ARC REVIEW

Mothered
By Zoje Stage

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Publishing Date : 3/1/2023

Grace is from Pittsburgh and is trying to navigage the nee Covid world. Her mother, needing a place to live, comes to Pittsburgh and moves in with Graces. They have never had a great relationship, but add in the stress of a pandemic, quartening in close quarters and the added stress of sharing your home with someone else.....things start to unravel.

Everything seems to be progressing fine, but Grace starts having odd dreams about her disabeled sister who died when she was a child.  She starts sleepwalking, and is having a hard time seperating her dreams, from reality.  When her mom makes a VERY shoccking accusataion against her, Grace starts to unravel. Will she be able to seperate reality from delusion and figure out why her mother has it out for her?! ........and try not to get covid.

Review:

Iam not a huge fan of dream sequences, so that wasn't my favorite part of the book. However, I loooooooved the creepy, ominous vibe. 

This book was an adventure! I was dieing, to know what the heck was going on! It was decently paced and kept my interest. It had me saying " what the heck" on multiple occasions. I didnt mind the covid element.  It added to the stress.

If you liked, Sharp Edges or books with dark tones, this one is good! I could also see fans of The Push and Verity reading and enjoying this one.

I will say...I'm a tad confused on the ending. If you have read this, I would love to talk about it with you! ( but I think the confusion regarding the ending was intended!)

I can see this book being very popular after its released!

A big thanks to @netgalley and Thomas & Mercer publishing for this wild adventure!

This book was absolutely bonkers but I’m on the fence about if it was good bonkers or just straight bonkers. Grace was an interesting character who I sometimes felt was a little shallow despite the many facets of her we see and the backstory we get. There are lots of dream sequences which are not my favorite.

Some of the horror imagery was great and what I want when I pick up a horror novel (but not always what I get). The decision to set this during the early days of the pandemic really added to the tension, paranoia, and claustrophobic feel of the novel. I didn’t want to put this down because it always felt like something crazy was right around the corner.

I’m not disabled myself but something about the way the disabled character was portrayed kind of rubbed me the wrong way. While I like that the book shows that disabled people are just like able bodied people in terms of variations in temperament and personality, the decision to make the disabled sister a bit of a villain might not be well received. I don’t think there’s anything egregiously bad about the portrayal but again, I’m not disabled or have a disabled person close to me.

Holy crap, what did I just read??? Mothered was a WILD ride, and completely triggering if you have any kind of strand mother-daughter relationship. A fucked up fever dream right til the end.

Thank you to net galley and Thomas and Mercer publisher for letting me read an arc copy. I have read books by Zoye Stage before and I love her "wow" factor when she writes her thrillers. This book was written about the pandemic that did not bother me but, i felt like I was reading and nothing was happening.

A claustrophobic, pandemic-set thriller that has you questioning what is going on and which character you can trust.

I think there are a lot of people who would say that having their parent move in with them would be a nightmare-but add in a sprinkle of unresolved childhood conflict to a bowl of forced quarantine and you're bound to end with a disaster.

I enjoy the writing style of Zoje Stage and LOVED Baby Teeth, but this one was an average thriller to me. (I am a self-diagnosed thriller snob though, so take that with a grain of salt).

MOTHERED is a tension filled novel taking place during the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Full of twists, turns and an unreliable narrator, I was on the edge of my seat trying to figure out who had committed the crime that was revealed within the first chapter!

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publisher for my #arc!

Thanks to NetGalley as well as Thomas & Mercer for this eARC. The book was well written. This was my first Zoje Stage book and I enjoyed reading it. The book was not what I would call a horror but it was horrible in a sense. I was enjoyable to read and if her books are all like this I need to read more of her work. I will rememeber this book for a long time as I enjoyed the memories for the co-vid issues but I like book that cover everyday life experiences...well..some of them...haha..

It feels a little silly to put a disclaimer at the beginning of this book that it's not specifically written about the COVID-19 pandemic, because it's absolutely about the COVID-19 pandemic even if that's never said on page.

