The book was a bit predictable and just would not have worked if the characters had been more well rounded and thought out.

This book is creepy, slimy, and made me so mad in parts I was grinding my teeth. Art of all kinds is meant to elicit emotions, and this book certainly did a good job of that. The only thing I thought this book didn’t do a good job of was surprising me in any way. It was very predictable. Does that mean it wasn’t entertaining, a total page-turner, creep-tastic, and I don’t recommend it? No way! I totally recommend it, it entertained the heck out of me, I couldn’t put it down, and it was so freaking creepy. I mean… dude. It was creepy in more than one way too. And downright slimy and deceitful too.

I described this book to my mom and sister as “[insert famous actress’ famous lifestyle company’ meets Rosemary’s Baby but with no demons]”, and that about sums it up. It’s maybe a touch deeper than that when you get to all the deeper themes, but that’s the basic gist of the book. It’s in those overlying themes where you get the creepiness and some of the sliminess, but it’s in the deeper themes where you get most of the sliminess, deceit, and those parts that made me so mad I was grinding my teeth.

This book, in essence, is about all the ways in which women deceive and wrong other women. How we judge each other in a million different ways, even if we don’t ever say what we’re thinking. How we, as women, say we love all women, but question if we really do: some still venerate the mother and the virgin but look down on any woman who is neither. We say we love all women, but does that include the nonbinary, the transexual, the gender fluid, or anyone else whose gender identity might not have always come with the “parts”? When do we count a woman a traitor? Do we even have the right to call any woman a traitor at all? Or are we all just trying to survive being a woman altogether?

There’s also a subtle and unforgiving streak in this book about how our worries regarding men are still valid, no matter that in this book it’s the women you need to watch out for. It’s not a huge part of the book, but it matters.

I don’t even know how to describe the creepy scenes and stuff that happens in this book. Let’s just say Heltzel knows how to paint a picture with her words. She knows how to stage a scene with vivid sentences and haunting details. Some of those scenes are stuck in my head, and they probably won’t come out for a while.

Thanks to NetGalley, Macmillan-Tor/Forge, and Tor Nightfire for early access to this book in exchange for fair and honest review.

This is one of the most twisted books I’ve read in a long time. It feels weird to give it 4 stars when the act of reading it was so uncomfortable, but once I got into it it was hard to put down.

We follow Maeve as she reunites with a cousin she was separated from when the compound of the cult they were raised in was raided. Maeve has a lot of trauma, obviously, and trusting people is difficult for her. Through out we get flashbacks to her time at the compound and the things that happened to her there. Content Warnings: Rape, Self Harm, Loss of a child, also implied child abuse, graphic violence

I don’t really want to say much more about the plot then that because there’s enough foreshadowing that I think readers will see the end long before Maeve does, though it’s done with enough tension and suspension to carry the book forward.

The writing is fine. There are a couple of sex scenes I didn’t need, the dialogue felt stiff and kind of awkward in places. But for the most part it was fine and didn’t detract too much from the book.

I think the biggest thing about this book is how timely it is. It was harrowing to read with everything going on In the US surrounding Roe V. Wade. It felt very much like a less subtle metaphor for that, though I could be reading too much into it.

Otherwise- if cult-horror is your thing, this would absolutely be one to check out. Thank you to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for the eARC.

I was really excited to read this novel as it seemed to be in my genre of favorite reads. Unfortunately, there were a lot of things about this book that went beyond disturbing for me. I am a huge fan of horror and psychological thrillers, but the abuse, rape and imprisonment was a little too much for me.

I love a good cult story and JUST LIKE MOTHER delivered on a whole new creepy level! If you think the cover is unsettling, just wait until you start reading!

From the beginning I thought I knew where this story was okay to lead me, but I was completely wrong. Heltzel took my expectations and blew them out of the water. This book reads like a season of American Horror Story with all of the jaw dropping revelations and weird twists you can’t get enough of as you watch. There’s something not right about all of the characters you meet, but just what is it? JUST LIKE MOTHER’s premise is impossible for me to talk about in great detail without giving too much away. What I will say is that if you enjoy cults, stories set in remote locations, and being completely creeped out, this one's for you!

