Maeve and her cousin, Andrea were raised by a group of women, “Mothers" on a commune. That is until one night when Maeve flees the commune with BOY. Leaving both the commune and Andrea behind. But Maeve and Andrea find each other again after being matched by a DNA website. Maeve is an editor who keeps others at arm’s length. Andrea is a successful woman working in the technology and fertility industry.

They soon reconnect and Maeve finds herself immersed in her cousin's life and when Andrea asks a question of her, Maeve is unsettled. When memories begin bubbling to the surface, she must face that the past might not be as terrorizing as her present.

I did feel that insta love with this book that others found. I found it to be an okay read from beginning to end. I often wondered if I was reading the same book that others had read. We can't love them all, and this was the case with this book. I listened to the audiobook and had a copy of the book on kindle so I could dive in to either when I wanted.

I would put this in my good not great pile. Enjoyable but left me wanting more. The creepy factor fell short for me.


Thank you to Macmillan-Tor/Forge, Tor Nightfire and NetGalley and Macmillan Audio who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.

Just as Maeve is reconnected with a long lost cousin, everything in her life goes wrong. She loses her job, her boyfriend gets into a tragic accident and there seems to be no hope on the horizon. However her cousin, Andrea seems to have all of the answers to make Maeve’s life better. But at what cost?
This debut horror novel is a punch in the gut. Right out of the gate you’re thrust into this Maeve’s life that is anything but perfect and her amazingly beautiful, kind, smart, and wealthy cousin has all of the answers to fix all of her problems. When it is clear that no jobs will be coming Maeve’s way, her cousin offers a solution - becoming her and her husband’s surrogate (which is the last thing this woman wants to do.) She considers herself to be the furthest from being a mother and wants to keep it that way.
The mystery and the horror just keep going on from there.
This is definitely a book that you aren’t going to wanna miss. It’s on a lot of lists for a good reason. This novel is slated to be released on May 17 so make sure that you pre-order a copy now. And happy Mother’s Day.
Thank you to @tornightfire for the advanced readers copy in exchange for my unbiased review.

This book was hella messed up. It starts out with 2 little girls - cousins - who live in cult. Eventually the main character is removed and put into foster care. As adults the cousins are reunited and everything seems to be great. Until the past comes back tenfold. I don’t want to give too much away, but I highly recommend this one if you want a book that is completely insane.

When Mae was a child, she escaped from the only life she had ever known, having been born into a cult referred to as the Mother Collective. She was quickly adopted by parents who loved her, but were not prepared to deal with the level of emotional trauma she had suffered. Mae did receive some counseling but was taught that it was best to just let the past go rather than actually process her feelings. Throughout the years she never gave up searching for her cousin Andrea who was raised in the cult with her, and who she had not seen since the day of her escape. When she finally reconnects with Andrea, her wealth and success are intimidating and she refuses to let Mae speak of their past. Despite this, she is excited to have found her family, but the closer she gets to Andrea, the more isolated she becomes from her own life. Is it a series of terrible coincidences that leave Mae with no choice but to turn to Andrea? Or has Andrea orchestrated these events for her own nefarious agenda?

I loved Mae from the start. She seemed to look down on herself but I was proud of her accomplishments. She is stronger than she knows, even if I did want to scream at her to run away! Some of the occurrences were predictable, but knowing that they were going to happen did not detract from my enjoyment of the story and maybe even increased the dread I felt since I saw what was coming but I couldn't warn Mae. The way that Andrea and her friends interacted with their husbands fairly screamed that they had been drinking the Kool-Aid. yet somehow the ending managed to take me by surprise. This is a must read for any fan of psychological thrillers.

