I'm not sure what drew me to request this book, but I'm so glad I did! Wife Shaped Bodies is a debut novel by Laura Cranehill and I can't wait to read what she writes next.

This short book immerses you into our main character, Nicole's, world immediately. She is getting ready to be married and as readers we quickly notice this world seems familiar, but also not. Kept separate from the rest of the community for reasons she doesn't completely understand, Nicole's first day as a wife is a dramatic shift from the life she knew with her mother. As Nicole slowly grows in her understanding of the world she lives in, so do we.

Be prepared for body horror that includes fungus and mushrooms, and there are some fairly disturbing descriptions of the women's bodies throughout this novel. However, what is truly horrifying is how the women are treated as disposable, the information that is kept from them, and the way in which their power is stifled by their husbands. This book is about how these women discover and use their power to find community and freedom.

Thank you to Saga Press and NetGalley for the digital ARC of this unforgettable book.

Huge thanks to Saga Press Books for the ARC of Wife Shaped Bodies via NetGalley! This one was an absolute trip, easily 4.25 stars. What Moves the Dead meets The Handmaid’s Tale, but way creepier and way weirder. A fungal fever dream. The post-apocalyptic atmosphere is culty, packed with unsettling imagery, and full of prose so vividly descriptive it feels like it’s crawling under your skin. If you’re into weird horror that’s equal parts disturbing and mesmerizing, this book is for you!

This book is incredible and the reader is left feeling so many emotions from sadness to disgust to complete love. The book truly shows how women give up their beings for everyone else and then in the end find themselves. I love how relatable it was for when she had the child in the end she struggled with all the emotions of motherhood and feelings of being inadequate

Laura Cranehill’s "Wife Shaped Bodies" is a haunting and gorgeously written novel that blends dystopian unease with a mythic resonance, creating something wholly original yet deeply evocative of works like "The Handmaid’s Tale" and Madeline Miller’s "Circe". At once lyrical and unsettling, the book asks difficult questions about womanhood, servitude, love, and the porous line between humanity and nature.
Cranehill’s prose is lush and intoxicating. The fungal imagery such as hyphae, spores, and mycelium works on two levels at once biological and metaphorical. It embodies both the intimate knowledge and the invasive control exerted over the wives’ bodies. The world is irradiated, altered by man-made ruin, and yet it is the women who bear the consequences most viscerally. The novel never loses sight of the tension between love and confinement, individuality and collective survival.

One of the most powerful sequences is Nicole’s pregnancy, described with a raw and aching beauty that rivals Madeline Miller’s rendering of Circe’s transformation and motherhood. Here, the fragility and strength of women are revealed together, filtered through the strangeness of a body both human and fungal. Nicole’s forbidden love for another wife provides yet another tender layer, expressed with language that captures desire as something both natural and dangerous, growing in secret like a network of roots beneath the soil.

"Wife Shaped Bodies" is not only beautifully crafted but thematically urgent. It speaks to our anxieties about environmental collapse, gender roles, and the fragility of intimacy in a fractured world. Cranehill has written a novel that feels both timeless and timely, mythic and modern, a story that grows quietly inside you like spores until you realize it has completely taken root.

This is an incredibly immersive book that hits multiple emotions within the eco horror genre. The mushrooms made me a little squeamish but everything was very well written!

This book is strange, stunning, and completely unforgettable. Set in a decaying village where wives are covered in fungal growths and forbidden from leaving their homes, Wife Shaped Bodies follows Nicole—a newlywed trapped in a mansion on the edge of town, promised to a husband she barely knows.

It’s literary horror at its most visceral. Cranehill explores gender, power, and isolation through surreal body horror and aching prose. Nicole’s journey—from obedient bride to something wild and unrecognizable—is eerie, heartbreaking, and beautifully defiant. If Sorrowland and Manhunt had a mushroom-covered baby, this would be it.

It took a hot minute of deliberation to decide if I actually liked this book because it's SO immersive and gritty, but in the end I came out loving it!

This novel's setting and premise are so unique, Laura Crane Hill expertly uses botanical body horror to tackle themes of gender inequality, intergenerational trauma, traditionalism, community, and power.

I love, love, loved this book! The plot locked me in from page one, and spit me out a new person on the last page. The characters became real to me and will live in my brain forever. The setting was tangible and perfect. The pacing was riveting, but not rushed. All coming together to be a book I can't wait to recommend to my friends.

DNF at 50%

This fable-ish novel is set in a post-apocalyptic world where nearly everything is poisoned or tainted in some way. Especially the women. They are afflicted with mushroom-like growths all over their bodies. They are also assigned to marry certain men at the time of their birth.

Actually there’s more to it than that and the book follows Nicole, a very young woman who doesn’t leave her house, ever, until her wedding day when she goes to live with Silas. Now that she is out in the world she learns about the other women of the settlement.

I think this book just needs to find its people, and, unfortunately, that’s not me. I’m not squeamish but the constant discussion of the “mushrooms” bothered me and the story just didn’t hold my interest. But it may turn out to be a horror-ish book that people love, what do I know?

Five Stars. Absolutely love.

I gave myself time to sit with this one for a week. I wasn't sure what I was walking into initially. Was it body horror? feminist narrative? social commentary? Yes, to all - but not in the way I expected.