MOTHERED was a quick read, and while the writing was more straightforward and conversational than what I'm usually into, it did keep me engaged. The horror elements of this book were particularly enjoyable, and to me some of the best writing in the book came out in Grace's nightmares/hallucinations. Uncertainty about what's real and what's not can be so hit or miss in fiction, but in these instances I felt it was done well.

Overall, though, I found this really disjointed and even nonsensical at times. I think the intention of this was to mirror the uncertainty of the earlier COVID years and how on-edge we all were, but most of the time it just felt like it was preventing the book from developing any of its characters well. Grace's character took such a dramatic shift in the last few pages of the book that left me with no sense of how she got from A to B. There was also not much suspense here for me because all of the assumptions I made in the first few chapters of the book turned out to be correct, but that could just be a me problem.

A lot of the discussion surrounding the main character's deceased twin sister also felt ableist to me. I don't know that I am really the person to speak to this because I don't have a visible disability, so I'll just say I wasn't comfortable with it.

I had high hopes for this book. It is my first one by this author, but I had heard such great things about previous books. The book started out great – the prologue was fantastic. However, it went downhill from there. The book was just boring and there wasn’t enough dialogue. There wasn’t an “OMG” moment until Chapter 35! That’s when it started to get a little better, but by then it’s more than halfway into the book. I personally feel like that moment should have occurred sooner so that the author could explore more. The book never felt settled or complete for me. The best part about this book was Miguel; everyone needs a Miguel in their life! I realize that I am probably an outlier, and that a lot of people will love this book. It just wasn’t for me.

when I started this book I didn’t have any idea of what I was diving in, the cover shows a scissor like the ones that hairdressers use, cutting in half the word mothered, I really empathize with Grace, I guess everyone that had a sort of distanced relationship with their own mother could relate with the grace at the start of the book, after things start happening and Grace starts to be a unreliable narrator, even in third person, we don’t really know if what she is living or seeing is the reality or is a dream, and that was what made me come back for more, through the end it gets really disturbing, and lets just get that in the out, I stopped relating to Grace.

I really don’t know what is true or not, what really did happen to Holy, grace sister, or what really happen to Jackie husband, but after reading all the events that led to the ending, I can possibly deduce maybe he didn’t have a natural death… but who knows… this is really a weird family story, and you know what I still recommend it, it is spooky, relatable in may ways, not only with the dysfunctional family situation, but quarantining with people that annoy us, afraid for loved ones, etc., its kind of a punch under the belt.

Thank you NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for the free ARC and this is my honest opinion.

“It wasn’t an emergency. I didn’t want to bother anyone.”

Grace had everything going for her until the pandemic. She worked at a great salon and had just purchased a house before “2 weeks to slow the spread.”

Her workplace closes for good and though she can pick up work at a chair here and there, she’s going to need some help with the bills.

Funnily enough, her estranged mom Jackie needs somewhere to heal while she’s on the mend from an injury, plus she’s lonely because her husband died. Grace reluctantly agrees, thinking maybe things can be different now that so much time has passed and she’s on her own turf.

Things start off fairly well but take a sharp turn downhill quite suddenly, as Jackie reveals herself to still be the mean-spirited woman who raised Grace and her now deceased twin sister Hope. Optimistic names for children doomed to grow up in dysfunction. With the pandemic and lockdowns straining their already feeble mental health and grasp of reality, we start to see that not everyone will make it out of this alive.

I’m torn on this! It had a lot of dream sequences and I don’t really like that or to feel tricked. Let’s be real: No one wants to hear about your dream. Someone had to say it. Any dream stories need to be pretty short. While I’m not a big fan of it, it did take you inside the mind of Grace as she’s slowly losing it in this pressure cooker environment. It took me back to those hazy days of early 2020 when none of us knew what was going on.

Being cooped up with someone you love is hard enough, let alone a narcissist mother who wears you down. Grace was an interesting, complex, and flawed character. I like that there weren’t too many characters to learn and it was fully driven by the main character.