This book had me rethinking if I should become a parent tbh.
When I read the description for this book, I was hooked. I love a good cult story.
As a child, Maeve was a part of the Mother Collective, a cult that placed a high value on motherhood and women. She has a lot of trauma from her experiences as a child and shuts everyone out. Her cousin Andrea, who was also in the cult, reconnects with her and invites Maeve to come visit her in upstate New York.
One thing leads to another and soon Maeve is completely dependent on Andrea.
While this story was pretty predictable, it was absolutely bonkers and I really enjoyed it. The author did manage to throw in one twist that surprised me. I was also surprised by the spicy scenes…I wasn’t expecting that at all.
This story is unhinged in a great way and truly did make me question if I want to be a mother. Deliciously creepy.

This book was one of the creepiest books I have ever read, and that's saying something. The main character(s) have an interesting bond, and there are several plot twists. The end...shocking!

by Anne Heltzel

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

Maeve escaped the Mother Collective, a cult that reveres motherhood and girls with plenty of dark secrets, on her eighth birthday. She is adopted and we meet her as a grown woman, lonely but generally successful and happy. She gets an alert from an ancestry website that her cousin (and best friend) from the Collective has registered and they reunite and begin to grow close. Cousin Andrea is the head of a successful life coaching business that has begun specializing in helping people prepare for having babies, or grieve after losing one. The cousins' relationship grows more and more important as Maeve's life begins to fall apart.

This was a good book, but it was not for me. I cannot relate with all of the people who say they flew through it in one sitting. The beginning set the book up nicely, but the middle dragged for me. The last third is where the pace really picked up and it became more of what I expect from horror. Before that, it was more of a sense of creeping dread.
I rather like creeping dread in horror, and it was done well. You're going to want to slap the protagonist a number of times, there are so many red flags and she keeps skipping by them. It was very interesting to see her world narrow tighter and tighter. I guessed the ending (yes all of it), but reading it was still delightful. The author clearly knew what she wanted to write and did a good job of getting that story down. I wish we'd have gotten more flashbacks, both of the cult and the protagonist's foster family.
The reason this book was not for me was because of the number of graphic sex scenes. I'm not particularly prudish about sex in literature, but these were serious stuff, with plenty of triggers. POTENTIAL SPOILER.................................................................................................. Normally when I'm that uncomfortable I'll just skip past, but that's not possible with every scene in this book, a couple are important to the plot.

I'll call this a 3.5

Just Like Mother was a slow burn for the first 60% of the book, and then it was one crazy event after another with an ending I didn’t love. The foreshadowing in the book was done exceptionally well, and I enjoyed the complicated dynamic between the two main characters. Andrea and Maeve were cousins born into an extreme feminist cult who were affected in completely different but equally horrifying ways. However, I found myself constantly wanting to know more about the cult and being confused by some aspects of it. I attribute a lot of this confusion to the flashback scenes that were somewhat vague and disorienting. One part of the story that I found unnecessary was the graphic sex and rape scenes — I quickly skimmed over these parts of the book. Finally, I did enjoy the commentary on feminism and motherhood. This exploration of women judging other women for their relationship and reproduction choices was timely and fitting.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this novel. This is my honest review.

I feel like there is definitely an audience for this book, it just wasn’t for me. I found parts of it a bit more disturbing than I’m comfortable with and it definitely required me to completely suspend disbelief. Many horror fans will enjoy this and it’s strong feminist vibe though.

I’m rounding this up to 4.5 stars and it would totally have been 5, but I still can’t shake off the creepiness of this book! And the ending!!!!! I cannot believe the author had the audacity to end the novel that way. You could almost see it coming but I wouldn’t have believed it until it was right there.
Maeve escaped a cult when she was 8 years old. After being found in the wreckage of a car accident, the Mother Collective is broken up and Maeve is separated from her cousin, Andrea. Later, Maeve and Andrea connect again and almost from the first reconnection, this story spirals quickly. There are definitely some predictive elements to the novel but the creepiness factor and the sprinkling of childhood details keep you guessing. Anne Heltzel just might be my new favorite!