I highly suggest taking a look at the trigger warnings listed on Storygraph because there are a lot of tough topics covered in this book.

A huge thank you to Tor Nightfire for my gifted copy!

In her debut adult novel, Anne Heltzel layers on the creepy atmosphere while poking at society's obsession with motherhood. She draws Maeve as such a traumatized and vulnerable character, keeping everyone at a distance to protect herself. We can't help but want her to get a win after her childhood in a matriarchal cult known as the Mother Collective, from which she fled. Her escape incited a raid of the Mothers' compound and effectively separated Maeve from her closest friend and cousin, Andrea. Years later, she and Andrea reconnect at a time when her adoptive father has died, her adoptive mother is in memory care, and she is let go from her job. Rich, successful, and charismatic Andrea becomes Maeve's only lifeline at a time of desperation. As their new relationship develops, Maeve comes up against old fears. Turns out, she can't get around them. She's got to go through them. So do we.
[Thanks to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy of this book.]

Holy $#!% !!! That was unexpected.
I think I may be obsessed with this book, but I’m still trying to process my inner turmoil.
You want creepy, messed up, cultish, post-feminist (maybe?) feminism mixed with horror and completely wild head-shaking moments? #JustLikeMother serves it up.

Not perfect. Some holes. A lot of suspension of disbelief required, but take this one as it is, and go in knowing as little as possible. Pick it up, but don’t say I didn’t warn you about some seriously effed up stuff. All the trigger and content warnings.

Thank you to MacMillan Tor-Forge and Netgalley for providing me with access to an ARC of Just Like Mother in exchange for my fair and honest review.

The prologue got my attention! It's obvious there is a commune where the majority are women. The women are all called 'Mother' by the children. The two main children are Andrea and Maeve, where Andrea is the favored. Andrea and Maeve are best friends with a few years that separate them.

There is a male child, simply referred to as Boy. Maeve is quite taken with him and tried to care for him. It is one night that Maeve defies the Mothers and flees.

Maeve grew up in a normal home under foster care, she still pines for her cousin, Andrea, and constantly searches for her online. It is years later that on a whim, Mae does a DNA test and makes a connection with Andrea.

Andrea is a successful businesswoman with her own company called New Life making lifelike dolls for women. It's not long before Mae becomes enmeshed in Andrea's life and finds that she needs Andrea.

Maeve was always told that she was a bad apple, but little does Mae know that being bad is actually good for her.

This was a creepy story, but I found it entertaining! I'd say it falls more into being a thriller than
a horror story. The ending was a complete surprise and I didn't expect that.

I received an ARC from NetGalley via Macmillan-Tor/Forge and I voluntarily reviewed this book.

Where do I start with this book? Okay, so the cover is super creepy but it totally fits this creepy cultish book! You know I am all about the cultish type books! I gave this 5 stars because I am still thinking about it even though I read it like 2 months ago! I may need a copy on my bookshelf.

Maeve and Andrea grew up with each other as cousins until one night when something tore them apart. Fast forward to the future and they have finally been reunited. Everything seems to be going so well. Andrea has made it to the top and is very successful. Maeve is not so successful and relies on Andrea more than she'd like. Then things start going awry and I'll leave you with that.

There is some definite creepy things that occur in this book and trigger warnings as well so do be aware of that aspect. Otherwise, grab this book and hold on tight!

So, I think I had too high of expectations coming into this book. It was certainly creepy, but the pacing was off. I felt like the information came too slowly at points, but then by the time a twist was coming I’d already guessed it. The concept is fascinating and I still really love it, but I’m not sure it hit the mark for me.

Just Like Mother was an absolutely trippy ride! I especially enjoyed seeing the past and present between the different chapters and how Heltzel weaved both stories together.

While I saw pretty much every twist coming, it didn't take away from how much I was enthralled by everything happening.

Great debut!

