been used to work on the themes and our main character's development.

When I reached the end of the story it did not feel complete and I left it not really getting any of the things I was excited to see from reading the synopsis. I thought this would be a character-driven story about a mother and her identity, but instead, this was just random rambling and daily activities. Motherthing did such a great job exploring motherhood, human connection, and grief in such an impactful way. This book took such strong topics and barely touched the surface. Nothing really packed a punch and I doubt this will stick with me past this month.

I am so disappointed that this didn't become a favorite.

I enjoyed the author’s earlier novel, Motherthing. However, this latest left me disappointed. A strong start full of biting satire, the premise devolves into a cringeworthy plot with flat characters.

A self aware, realistic look at the unappreciated reality of stay at home mothers. There’s a bit of a mystery element and tons of social commentary, but the main focus is on the lack of value for female labor and how that sets women up for failure in a capitalist society. Can’t say that I loved the plot itself, but I’m so in love with Hogarth’s writing that I’ll never quit picking up her books. She has so much to say and it comes across perfectly without sacrificing humor.

I really hate that I had to DNF this but I've never been so bored and unengaged with a book. I really appreciate what Ainslie tried to do by addressing women issues involving battling postpartum depression, how we feel about our bodies, and our own independence. Unfortunately, it only touched on it in the literal sense when there are numerous underlying points she could have expanded on. Sadly, 2 stars

Thank you to Netgallery and Vintage Anchor for this arc.

Being a MegaFan of Hogarths first novel Motherthing, I was thrilled to get this arc opportunity and I’m happy to report that she is no One Hit Wonder folks. Normal Women is just as quirky and fun and our female mc is amazing! The mystery vibe had me on my toes the entire time.

Dani is a first time mom who is trying to embrace her new stay-at-home role. She finds herself an unlikely friendship and a possible side hustle in the seedier part of town. When her new friend goes missing, she takes it upon herself to get to the bottom of things. Nothing is as it seems in this one.

Her husband was the only one I kind of disliked; all the women characters were aces! And the unique premise of Dani’s side hustle left me wanting more details. Overall, not much to complain about :)

Instagram/Bookstagram link to come…

After giving birth to a baby girl, Dani moves back to her hometown for financial stability. She’s constantly anxious about motherhood and has a complicated relationship with her husband, whom she relies on financially. When a co-worker of his is diagnosed with terminal cancer, it sends her into a tizzy to find financial independence. Is she exhausted? Suffering from post-partum depression? Or is something even larger nagging at her? She does have a degree in philosophy, after all. While Barton Street used to be dangerous, because of gentrification, it’s changed. When Dani befriends a sex worker on Barton Street named Renata, they seem to forge a real friendship and Renata seems equally intrigued by Dani’s curiosity and asks her to come to the Temple, a yoga studio / place of worship / place where husbands married to women in Dani’s friend group go to sleep with sex workers. But when Renata disappears, Dani takes it upon herself to find her. The concepts in this novel are prescient: sex work, desire, women’s bodies, but the story didn’t grab my attention enough to invest in it. I was left feeling disappointed especially since I so loved Hogarth’s previous novel. Thank you to NetGalley and to Vintage Anchor for the advanced copy of this book.

Ainslie Hogarth's "Normal Women" captures the double-edged sword of being a stay-at-home mother — of being a Normal Woman. After married couple Dani and Clark welcome their firstborn Lotte, the two move to Dani's hometown of Metcalf for Clark's promotion as the town's newest real estate developer. With the money Clark's making, Dani falls into the role of stay-at-home mom, but when Clark's coworker is diagnosed with terminal colon cancer, Dani becomes riddled with anxieties about her future and life's purpose.

What you need to know about Dani is that she comes from a formerly wealthy family with a legacy deeply intertwined with the town of Metcalf and is now married to a financially well-off man. To be a stay-at-home mom is a choice for her — a choice that so many working-class parents can only dream of. Still, she feels deeply unsatisfied in remaining financially dependent on a man with a savior complex. Valid. At the same time, she feels she's above her fellow stay-at-home mothers/mommy bloggers, as well as any entry-level office jobs she could realistically qualify for. Dani's entitled, privileged, overdramatic perspective may bother some readers, but I feel Hogarth's offbeat humor and sharp writing balance out these potentially irritable qualities. For me, Dani's obvious flaws never overshadowed the book's overall feminist-leaning message of valuing female labor (in the workforce and at home).

In addition to its (somewhat surface-level) commentary on motherhood, parenting, marriage, momfluencers, and sex work, "Normal Women" delivers a scandalous mystery when Dani's new friend Renata goes missing and no one seems to care but her. During her existential crisis, Renata offers Dani the opportunity for salvation through her sex work-coded yoga center, The Temple. So when Renata goes missing, Dani's fears of never meeting her true potential amplify.

I thoroughly enjoyed my reading experience and found a relatable sector of women adeptly represented within these pages. I recommend you give it a try for yourself.

Thank you to NetGalley and Vintage Anchor for providing a digital review copy of Normal Women.

I had such a blast reading Hogarth's previous novel, Motherthing, so I had high expectations for Normal Women.

New mother, Dani, is back in her hometown and having a hard time adjusting to being a stay-at-home mom while her husband continues to build his career. Dani begins to fret about what the future might look like for herself and her daughter should something ever happen to her husband, and this leads her to consider ways she might be able to become financially independent.

While there were moments I enjoyed, overall this didn’t quite work for me. I can think of other readers who might be delighted by it, and I think I would especially recommend it to fans of Nightbitch. And I will still certainly pick up whatever Hogarth writes next!