This had a lot of potential but just didn’t seem to get there. It felt like it didn’t really know what it wanted to be which ended up being messy and strange. The whole thing was all over the place.

The characters felt very flat and the relationships were shallow. I expected more spookiness from Motheater but instead her character and actions seemed a bit ridiculous at times, verging on humour.

Perhaps my expectations for this book were unrealistic for what it was. I wanted spooky Appalachian mountain witch vibes with a bit of romance but I felt like I got Sabrina.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Publishing for my eARC.

An immediately gripping tale of capitalism vs nature on the surface, this book delves deep into Appalachian tradition and the myths and legends we surround ourselves with in modern society, as well as our capacity to love. It's a deeply felt and hopeful book. I had no idea what I was getting into when I started and I loved it.

A visceral and unearthly venture in the subtle horror of the Appalachian Mountains and the might of those who will not be consumed by capitalism.
When a woman turns up from inside the bedrock of a mine on Kire mountain, Bennie seeks her out, searching for answers to her friend who died in that mine, and the mining company covered it up. Motheater has lost her mind to the mountain, why she was imprisoned and what happened to her a century ago. Together the pair work to restore Motheater’s mind and magic, to save the mine and small town of Kiron from the ire of the mountain Kire, who will bite back at those to seek to plumb its depths.
This appeared to be a beautiful haunting tale, and the early part of the book really does give a sense of the unearthly, as speculative twists amp up the horror of what has been done in this small mountainous town, and what will come next. I enjoyed the rich writing style, thought it did end up becoming repetitive, but bogging down in it’s prose towards the midway point and ending.
The opening story arc with the two perspectives of Motheater and Bennie was then infused with a third arc, Esther, though it was clear from the start that Esther was Motheater before she lost her memories. Shuffling between these perspectives started out well, but became increasingly confusing especially when at several points the narrative isn’t from the right character for that chapter.
The romantic arc of the story between Motheater and Bennie spent about 70% of the book being hinted at and then ended up becoming a central theme to the story’s climax which didn’t sit well with the flow of the story. Bennie’s drive to support Motheater, and who ends up liking her, seems more an observation of awe towards Motheater’s power, and not out of a growing love. Mothewater/Esther herself spends a large portion at the start of the story being rather arrogant and presumptuous to the point of making her almost unlikeable. She also doesn’t appear to think on Bennie very much until the climax of the book, her interest tied to a character from her past. There are many character interactions, and some flashbacks that don’t seem pertinent to the plot, such as when Esther goes to visit a witch in another town.
On that note the magic and world building around it shifts across the book and isn’t always clear. I did love the blend of traditional “witch” magic with bones and herbs and scrying, whilst adding in the more biblical psalms, creating a vivid imagery of how strongly witchcraft is tied to will. But too many times Motheater has nothing left or can’t remember her magic, but somehow still uses magic to solves her problems.
I was also concerned over the portrayal of one of the main characters as black, with references to police and her braids that appeared in the story rather randomly, didn’t make sense, and then was never referred to again.
Ultimately the story here becomes sacrificed to the prose lending itself a more literary air. Rich, lyrical as it was, with a world building in it’s magic systems that struggled to deliver clearly and concisely. I wanted very much to love this story but couldn’t due to the execution of the book’s ending.

Lush, thought-provoking, and eerily enchanting. “Motheater” is a rural fantasy that reads like folklore, woven with mystery and sapphic romance. I was obsessed right from the first page. The writing is incredible - full of rich imagery and profound prose. The subtle horror elements and the portrayal of magic + witchcraft were superb.

I love the two protagonists. The moment Bennie pulled feral-seeming Motheater out of the river, I knew I was in for a unique treat. I found both Bennie and Motheater’s personal goals and histories to be really interesting, complex, and authentic. Also, I enjoyed the romance that gradually blooms between them. It was really sweet seeing them grow closer, exchanging tender touches and helping each other emotionally. It wasn’t always smooth sailing - they had moments of tension and disagreement that made the situation more believable and enticing. And they had some silly moments too that made me laugh out loud. Overall, I got butterflies (moths?) reading it.

Moreover, this book has a heavy focus on the impact of industrialism and corporate greed on the environment. It’s a nuanced conflict between the unyielding, ever-growing ferocity of modern industry against the deeply-rooted might of nature’s magic. (The ending was rather bittersweet, but I can understand why.) The side characters were fleshed out well and contributed to the development of the conflict in interesting ways. And I cannot state enough how impressively the author describes the natural world. You can tell they really did their research. The mountains, the culture, etc. - the author definitely has a deep love and understanding of it, which is reflected in such a mesmerizing way through their writing.

