This was a wild ride for sure! I’m not easily rattled, but there were definitely parts of this book that creeped me out and the ending is absolutely skin-crawling!
I really enjoyed the overall message of this book and found it incredibly creative how Heltzel portrayed it. There’s a lot of pressure and expectation of women surrounding life choices and I can appreciate the feminist undertones and message it delivers.
There are some gory parts of this book, so if that isn’t your thing you might want to reconsider reading this one.
There were a few loose ends I thought were going to be tied up by the end and a couple of instances I thought were going to be revisited or more thoroughly explained and weren’t hence the 4⭐️ and not 5.
I did thoroughly enjoy reading this one though and was actually really sad when the book was done. I had the hardest time putting this book down and I look forward to reading more from this author!
A big thank you to NetGalley for providing me with this ARC.
4⭐️

Just like mother really surprised me with the way it had me invested. While I guessed early on who was the "bad guy" in this story, there was still so many horrifying things that I couldn't have even guessed at. This book really takes a common horror trope of women's fertility and motherhood and twisted it on it's head. Often in this topic of horror, the people taking advantage of women are men- but in this instance, the women turn on women, which made it all the more interesting. Maeve's naivety at times was unbelievable and frustrating, though, and this took a bit away from the story. It felt as though she never really fought to have anything different happen to her, which was odd to me.

Trigger warnings: strong sexual content (NC-17 level); physical and emotional child abuse; rape

Maeve is a thirty-three book editor living in New York. The survivor of a misandrist and organic or chosen infertility-despising motherhood cult she escaped and inadvertently uncovered as an eight year-old girl, Maeve is a psychologically impaired adult whose PTSD and intense guilt have left her unable to form lasting relationships or to enjoy physical pleasure that is not accompanied by punishment and pain.

Maeve's biggest regret is the loss of companionship she had with her cousin, Andrea. Because Maeve exposed the cult, all of the girls in the cult were taken into foster care and Maeve knows only that she destroyed Maeve's life with the Mothers. Maeve is adopted by an older couple and given a pleasant enough childhood, but as soon as she leaves home she begins to search for Andrea. In spite of years of searching, Maeve's search proves unsuccessful until one day, years after submitting her DNA to an ancestry site, Andrea suddenly appears and is looking to reconcile with Maeve.

Maeve soon finds herself at Andrea's estate, an old Masonic Temple complete with hidden passageways, with Andrea, Andrea's husband, Rob, the face of Andrea's company, Emily, Emily's husband Micah, their son Henry and their dog, Truman. Emily and Micah have an unusual relationship in which Micah always seems on edge and Emily seems jealous of the attention Andrea pays to Maeve. Andrea and Rob soon make an overture toward Maeve that makes Maeve uneasy and puts a damper on their relationship.

In spite of all this, Maeve continues to work toward rekindling the close relationship she had with Andrea while they were with the cult. Suddenly, Maeve's successful, except monetarily, career as a book editor comes crushing down when her publisher decides to restructure leaving Maeve without a job and with no way to pay for her apartment. Luckily, Maeve's friend with benefits, Ryan, offers her a place to crash and her former boss offers her some free lance editing to do to make ends meet. Then Maeve, who one of the Mothers said was born under a bad sign, suffers a soul crushing setback that leaves her without Ryan and a place to live.

Andrea comes to the rescue and Maeve moves to the estate to recover from this disaster. While Maeve's relationship with Emily and Micah worsens, Maeve strikes up a romance with a local restaurateur, Tyler, and opens herself up to the idea of real relationships and allowing herself to feel love without the accompanying need to be punished. Just as things are looking up again, Maeve again seems to have been born under a bad sign when it appears that Tyler has "stealthed" her. Things go from bad to worse when a remorseful Tyler is found wrapped around a pole apparently under the influence. Soon, Maeve finds herself using all the coping skills she learned in the cult and surviving it's aftermath.