Shades of Rosemary's Baby, The Stepford Wives, and The Handmaid's Tale! This book creeped me out from the get-go. Several young girls live in a house with Mother-Mother with the lazy eye, Mother with the blonde hair, Mother with the baby in her belly-and no men. Andrea, the oldest, is the favored one. Her "cousin" Maeve, 3 years younger, is always in trouble and gets locked in a dark closet as punishment. Something awful happens at the home. We really aren't told much about the Collective except through Maeve's young eyes and in flashbacks. This adds to the creepiness of the story. Fast forward 20 years when Andrea and Maeve reconnect through a DNA database. They really are cousins. Andrea is a life coach and runs NewLife, developing a line of creepy very realistic AI dolls to help clients through grief and stress. Through a string of bad luck Maeve ends up without a job, home, or any money so Andrea invites her to live with her on her remote estate in upstate New York. I should have expected some of the twists by this point, but I really didn't. The ending made my skin crawl. Thanks to netGalley for giving me an ARC copy. It was an entertaining read.

I wanted to like this book so much, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it and was so excited when I snagged a copy from @netgalley! Unfortunately this book just wasn’t for me. I found myself waiting for the “good stuff” to start and I was incredibly bloated until about the 70% mark. Then all of a sudden things started happening and I was hooked… then the ending just killed me.

Maeve escaped a cult that believed women ruled everything - they kept men to procreate only. When Maeve escaped at 8, her closest cousin Andrea who was 11 also was free. Maeve was adopted and went to grow up and work in publishing in New York City. She decides to do a DNA test and is pleasantly surprised Andrea has also done the test. The two connect and hit it off. Andrea owns a life coaching company that helps new mothers, though Andrea lost a baby herself several years back. Maeve never wants children, and while Andrea seems confused by this, she’s okay with it - or so we think. Things start going horribly wrong in Maeve’s life and Andrea is there to take her in. Then things get strange and Maeve isn’t sure she’ll get out unscathed.

I feel like there was so much u necessary build up that went into this store. Like I mentioned I didn’t even feel like the book truly started until it was almost over! Then I was like OMG what a ride…and the ending! As much as I didn’t see it coming, I really didn’t like it. It felt undone and like a final in your face. I like closure at the end of a book. While this book wasn’t for me exactly I still give it 3 stars and can see why some people have enjoyed it so much!

In Just Like Mother, Maeve and her cousin Andrea are inseparable until the night it all changes and Maeve is separated from her cousin and the group of Mothers she considered her family. But years later, when Maeve has exhausted herself trying to locate her long lost cousin does Andrea randomly appear out of nowhere. While Maeve is living paycheck to paycheck, Andrea has been living in wealth, having started her own brand and lifestyle organization based on motherhood. When a series of unfortunate events leads Maeve to move into Andrea's large mansion in upstate New York, Maeve is relieved to be with family, no longer feeling alone. But then things take a turn, and it all comes crumbling down.

This novel was a slow burn at first, slowly picking up speed until you are barreling ahead towards the end. Heltzel has created a creepy story about a Cult and the lasting effects it has on it's young members, Andrea and Maeve. This disturbing book will have you feeling all sorts of helplessness and paranoia! A totally original plot with Stepford-like characters, While the book is somewhat predictable with a lack of twists, it still possesses a disturbing and interesting storyline that has you wondering how it will all turn out. More backstory on the Cult would have been fun, but I don't believe the book suffers from the lack of it. Emily and Micah's characters are a little pointless and blaise but some of their dialogue and actions contributed to the main plot.

More suspense than horror, it's worth the read.

3.5 stars, but rounding up because I think others will like it!

Just for clarification I would give this book 3.5 stars if possible!

This book encompasses all things eerie, circling around a cult that the main character, Maeve, escaped as a child. Along with the plot's creepiness, there are many points of gore and is riddled with CW (rape, cults, death, abortion, fertility).

I would have given the book a simple 3 stars, as the middle portion of the book seemed to drag on and the reader could anticipate what the main character was not seeing, but the end twist left me audible saying "damn damn damn", which is what I want out of a horror/thriller.