Thank you to Kensington Publishing and NetGalley for the e-ARC! I want to note the copy I had (which I obtained August 2023) had some typos, and I believe chapter 33 was in Bennie's POV but labelled as Motheater's. I imagine these will be resolved by the time this is finally published, but wanted to mention it just in case.

Motheater is one of those books that stays with you long after you’ve read the last page. Set in the hauntingly beautiful Appalachian Mountains, it’s a queer fantasy that feels deeply rooted in both history and the land itself. The story centers on Bennie Mattox, a tough, determined woman grieving the loss of her best friend in a mining accident. Bennie’s search for answers leads her to something—or rather, someone—she never expected: a strange woman who calls herself Motheater.

Motheater isn’t just any woman; she’s a witch with ties to the mountain’s past, though she can’t remember much of it. What she does know is that she was bound to protect the land, and her failure to do so still haunts her over a century later. Together, Bennie and Motheater find themselves caught in a battle between industry and nature, with the choices they make threatening to change their entire community.

What really stood out to me was the way the book captured the soul of Appalachia. The mountains felt alive, almost like characters themselves, and the way the author blended local folklore with fantasy was seamless. You can feel the tension between the beauty of the land and the destruction caused by coal mining. The story doesn’t shy away from these hard truths, and that makes it feel raw and real.

Bennie is such a strong, relatable character. She’s flawed and stubborn, but she’s also brave and loyal, which makes her the perfect counterbalance to Motheater’s otherworldly, mysterious vibe. Their relationship is one of the highlights of the book—a mix of mistrust, chemistry, and a slow-growing understanding that’s both heartwarming and heartbreaking.

If I had to critique anything, I’d say the pacing drags a bit in the middle. There are moments where it feels like the story gets caught up in its own atmosphere, but honestly, I didn’t mind too much. It gave me time to soak in the world and really connect with the characters.

Motheater was a thrilling story that ensnared the reader with it's mystery and witchy presence enveloped in an Appalachian setting. I adored Motheater, it's characters were easy to root for and the story pulled me in. I'm excited to read more worlds and characters inspired by Linda Codega.

3.75 stars out of 5.

Thank you to Netgalley and x for for the free copy of this book and the opportunity to read it before release.

Motheater is one of those books you pick up because you like the cover, and the synopsis sounds intriguing enough for you to hope for a hidden gem of a story. On many points the book does deliver exactly this; a fantasy and horror with a lot of folklore elements set against an Appalachian backdrop with a lot of important themes discussed and shown as the story progresses.

When Bennie’s best friend dies in Kire Mountain, Bennies decides to take matters into her own hand and find out what’s killing the miners. During one of her expeditions to uncover more clues, she finds a half-drowned woman in a dirty mine slough and brings her with. Simply because it’s the right thing to do. Instead it brings yet another mystery to Bennie’s front door, as the woman can’t remember her true name, nor how she’s gotten there. All that is known to her, is the name Motheater, that she is a witch and that she has a connection to the mountain. Suddenly uncovering the deaths of Kire Mountain isn’t just about getting justice for the lost, but also about uncovering Motheater’s memories.

In many ways Motheater is very good at creating an atmosphere and a culture I would expect in a smaller, disconnected town. It’s hard to say how realistic it is, because my cultural reference point is different to the American one, but as an outsider looking in, I think the book does a very good job at not being too shallow in its intended audience, while still having things strewn in, I would assume, would be smaller love letters to the area the book is set in. It unfortunately never really connected with me.

I have a big love for the usage of flashbacks and the current setting, and the parallels it creates in the story. The theme of industry vs. nature, and to some degree the environmentalism and connection to folklore works really well, and makes for a rich story with a lot to offer.

This book had a lot of promise. So much about it ticked a lot of boxes for me but over all the execution left a lot to be desired. I went into it excited that Bennie was going to be the main character but quickly the whole story became focused on building up Motheaters character and her backstory and Bennie was sort of left in the dust.

It really felt like a YA book at times and I was excited for the romance that was advertised with this and was left wanting so much more. It was very lacking.

The book was very repetitive and kind of confusing at times although most of the writing was quite beautiful. It just wasn't gripping enough.

I would have loved so much more from this story.

Although I liked some things about this book, I did not have a good time reading it.