The climax of the book twists and turns its way into a conclusion some will guess, but the rollercoaster ride that brings you there is fun, nonetheless.

Wouldn't classify this as horror, but definitely creepy and suspenseful. I liked the main character Maeve, as the book starts she is 32, has a sort of boyfriend
and a job as a book editor. We get flashbacks of her childhood where she was raised by her Mothers in an isolated area with her cousin who's a little older and then several much younger siblings. The childhood memories are doled out as things happen in the present. After 25 years she is alerted to a familial match, her cousin Andrea who has been looking for her too. Thus begins a ride Maeve never expected. I kept reading to find out what happens next, and was not disappointed. Creepy is all I'll say. Appreciation to NetGalley for the ARC read for an honest review.

I have to start by saying the cover of this book is so freaky and perfectly captures the tone of this story. I'll never look at a doll the same way again!

This story checked all the boxes for me: a gothic mansion full of secret passages, an isolated setting, cults, creepy dolls, a slowly building sense of dread and claustrophobia, characters who may or may not be who they seem with hidden motives galore.

I felt a strong sense of nostalgia at times with this story having touches of the classic gothic, woman-in-peril thriller, Stepford wives, and the retro cult horror books and movies from my adolescence. The author managed to take these nostalgic tropes and give them a fresh, modern, thoroughly terrifying spin, givng the reader the best of both worlds.

I couldn't set this book down until I reached the last page and the final secret was revealed. Highly recommended!

This was a great thriller like nothing I've read before! Maeve and Andrea are cousins and grew up in a cult with "Mothers" and have been estranged since childhood. But Maeve finds Andrea and the two re-connect as Andrea and her husband live in an isolated place with an incredible house that's gothic-like and eerie but has its charm as well. They are delighted to reunite until odd things begin to happen and Maeve is unsure what to make of the circumstances as she becomes enamored and then skeptical about her surroundings. It's creepy, it's dark, and it borders on horror so go into it with no planned assumptions; just let Mother guide you!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

This cult thriller is about a woman's struggle with reconnecting with people from her tragic past and it explores how love and trust can be used against you. This book also explores the reality many people are faced with when the question to have children arises and the stigma surrounding people who choose not to become parents (more specifically mothers).

I really liked the writing in this book. The author knows how to set the tone and use language to set up the creepy atmosphere; it felt very believable and not eye-rolling at all. The twists were also very unexpected, I think the author knew how to set the plot up and make sure it all worked well together.

I think the characters could have used a bit more development, it wasn't until nearing the end I found myself actually seeing the characters past their 'robotic' personalities. I will say this book did feel a bit too mild to be categorized as a 'horror', but it definitely has dark aspects. I wished there were more intense scenes throughout the book and not just at the ending. A lot of the 'horror' scenarios could have been explored more to add even more to the story.

I enjoyed this book and I think it was well done. It may have been too mild for my taste, but it had very important plot points and was interesting to read.

I wanted to love this book. Ms. Heltzel is deft at creating a mood and setting a scene that you can visualize in your mind like a film. The central idea of motherhood and what it means to a modern woman who may choose not to procreate has never been more relevant given the times. Such awkward and sometimes intrusive discussions were captured well in the dialogue of these characters, so well in fact that I found my blood boiling for the sake of the main character. If I could have reached into the book and throttled those women, I would've had to be held back.

The story itself was intriguing, at least in the beginning, but then it went into predictable if not maddening directions with no explanation for the choices these characters were making. There was never any truly believable motive for anything anyone was doing by the end. Characters we'd never met before suddenly popped up with the sole purpose of moving the plot forward while leaving us still wondering what exactly had happened to those who came before.

The subtle blending of a sci=fi element into the mix of a horror novel was exciting... until it went absolutely nowhere (I find myself now wanting a story about those creepy babydolls).