*Special thanks to NetGalley & Tor/Nightfire for an e-arc of this novel.*

I can’t stop thinking about ᴊᴜꜱᴛ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴍᴏᴛʜᴇʀ. A cult: The Mother Collective. The entire narrative on motherhood. The dolls. The gothic house.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: dolls are creepy so I KNEW I had to have this book because the cover just…ick 😂

Emily and Maeve are cousins who promised to never leave each other, but the last time Maeve saw Emily was when she escaped the cult. And she’s worked really hard on creating a normal life, but she can’t help feeling as though something or someone is missing from her life: Andrea.

Once Andrea reappears in her life, she feels like everything is finally coming together for her. She has her cousin back after all, and she doesn’t mind that Andrea’s friends disapprove of her single lifestyle.

But something just isn’t right. There’s discarded doll parts in an abandoned section of the house. Mysterious deaths are occurring when people get close to her. And she has this feeling of disconnection from everything she’s tried so hard to create. But Andrea has her best interests at heart….right?

This book slowly builds a very sinister atmosphere. There’s mild gore to keep your horror heart happy, while your gut adjusts to the ever deepening dread of what’s to come. Even though this was pretty predictable for me, it still held a lot of surprises.

Oh and did I mention, I hate dolls? Honestly, if you find them as creepy as I do…please give this one a chance. This book will infuriate you with its messages of motherhood. If I could slap Emily, I would have.

And the ending 😱😱😱. I think you just really need to see for yourself. If you read this, come let me know!!

Thank you to Nightfire for my ARC!

I wanted to love this book so badly, but it just fell flat for me.

The book starts out super promising: you have an MC who was born & raised in a cult, creepy relationships where the spouses seem to act like robots, extremely weird dolls that are meant to serve as a sort of replacement for real children. This had all the components to be a really good horror story about cult survivors, female body autonomy, infertility and both the desire and lack of desire to become a mother. Just Like Mother could've been an amazing social commentary wrapped in a horror story but it just became more bizarre as the story progressed, and not in a good way.

The characters felt inconsistent, the sex things were so damn awkward and completely unnecessary (don't get me wrong, i love smut as much as the next person, but what was the reason for those? it felt so awkward). Even the cult aspect of the story, which is one of the main themes, didn't even feel like a cult. It just felt like a bunch of women on a weekend retreat. Honestly, Just Like Mother is the epitome of an incredible idea but with terrible execution.

The Mothers

Predictable and not so scary. I thought this book would be better than it was. I actually guessed what was happening or going to happen before it did. It made Maeve look a bit naive and not very perceptive to the happenings around her.

The story of two girls raised in a cult until they were ages 7 and 11. The they didn't have contact for over 20 years and all of a sudden they were cousins again and best friends. I didn't buy it from the beginning.

The only thing I found creepy was the dolls. The dolls were creepy. Maeve should have picked up on Andrea's motives, especially after her encounter with Emily. Maeve's escape from Andrea and the cabin was the only really interesting part of the book.

There was a bit of a twist at the very ending, but not enough to make much of a difference to the story, I already figured it would end somewhat as it did, I was just waiting to see how.

Thanks to the Author Anne Heltzel, the publisher Macmillan-Tor/Forge, and NetGalley for making a copy available to me to read and review.

****trigger warning for this book: rape****

This book is insanely good and keeps you hooked. I wanted to scream at Maeve for being so oblivious to everything that was happening to her. Maeve and Andrea grew up in a motherhood cult and escaped when they were children and were separated and placed in foster care. As the book goes on you get small peaks into the events that occurred back when Maeve was 7, as she begins reconnecting with her cousin Andrea at in their thirties. The scariest part about this book is that the motherhood cult does not differ all too much from the beliefs of many pro-life women and knowing that those women do exist in the world, just maybe not to the same degree. A great horror novel that you won’t want to put down!

Creepy as they come. The Mother collective a far reaching group which exists for women to birth girls to continue this cult of motherhood perfection. Young Maeve escapes in childhood and in her adult years is reunited with her cousin Andrea. This successful cousin and her husband live in a Catskill estate where their tech company fashions dolls to help woman to be better mothers?
You know exactly where this is going but you can’t look away. Lots of psychological and physical trauma past and present is endured by Maeve and just when you think she’s out of the woods….
Thanks to netgalley for this ARC. Publishing soon!