The story hooked me in with the start and the setting. Bennie is a former employee of a local mine in Virginia. Her main focus now, since her firing, is to investigate the greedy mining corporation to find out why so many miners are mysteriously dying. During one of her runs, she inadvertently rescues a woman from the river adjacent to the mountain. Motheater turns out to be a 150 year old witch who has a long history with both mountain and mine.

Both Bennie and Motheater/Esther are solid characters. They have a nice connection but no romance. The writing is good and captures the Appalachian country vibe. I enjoyed Esther’s magic, especially back in the day during the older timeline. I also appreciate the book’s stand against corporate poisoning of natural resources and the exploitation of working people.

But ultimately the story lost me because I felt it was way too long and had repetitious passages. There are two timelines, Esther when she was a witch in the past with a snake-handling preacher father and in the present trying to help Bennie with her fight. It was exciting at times but then so much repetition and a convoluted storyline that I nearly stopped. I felt like this story had all the ingredients to be a very good book but the length killed it.

In Motheater by Linda H. Codega, Bennie is searching for answers after years of mysterious disappearances and deaths surrounding White Rock, the mining company she had previously worked for. Bennie’s best friend has recently gone missing, and in her search for evidence that White Rock is killing its workers & covering up the deaths, she finds a woman barely breathing in a creek. After rescuing the woman, Bennie learns that not all is as it seems on Kirk Mountain.
Told in alternating POVs, modern day Bennie is trying to help Motheater remember where - and when - she comes from. Meanwhile, in the past, Esther is trying to save her beloved Kire Mountain from an encroaching mining company’s purchase.
I really enjoyed this book, although I did feel at times it read as more YA than adult. I loved the relationship between Bennie and Motheater, and I really loved reading Esther’s story.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of Motheater in exchange for my honest review.

3.5 🌟

I love a book steeped Appalachian folklore, and this certainly delivered in that front. The prose is beautiful and the setting is entrancing.

I don't usually want a book to be longer, but this one could have benefitted from more time building up Bennie's character and story. I was extremely interested what was happening with Esther and Jasper in the past, but the scenes in the present, while promising, were sometimes confusing and slow. I definitely wanted more from the romance as well.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC!

Motheater is an interesting little story that takes the reader on a journey through time and the Appalachian Mountains. Codega does an incredible job of immersing the reader in a small mining town that sits on Kire Mountain through their prose. I really liked how I felt like I was by Bennie and Motheater's side throughout the novel. Codega did a fantastic job of rooting the reader in place; we see characters speaking in dialect, discuss hyper-local folklore and magic.

Bennie, the main character, felt extremely one-note and is quick to trust Motheater, a witch she finds in a river who has no idea who she is, where she came from, or what happened to her. For a character that's introduced as hesitant to trust people, this felt odd. When we follow her specifically, her internal thoughts, feelings, and actions are repetitive and it feels like she really didn't learn anything, even after going through an unexplainable journey with Motheater and the other characters in the novel.

I absolutely loved Motheater's character, her backstory, and everything else about her. She reminded me of Nona from Nona the Ninth in many respects, which is why I think I feel such a strong affection for her. Codega slowly peels back Motheater's layers and we learn about her in real-time as she begins to uncover who she is. This particular storytelling method was effective and I looked forward to every one of those chapters.

The overall plot has good bones and an interesting premise, but the work as a whole felt like a draft. At times, the story simultaneously rushed and dragged and it felt like key details were missing. Overall, Motheater's themes are deeply resonant, but the narrative feels disjointed and falls victim of trying to do too much in one book.

This is for the Appalachia girlies and that is it. I just could not imagine someone being as emotionally connected to this story as people who were raised here and have seen the destruction first hand. I have seen criticism for the christianity aspect fused with magic, but that made sense to me with the regional setting (please give me more snake handling churches- as a former Mormon, current (non practicing) Baptist, I love the snake handlers)

My biggest problem is that it was full of grammatical errors that were overlooked by the editors and it pulled me from the story, as well as how slow the overall exploration was. I will say that the romance could have sat this one out and nothing would have changed for me.

I feel like this book had a lot of cool ideas but didn’t really execute any of them very well. I found it to be mostly boring and hard to stay focused on. :( really disappointed.

I found this difficult to get into for some reason. I thought the premise was interesting but I didn't like the execution. I was bored for a lot of the book, and thought the plot was slow and repetitive. The characters motivations are stated over and over to the point where it saturates the narrative.
I found numerous errors in the book, typos and others things like missing quotation marks or commas which made the text difficult to understand. I was often taken out of the story by a typo or a strange sounding sentence. These are simple mistakes that another read over would correct.
However, I did enjoy the magic system, the gristly side of witchcraft, and I enjoyed the small Appalachian town setting, something I haven't read a lot of before.