This was unique, original, and made me feel something. This is a great piece of pandemic fiction and this author continues to surprise me with her bizarre situations!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read and review!

Just too creepy and disturbing… That was the reason I did not finish Ms. Stage’s “Baby Teeth” and I’m afraid that’s the reason I had to finally put down “Mothered” one last time (after multiple starts over 5 months and waiting “to be in the right mood”). I’m more disappointed in myself and I now realize that pandemic horror/thrillers are a sub-genre I want to avoid. This is another battle of wills between mother and daughter (except this time the daughter isn’t 7 years old, as in “Baby Teeth”) and maybe having a super creepy older woman made this worse. I stopped being curious about the scissors on the cover and the dead twin aspect threw me for a loop. I’m rating it as 3 stars — a neutral review from me. There’s probably an audience out there for “Mothered” (like the fans of “Baby Teeth”) and chances are they’ll appreciate this narrative. Fellow reviewers that I respect did like “Mothered”.

Thank you to Thomas and Mercer and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review!

Relatively expositional, slow-burn title with mostly character driven story that relied heavily on pandemic elements for atmosphere.

Love love love this one!
I feel like I haven’t read a good horror book in a long time and this one absolutely delivered. I couldn’t get enough. I loved it! I usually get irritated by an unreliable female narrator but this one was just so well done. Lots of suspense and some body horror. Obvious mommy issues and pandemic fears. So good.
Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

A domestic thriller that tells the tale of a complicated relationship between a mother and daughter. When old wounds come brimming to the top, what could go wrong? A pandemic story that will keep you on your toes and keep you guessing. This story is wild ride for sure! (Call your mom!)

Disclaimer: Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for this ARC copy, I received this review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Mothered is a chilling, scary story that will keep you at the edge of your seat. The author has captured so perfectly the fallout of a pandemic when relationships are pushed to the limit and tensions escalate quickly.

This book has the mother (pun intended) of messed up toxic mother-daughter relationships at its core. Throw in the death of a sibling at a young age and its associated trauma, and the author has created the perfect storm with a supernatural twist to keep your eyes glued to the pages.

The only element I struggled with were the dream sequences - is Grace awake or is she dreaming? The lines are blurred so often in this story, that it gets hard to tell what’s in her head and what actually is happening around her.

Deliciously dark and twisted, Mothered is out on March 1st 2023.

Thanks to NetGalley and publishers for the arc!

This book is a real page-turner but oh-so unsettling. It's strangely relatable when you've lived through the pandemic, and you remember the uncertainty and feelings of scarcity. The author does a great job of capturing the emotions of that moment. Thanks for the advance review copy.

What took me so long to read this book? I downloaded it several months ago and read it only now, as I am trying to wrap up all the books I wanted to read in 2022.
This definitely was not an easy read. But it was sooo good nonetheless. The book is horrible, horribly good, awfully tragic, awfully awesome, and awesomely scary. I know it is my very own past experiences speaking here, me being able to relate to the main character and her family dynamic struggles. If you have grown up in an unhealthy household and struggled with relationships with your parents long into your own adulthood, you might be able to relate on some level, but I sincerely hope that there are not too many of those like me out there.
What I loved most about this book was this weird ability to see someone spiral in all the bad possible ways and know it is not me who is spiraling there. I am still safe here, in the comfort of my own home, and I get to witness closely and intimately the struggles of someone else. Someone who is entirely made up and not real but described in such fine detail that it makes it feel real.
What this book was about for me: a mother who has done everything she can for her daughter not to want her a part of her life, who then moves to live with the said daughter and keeps doing everything in her power to ruin whatever chance of peaceful co-habiting they might ever have possibly had. And there is no happy ending. Not the slightest bit of a happy ending.
What I also loved about this book: the slight hint of something possibly paranormal, extrasensory, but mentioned only as a tiny, remote hint. Definitely not too much to ruin the story.
I know many people hate that the book takes place during the pandemic. The author never calls it C19, but the similarities are there. I saw it as something that made the story more relatable, not annoying or triggering.
Oh, and did I say I absolutely loved the book? Yup, absolutely loved the book!