In the end, if I don't care about any of the characters - if I don't feel that I really got to know any of them well enough to care - then a story will fall flat for me. So much of the dialogue of this book was used to explain what was happening instead of revealing something of true importance about the inner workings of a characters mind, drive and desire. It read more like a book that is aiming to become a movie with a reliance on visual storytelling vs. telling us a story through careful and detailed character development. I'm left wondering what the author was trying to say or rather, asking the question "why should I care about any of this"? And I DO want to care, the bones are here, they just need a little more flesh.

Thank you to NetGalley for the digital advance reader copy of this book. Cults are fascinating and this novel weaves a great story about an odd type of cult. I would have enjoyed a little more graphic telling of the main characters childhood of horrors, but it is definitely implied. There are several twists and turns in the story, however most were predictable. This is a solid and entertainingg story with interesting characters. 4 stars.

Wow i was very pleasantly surprised by this one! Super creepy, intriguing, and not at all predictable. Great read!

Plot: 4
Characters: 4 (for some that lacked fleshing out, it makes sense later)
Writing Style: 5
Enjoyment: 4/4.5
Cover: 4 (but it's a perfect fit)

What a creepy, intense, trip. I have very little issues with this suspense-thriller-horror book and what issues I do possess are minor and not the sort to ruin it, overall. I liked the pace and movements from present to past and back again, I mostly enjoyed the main character (and think the first PoV fits) - I liked that she could advocate for herself in some aspects. Setting is properly quaint and then creepy when it needs to be, leaving you uncertain if the narrator is unreliable or if it's you reading too much into things. The cult's concept is tragic, awful, and has certain *objective* relatability. Definitely a triggery book for some readers, given it revolves around: cults (brainwashing, kidnapping), elite feminism/twisted motherhood, rape, infanticide, torture, murder. Of the multiple twists, I didn't see at least one of them coming and has suspicions about another until it was then confirmed.

Not a spoiler, but there was a part that had me laughing for a good moment because it's something I would do - when the toddler, Henry, is having a tantrum and Mauve (MC) whispers to the unruly child she knows he's faking.

p.s. Belated realization; oh, wait a minute, what happened to the dog? D:

Who doesn’t love a book about cults? I picked this from NetGalley because of the cover and the mention of cults. I sometimes like to skip a whole description so I’m surprised when I read and boy did this deliver! All the puns intended. Sure I was able to predict a majority of the book but it was still extremely captivating and hard to put down. This story may be hard on anyone who is sensitive to motherhood topics or mentions of miscarriage. It is considered a horror so there are some intense scenes but overall not too graphic, mostly just a hard look into motherhood and how society perceives women who choose to not have kids. I loved this story as a women that doesn’t want kids or, frankly, even like kids. I resonated with a lot of the feelings Maeve had on being happily childless.

Ever feel like everywhere you look there's a baby? And it's cooing mother?
They are all around and watching you and they want you to join their "tribe."

Being a mother is such a blessing and everyone should experience it! If you're not sure it's for you it's because you haven't tried it yet, but luckily there's a robot doll to help you start that motherly bond up!

This book insidiously crept it's way into my mind and it's been there since. Its been weeks since I finished and I still am thinking about Just Like Mother. Motherhood is totally a cult and it's not for everyone.

Mauve, the protagonist of this book escaped a cult about the joy of motherhood and has stayed away from anything that reminded her of the past until a chance DNA test leads her to her cousin. Her cousin who she left in the cult, but has somehow grown up to be happy, healthy and hella successful. How lucky for Mauve! What could possibly go wrong when she's invited to spend some time living with her "family" again?!

Stay away from this book if you're sensitive about infertility or miscarriage, but otherwise READ THIS!

Well developed characters and well written.
This is a great horror story, on so many levels. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book

Review of Uncorrected Digital Galley

When eight-year-old Maeve escapes the cult where she’s spent her entire life, she leaves her best friend/cousin, Andrea, behind. And, for the next twenty years or so, she tries to make a normal life for herself in New York, working as an editor for a publishing firm.