This book has a vast array of characters, twists and turns in its plot, and a great theme of cults for readers that are interested. If this was made into a movie it would haunt my nightmares, but the ability to read past the gore was a benefit for me.

This book is creepy AF in the best way possible!

Maeve and Andrea, cousins that grew up together, are separated when the girls are 8 and 11, respectively. Maeve tries to search for Andrea endlessly, almost an obsession. When she’s in her early 30’s, Andrea finds her through a DNA sight and the girls reunite.

Andrea is the antithesis of Maeve: she’s rich, married, and the CEO of a company. Part of Andrea’s company makes life-like infants that are used to help grieving mothers heal and prepare new mothers for motherhood. Maeve is originally disturbed by this, but understands it’s part of Andrea’s own healing process.

As Maeve and Andrea begin to bond again, Maeve is hit by setback after setback and finally relents to moving in with Andrea and her husband. Maeve quickly learns that Andrea has not healed from their childhood and finds herself trapped in her worst nightmare.

Poor, poor Maeve! She has witnessed and endured so much, yet is a bit on the naïve side. She wants so badly to feel connected to her blood family that she overlooks so many red flags. Andrea and Rob are truly horrible people.

Without giving too much away, I will say that this book is timely and more terrifying due to the political Roe v Wade turmoil in the US. While the females supposedly hold all the power, they’re viewed as having no other purpose than to become mothers, even by members of the same sex. The author shows the horrors that can come about when obsession with who we’re supposed to be goes too far.

Thank you NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for a copy this book.

This was fantastic. From the first chapter, I was absolutely hooked. Heltzel does a fantastic job weaving in character backstories while moving the main plot forward. I felt invested in what was going to happen, and found myself speed reading this, because I was so into it. A fun read for sure - highly recommend!

The nitty-gritty: Anne Heltzel brings several tried and true horror tropes to her latest novel, including cults, creepy dolls and motherhood.

Just Like Mother was creepy and shocking, and yes, over-the-top at times. But I have to admit, despite it’s flaws, I had a lot of fun with it. Parts of it made me mad, some parts confused me, and others were genuinely unsettling, but overall it was a fast-pace story and I never once wanted to stop reading. 

Maeve has a pretty good life. She works at her dream job as an editor for a publishing house. She has a boyfriend named Ryan who she enjoys being with. When she was a young girl, she managed to escape the cult she was raised in—the Mother Collective—and afterwards was placed in a loving foster home. But she’s always wondered what happened to her “cousin” Andrea, her dearest friend from her early years growing up in the cult. When the cult was raided by the police, the girls were separated, and Maeve has been searching DNA websites for years, hoping to reconnect with Andrea.

And then one day, she finds her. Andrea suggests they meet, and Maeve is surprised to discover that her friend has flourished. She’s the CEO of a profitable tech company called NewLife that makes AI baby dolls to help women prepare for motherhood or overcome grief over the loss of a child. Andrea is happily married to her husband Rob, and despite the tragedy of losing a baby herself several years before, she seems confident and put together. 

Maeve accepts Andrea’s invitation to visit her upstate New York mansion for the weekend, but when she arrives, things get weird. Andrea’s coworker Emily seems almost angry when the subject of motherhood comes up and Maeve admits that she never wants to have children of her own. The mansion itself is full of creepy, hidden passageways and spiders, and the plumbing doesn’t work. But Maeve will do almost anything to have a relationship with Andrea, and so she decides to put up with these small inconveniences for the sake of that friendship. And by the time she’s realized her mistake, it’s way too late to leave.

There’s some dark stuff going on in Just Like Mother, and most of it has to do with sex, consent and rape, so once again I’m forced to mention these trigger warnings for those that need them. Maeve seems to be obsessed with sex, and there are some unexpected and pretty explicit sex scenes in the book. Maeve’s behavior ends up making sense later in the story, but it took me a while to figure out why the author included these scenes.