An Applachian folk fantasy that will have you believing in witchcraft and the inherent majesty and power of the mountains that make up all of Appalachia.

“Benethea Mattox was not raised to be a fool. Yet here she was, fishing a skinny white lady out of a river.”

I really loved this book from the first page (the first sentence even), and it kept me engaged throughout. We meet Bennie, a forcibly retired safety officer determined to find out just what is causing miners to consistently go missing in the mountain overlooking the town she lives in. During her investigation she accidentally finds Motheater, a witch out of time without a name and powers that break one’s understanding of the world. Together they must fight together to save their town from a power that neither one expected to haunt it.

If you love Applachian folk magic, a touch of horror, and the unyielding loom of industry always on the horizon, this is the book for you. Reading this felt like it was straight out of a season of Old Gods of Appalachia, and I never could predict where this story was going. The romance progressed naturally, the conflict was diverse, and the book ended on a high note - without solving the complex issues that were explored with a simple fix that would not have felt realistic.

I’m from Pennsylvania, which is in turn both part of Appalachia and not depending on the location and your opinion of it, but I’ve lived near the Appalachian mountains almost my entire life and I could so easily see the descriptions of all the mountains present within this book. The looming and majestic presence of Kire, the stripped mountains from strip-mining, and just the presence of nature and the feel of the wildness when walking amongst those giants. This book is beautifully written, and perfectly captures the intrinsic feeling of loss felt when looking at a once-majestic mountain stripped to barely anything due to mining.

My only real issue with this book is that a main plot point is that Motheater doesn’t remember her own name, and this is the thing limiting her power. However, when we delve into the past with her memories, her name is given within these chapters. I think the impact at the end when Motheater is given her name back would have been more impactful if she is referred to as simply Motheater during these chapters, or something like E—- is used, to still have it be a mystery.

A huge thank you to the author, NetGalley, and Kensington Publishing for providing this e-ARC.

slow gorgeous litfic that's strong on the fantasy/horror but def primarily a litfic. i do think the element of strongly fusing christianity with the magic system was not my fav, but that's a personal taste thing. 4 stars. tysm for the arc.

This book has some great ideas, specifically the Appalachian folk magic with a connection to Pentecostalism. However, the pacing and plot beats are a mess. There are huge swaths of the book where it feels like the plot progression is going nowhere and I suspect that the Esther chapters are to blame. It would feel like the plot was finally moving and then the next chapter would be set in the past bringing everything to a halt. I would have preferred to not have flashback chapters and instead to give Motheater more POV chapters where you impart the same information. It felt like maybe 40% of Esther’s chapters were actually necessary for the plot. I think that more Motheater chapters could also help with how clunky the romance felt. We mostly got Bennie’s perspective on their romance so it felt quite one sided. Finally, I wish that there was more delving into the Pentecostal stuff. I find religions that have a connection to folk magic/folk traditions so interesting but all we really got were like two scenes in the church. I just wanted more because I thought it was the most interesting aspect of the story.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a free e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Many novels have been published about witchcraft in recent times, but this one takes a very different (in a good way) spin on the topic compared to any other novel that I've read in the past couple of years that all deal with the same witchcraft-related themes of independence, self-actualization, powerlessness, privilege, honor, sacrifice, and greed. I'd almost call this an eco-horror - or at least climate fiction - with an ending that feels realistic and very true to the story progression (even if/when you wish it could've been different).

Motheater is an Appalachian witch out of time, stuck between her community and nature. Can we survive without taking from nature? How much is too much? Where is the balance? And whose side should she take?

A story told in two timelines, in present time and a hundred and fifty years into the past, with a cast of queer characters. The romance itself is pretty slowburn, and I wouldn't really call this a romance book, but the love is still very much important to the endgame. Romantic love, friendship love, love for community, love for nature, and all of that.

The present-time POV character is a Black woman who is investigating mysterious mining deaths on the mountain. I loved that Bennie and Zach are exes who are both bisexual - good for them.

Only four stars because I couldn't immerse myself fully, the Bible verses and Appalachian accents/slangs was pretty far from my experience. Somebody who is closer to the culture might enjoy this more, for me the Bible verses are an automatic turn-off. Still, I enjoyed the rest of the book.