I am so disappointed that I did not enjoy Just Like Mother. The title is creepy, the cover is unsettling, and the premise is intriguing. Unfortunately, the execution was just not there for me. The plot requires an immense capacity to suspend your disbelief -- and I just didn't have it in me. And the writing fell flat because Heltzel continually tells the reader what she wants them to know, rather than showing it to them. Overall, I think you can skip this one in favor of some other creepy books.

This book gives the term mother a whole new creepy meaning.

Giving me all the cult, wacky mom group vibes just like mother delivered on the creep-factor with just enough discomfort, disorientation and gore. I loved this book.

Maeve and her cousin Andrea grew up in a cult built on the idea of motherhood being the ultimate calling with the underlying message that men are irrelevant beyond that. After Andrea escapes the cult as a young girl, she grows apart from the one person in the whole world she lives and trusts…her cousin Andrea.

After years apart Andrea and Maeve get back in touch and seem to pick up exactly where they left off…but Maeve is forbidden from talking about their past and Andrea can’t understand why Maeve doesn’t share her same goals in life…to be a mother.

Things get a little tense from that point forward.

This book is like an awful, judgey mommy Facebook group to the extreme. Trust. No. Mother.

But also happy Mother’s Day.

4.5 stars.

This is a truly creepy thriller that earns its creepiness with a slow build. After a brief childhood scene with a group of women who call themselves the Mothers, the main story begins in the present with young adult Maeve trying to make it in publishing in New York as an editor. She had been adopted into a foster home and lost track of her cousin and best friend Andrea.

When she and Andrea find each other through a DNA matching site, it's as if she has been reunited with long-lost family. Not only that, but after scraping by she is invited into Andrea's world of wealth and success. Andrea is the CEO of a lifestyle company called NewLife which supports family planning with AI technology.

From here things become increasingly complicated. After turning down Andrea's request to donate her eggs to give Andrea the possibility of having a child that looks like her, her life goes into a tailspin. Her lover dies in a fire, and then her new love abandons her. Pregnant against her will, Maeve miraculously escapes a trap. The original Mother collective story is interspersed through the narrative, and eventually all of the questions that are hinted at from the beginning are answered. But that only begins to address the mystery that Maeve is facing. The conspiracy runs deeper than she imagined, and the surprises continue right up to the end.

Thanks to NetGalley for a prepublication copy.

This started off as a bit too much of a slow burn to really keep my attention; I kept finding other books to read unfortunately because I just could not get into this. The synopsis sounds really cool and there was * some promise* to the first 150 or so pages, but it was just... honestly a little boring. I finished it and it felt like I was doing so intentionally, with great effort - and the payoff didn't feel worth it. Not the worst book and not poorly written, just... very slow & kind of dull.

2.5 stars - I am so conflicted about my feelings towards this book because the ending (and I mean the epilogue) was one of the eeriest things I have read in a good while. The beginning of the novel (and I mean the prologue), while we get to know our protagonist Maeve and her cousin Andrea's history and upbringing, was also incredibly interesting. The entire plot of the book was super interesting and Heltzel's writing is extremely quick paced - I definitely felt like I could not put this book down because I really wanted to know what was happening. The first 30% of the book is a lot of buildup to the overall cult/thriller vibes and I really enjoyed that. But - you really need to suspend your disbelief. The novel very much hinges on the fact that Maeve is straight up naive and oblivious (and also, that the reader is too tbh). Without going into details, there is so much that does not make sense and if you have even an ounce of awareness of what is going on around you, you pick up on the plot and exactly what is happening verrrry early on. The mystery then became a chore to read because I just wanted it to be over; I knew exactly what was going to happen. I do want to give credit to Heltzel because I trusted exactly 0 women from the reveal of the cult to the ending of the novel and I still did not expect that ending at all.