I happen to enjoy cult stories, and the Mother Collective is pretty creepy, although it felt familiar in a lot of ways. The author gives us flashback chapters that show Maeve’s experiences growing up in the cult, and she teases out the important information little by little, so the story had a nice tension throughout. We know something horrible happened and that Maeve was able to get out, and I liked the way these chapters kept me guessing. 

I liked Heltzel’s take on the more sinister parts of motherhood, and I thought it was the perfect backdrop for a horror story. Andrea and Emily both have radical opinions about how a woman’s greatest gift is to create new life, which doesn’t go over well with Maeve, as you might imagine. At the same time we are learning about the Mother Collective from the girls’ past, which mirrors some of what’s going on in the present. I just wanted Maeve to clue in sooner to the dangerous situation she finds herself in, especially when her thoughts on motherhood don’t line up with Andrea’s and Emily’s at all.

And speaking of Maeve, she was an interesting character. On one hand, I understand she’s been through trauma and still hasn’t recovered from it, but on the other, she doesn’t have much agency and seems almost resigned to letting others make decisions for her. She’s upset when she loses her job, and yet she jumps at the chance to do freelance work for the company that just fired her! She knows something weird is going on with Andrea, Rob and Emily, and yet she continues to go back to them, even after she and Andrea have a fight over a very delicate subject (which I won’t reveal due to spoilers). She finds herself in a terrible predicament, and yet she doesn’t try very hard to get out of it. I found myself exasperated by her actions, although I get it. None of the horrific parts of the story would happen without all these bad decisions, lol.

Maeve’s story reminded me a lot of a particular horror classic (trying to avoid spoilers!), so in that respect the creepiness of the unfolding events worked really well, as long as you can suspend your disbelief over some of the sillier things that happen.

I know many of you are curious about the cover and how that plays into the story. Like many readers, I find dolls in horror stories to be unsettling, and the NewLife babies were extremely creepy. There are a couple of scenes in the mansion revolving around these dolls that made my skin crawl, but ultimately they ended up being little more than props and didn’t have much to do with the story at all, which was a little disappointing.

At about the halfway point the story veers into crazy territory, with all sorts of over-the-top events taking place, some that made sense and some that didn’t. There’s an almost dreamlike quality to what’s happening to Maeve, and despite the “runaway train” climax, I actually loved the ending. Negatives aside, I really did have fun with this book, and I’m very curious to see what Anne Heltzel does next.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

Ah, cults. So deliciously creepy, and such great fodder for a thriller story! Maeve and her cousin Andrea escaped the cult in question as kids, and as such were separated, and urged never to ask questions about what went down in their lives before. While Maeve did seek out answers, she also didn't want to upset her new family, so she let it go. Well, as she's come into adulthood, she finds herself unable to forget the past completely, and lucky (or unlucky) for her, DNA sites are easy to use. She and Andrea reconnect immediately, and she is thrilled to have her cousin back in her life.

Andrea has done really well for herself, and lives in a creepyass perfectly lovely old mansion in upstate New York with her husband. After some very unfortunate events befall Maeve, her cousin convinces her to stay on a more full time basis. The more Maeve gets pulled into Andrea's life- and her friend circle's belief that a woman cannot be fulfilled without children- the more she notices that everything is not really what it seems.

I didn't fully connect to Maeve, honestly, but I felt sympathetic toward her which was good enough for this sort of novel. Obviously, the reader can tell that something is amiss with Andrea and company from early-ish, but exactly what is not clear at first. I was able to figure out some of the twists before Maeve, but it was still exciting wondering whether Maeve herself would figure things out in time.

The second half of the book especially is very thrilling, with a lot of excitement and twists. The first half is more of a set up for what is to come, and I suppose the psychology behind why Maeve doesn't run for the hills at the very first signs of shadiness. The end is fairly satisfying, and while I wasn't sure whether I loved it, hated it, or both, it certainly was well crafted. I would have perhaps liked a little more backstory about the cult itself, but it's definitely a messed up one, which I loved!

Bottom Line: Certainly delivered on levels of messed up, just as the creepy disembodied baby head cover promises!

Just Like Mother is a fantastic thriller .
The characters are well written .
The story is twisty with a perfectly paced plot .