When a DNA test for an ancestry website unexpectedly reunites her with Andrea, Maeve is delighted. Soon she is spending more time in the Catskills at Andrea’s estate.

But there’s something untoward happening with Andrea. Will Maeve continue to excuse Andrea’s strange behavior or will she find herself forced to confront her childhood terrors?

=========

Told from Maeve’s point of view, the twisty story is an unsettling descent into depravity, filled with horrific events and unlikeable characters. Readers will find that the unfolding events are often predictable,

Definitely creepy, especially those dolls, but readers will be disappointed to learn that the details concerning the Mother Collective are sparse; despite its centrality to the telling of the tale, the cult remains shrouded in mystery, with no information about it except for some flashbacks that provide minimal insight into the Mother Collective where the girls grew up.

The insidiousness just creeps along, creating an undercurrent of apprehension to accompany the frustration over Maeve’s overwhelming naïveté. As the evolving story becomes more and more implausible, readers will have no trouble identifying the “big reveal” long before it occurs. Astute readers will see where this story is going well in advance of its denouement.

I received a free copy of this eBook from Macmillan-Tor/Forge, Tor Nightfire and NetGalley
#JustLikeMother #NetGalley

I love a good cult story, and this book is just that. It’s a quick read, super dark with a lot of twists. The main character was incredibly obtuse though, which was frustrating as hell. I wanted to shake her repeatedly and scream “Get out of there!” for the entire second half of the book, but that just served to ratchet up the tension even more. I can’t wait to see what else this author comes up with.

Book received for free through NetGalley

So terrifying. That said the book grabbed me from the start and it was hard to put down. Scary but good read.

This book is a creepy and fast paced thriller. I really like how quickly the story moved, and it was a super fast read. The motherhood cult is super disturbing, but I wish we’d gotten to learn a little bit more about the original.

A quick, unsettling ready that I really enjoyed, even as it grew increasingly implausible that the lead character couldn't figure out what was going on. Motherhood is the ultimate horror for me so this definitely touched on some discomfort and included many nightmare scenarios. Good pacing and the length was perfect, I would've just liked for our heroine to be a teeny tiny bit sharper (or to have learned anything at all in therapy? Anything?)

3 stars. Just Like Mother succeeds at being extremely creepy, even more so if you are a person who is childless by choice and may see disturbing parallels between the conflicts in the book and conversations you've had in real life, but fails to do much else. The main character of the novel, Maeve, is a survivor of a motherhood-centered cult who has done her best to distance herself from her past and build a new life for herself since. She and her cousin, Andrea, grew up in the cult together and were inseparable until the cult was busted. One day, when Maeve is thirty-three, she suddenly finds Andrea through a DNA-matching site, and they are reunited for the first time in twenty-five years.

The atmosphere of the novel was sufficiently creepy to disturb me and make me want to read on to find out what happens -- but when I finally did, it felt disappointingly predictable. This disappointment was exacerbated by what I found to be Maeve's incredible stupidity. I'm sorry, but I'm not sure why Maeve's first thought after having grown up in a motherhood-centered cult with another girl, been separated from her for decades, and then reunited with her to find out that she is the head of a motherhood-centered tech/life-coaching hybrid startup, was not one of suspicion. The "big reveal" of the novel was obvious to me from the second Andrea started talking about her company. Throughout the buildup to this big reveal, several huge hints and red flags are dropped, but Maeve almost seems to willfully ignore them. I've never liked when plots rely on you believing a character is actually so obtuse that they don't notice obvious clues just to build suspense, and this was no exception. Finally, unlike a lot of people, I actually did not like the ending. Without giving away the details, I simply thought it made no sense, and did not add any sort of scariness or meaning to the novel.

If you want to feel thoroughly creeped out from cover to cover, Just Like Mother is for you. However, if you want a more poignant storyline and ending with a meaning beyond just "creepy," you may yourself a bit disappointed when you reach the back cover, as I did.