The world has ended. For some. In a time where the women are covered in mushroom growths, they are born and raised to be wives for the still-human men in their compound. That is their one and only real function and we start off this story with the day of Nicole's wedding and the death of her mother. Two life-changing situations that our protagonist internalizes in the way of someone siphoning sunshine into their skin. As she navigates the life of a married person, she seeks truth and connection and purpose outside of her husband's house.

This story reads like a dream. The prose is poetic without feeling pretentious, grounded by the narrator's point of view. Nicole, in her fully grown state, is technically only two years old, and she pursues the world with all the hunger of youth even as she does all she can to ensure her survival to do so. I think the pace may bore some people. This is not particularly exciting until the end. It is internal. A look into the heart and mind and skin of a creature who knows deep down in her bone marrow that there is more to her, to all the women, than what they have been told. Her husband is a scientist that studies mushrooms, and in his loneliness, he shares things with her that the other men wouldn't dare. Through the other Wife that enthralls her, she learns just what that means and more.

There is so much to spoil, so I will refrain. This story is about the connection between mothers, daughters, lovers, and ancestors. The truth and horror of feminine rage, the kind that draws back through time and lives in our bodies and moves on with our descendants long after we're gone. It feels wrong to slap labels on it as only "sapphic" and "feminist" and "horror" but if that piques your interest, we'll start there. In the end, it was a fascinating, grisly, psychedelic experience that I simply couldn't put down.

This is a very eye-opening, eerie story about life as an altered human living in an apocalyptic world.

The story moves smoothly from the viewpoint of a young woman, who has to quickly grow and learn to become a woman who knows what her position in life is to be. Through lessons from those around her, she learns the history of her ancestors and the sacrifices women have made in the past.

For readers who enjoy deep, personal growth in the stories, this is for you. It is full of life, death, love, friendships, and how to survive the apocalypse. A very unique story.

#NetGalley #WifeShapedBodies

Eco horror written in near poetry level prose.

Nicole is not allowed to leave her home until marriage, which ends up also being the day her mother dies. The night before, Nicole's mother had shown her how to remove the mushrooms that cover the women in their village, which they are taught are repulsive and dangerous. On the day of her wedding, she moves in with the husband she has been promised to since birth, a giant dilapidated home on the outskirts of town. When a rebellious wife in town becomes friendly with Nicole, she finds herself drawn to the woman and must come to terms with who (and what) she truly is and what she desires.

Thank you to NetGalley for an eARC of this novel.

Quick very high level summary.
The world is spore infected and we follow a newly wed who is covered in mushroom spores like all of the women are. The new bride has never been allowed to to leave her home until the marriage.

My take.
An eco horror with a feminist punch. At times I was not sure if I was reading an eco horror or poetry. Beautiful yet shocking. Dark yet lyrical. We also have so many themes that this story tackles with so much artistry and emotion. Themes like mans need to control women and their bodies, predetermined gender roles that are terribly outdated and burdens carried in silence just to survive. The atmosphere in this story is so heavy and dark. From the decaying homes to all the fungal rotting the author creates a deeply haunted space but sometimes the symbolism can be too ambiguous. I will say this is a slow burn. It takes what at times feels like forever for our MC Nicole to wake to her own needs and want to understand what is happening to and around her. Overall there will people that struggle with all the metaphors but there will also be people such as myself who were completely inthralled.

Wow. Wow. I’m having a hard time really articulating how much I loved this book. It will be in my favorites for the year for sure. This was feminist literary body horror at its best. I adored it.

Never have I ever read a book like this. Imagine Our Wives Under the Sea, but make it mushrooms and post-apocalyptic. If you're looking for a fever dream, an empowering dark fairytale, and a pressure cooker of tension, this is your book. Cranehill is the master of the uncomfortable and suspenseful. Highly recommend!

Wife Shaped Bodies was a unique and super trippy read! The ecological/body horror component of this story had me hooked right from the beginning– I ended up finishing this in one sitting!

A lot to like here. The premise is super cool, and the horror elements are done well. Unfortunately, I didn’t connect with the characters all that much, and the plot was a little predictable. Still, I’d be interested to see what this author does next.

I really, really thought I'd love this, but there was just something that didn't let me connect with it. Such a cool premise though and I'm sure others will love it.

Hell of a debut, and someone I'll be keeping my eyes on in the future. My only criticism is I wanted a little bit more of the lesbian mushrooms and maybe a bit more connective tissue overall, but this was the excellent mushroom based horror book I was looking for. Weird patriarchy holding down a more pagan-ish mushroom lady population, and two wonderful lesbian mushrooms finding out the possibilities of their bodies together and as a community. The weird mushroom sex is pretty damn great, and at times the metaphor of literally carving pieces of yourself off to fit a mold feels Too Real, and you're counting down till all the men get super dead. Pick this up this spring and enjoy the ride.

4.3 on the rubric, but rounding up bc anything that makes me whisper "what the fuck" this many times to myself has earned that extra quarter star.

Claustrophobic, hallucinatory (genuinely one of the best written descriptions of the effects of psilocybin I've ever read), weird as hell, and absolutely gorgeously grotesque in parts. All of my senses were engaged during my mental movie, and there were a lot of things I did not want to taste or smell, but I could not put it down. How is this a debut?