There are unreliable narrators and then there are Zoje Stage’s unreliable narrators. There’s no contest. When it comes to unreliable narrators, the ones Ms. Stage creates are the very best. Ms. Stage, if you already don’t know, a few years ago wrote a superb novel called Baby Teeth. At that time, I read Baby Teeth and started out not sure that I would like it because the plot was, I thought, likely to be maudlin and melodramatic. It was nothing of the sort. After reading two chapters I was hooked.

Now comes her new release, Mothered. It’s completely different from Baby Teeth in which a mother is terrorized by her young daughter. This time it’s an elderly mother who brings back Grace’s childhood baggage. But, as this is a Zoje Stage book, it’s not just baggage. It’s more like a baggage car chock full of horrors.

The book is set during the covid-19 pandemic in which the main character, Grace, had recently bought a house and then found herself out of her job as a hairstylist when her employer decided to close the business.

Next, Grace’s mother, Jackie, suggests that she move in with Grace. After all, her second husband recently died and left her some money. She can, she says, help pay the bills for Grace so she doesn’t lose her house. This is not altogether a good idea because to say that Grace and Jackie have a strained relationship would be a gross understatement. Still, seeing no other option, Grace agrees to the plan.

Grace quickly finds that she made a mistake in allowing Jackie to move in. Grace starts having nightmares and flashbacks to disturbing incidents from her childhood and is no longer able to tell what is and isn’t reality, particularly when it comes to her twin sister’s death. It is at this point that the horror element the author has been developing really kicks in. Ms. Stage is such a good writer that I found myself pulled into a plot as masterful as anything ever written by Hitchcock such that as the plot progressed, just like Grace, I could no longer discern what was real and what was not.

Meanwhile, Jackie is shocked to find out that Grace is an online catfisher. But Jackie herself is not without her own flaws: she is overbearing, passive-aggressive and judgmental. Grace’s problems and the tension between the two women continues to mount. Is Grace having a mental breakdown? Or is Jackie manipulating her by gaslighting her?

Were I able to, I would give this book six stars. It’s that good. Few writers can successfully merge the elements of horror genre fiction with those of traditional literary fiction, but as she did in Baby Teeth, Ms. Stage proves herself to be supremely adept in accomplishing the task.

Thank you to Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

When I saw that the author of Baby Teeth had a new book out, I knew that I needed to add it to my TBR list right away! Mothered by Zoje Stage revolves around Grace, whose mother Jackie recently moved in with her. But they don't have the best relationship. Back when she was a kid, her mother always favored Grace's disabled twin sister Hope. Now that they're living together, old memories are resurfacing. What secrets is Grace's mother hiding?

Here is a gripping excerpt from Chapter 1:

"Two weeks of lockdown became three. One month became two.
Grace whirled around the “office” in her new rolly chair, angrily pushing off the wall with her bare feet. She’d never had space for an office before. At present it was a mostly empty room, with a cheap IKEA desk in the corner—one of the mix-and-match styles where you picked the tabletop and legs separately.
“Grace?” her mother squawked in her ear. After barely talking once a month for decades, Jackie had been calling every other day for weeks; her life had been upended—first by her husband Robert’s mysterious illness and death, and then by her own health scare. Now she was waiting for an answer to a simple question: What’s wrong?"

Overall, Mothered is an amazing thriller and horror blend that will appeal to fans of Sharp Objects or Netflix's Clickbait. One highlight of this book is the eerie, odd atmosphere that kept me constantly on edge. Another highlight of this book is that it is absolutely terrifying. It gave me nightmares and made me afraid to go to sleep at night. If you're intrigued by the excerpt above, or if you're a fan of thrillers in general, I highly recommend that you check out this book when it comes out in March!