The nitty-gritty: Zoje Stage's latest should have worked, but too many disconnected elements made for an overall confusing and lackluster thriller.

I had high hopes for Mothered, since I’ve had such good experiences with Stage’s other books, but unfortunately this didn’t completely work for me. The premise is great: a woman struggling to pay her bills due to Covid lock-downs agrees to let her mother move in with her. Both women are mentally unstable in different ways, so the story should have worked. But although there was plenty of potential, the execution fell flat at times.

Grace has just purchased her first house when the Covid-19 pandemic hits, and when her employer decides to retire, Grace suddenly finds herself without a paycheck. Luckily, her estranged mother Jackie has a great idea: Jackie’s husband has just died and she doesn’t want to live alone. Why not move in with Grace and help her pay the bills? It seems like the perfect solution, but is Grace really equipped to cohabitate with her mother? As the pandemic drags on, Grace begins to experience terrifying nightmares, many of them having to do with her sister Hope, who died when Grace was a teenager. The tension between Grace and Jackie mounts, and Grace’s nightmares worsen. Are they real? Or is she losing her mind?

Let’s start with the positive, because there were things I liked about this book. First, Stage has created a creepy, claustrophobic atmosphere that leaves the reader feeling very uncomfortable. There is a sense of unease permeating the story, and even lighter moments are overshadowed by the feeling that things just aren’t quite right. And for a thriller, that’s a good thing. The Covid-19 element adds a lot to this unease (although I have more to say about the pandemic theme later in this review), and the author really captures the fears and uncertainties of those first few weeks of the pandemic, when no one really knew what was happening.

A lot of the story deals with Grace having weird nightmares, and while this device started to get old after a while, it was effective at first. The dreams were described in such a way that it was hard to figure out whether they were real or not. Sometimes Grace appeared to be having a conversation with someone, and then it would devolve into a bloody nightmare. I found myself making notes like “WTF” quite a bit, these sections were so weird and shocking. If the author was trying to keep the reader off balance, then she succeeded.

I also really enjoyed the flashbacks with Grace and Hope as children, and I actually found these sections to be much more interesting than the interactions between Grace and Jackie. Hope was born with cerebral palsy and used a wheelchair to get around. She wasn't able to speak very well, but Grace understood everything she said, as they had a strong sister bond between them. Hope was smart and did well in school, and Jackie never missed an opportunity to let Grace know that Hope was her favorite daughter. It was heartbreaking to read about their weird dynamic, which is even weirder because it turns out Hope was a horrible person. She was mean and manipulative and went out of her way to hurt Grace whenever she could, and even though Hope is dead, Grace still feels haunted by the awful things Hope did to her. One of the things the girls did together as children was to make paper dolls and elaborate paper outfits for them, which leads to one of the more shocking events in the story. There’s also a twist where Jackie reveals something to Grace that makes her question her memories and sanity. In short, I enjoyed everything surrounding Hope’s storyline.

But now for the elements that didn’t work for me. Oddly enough, the author introduced a side plot where Grace has taken on multiple online male personas and is catfishing unsuspecting women. It was just—weird. She calls these women her “damsels” and offers them relationship advice, and in order to keep them all straight, she has a detailed notebook with each of her persona’s names and who they are “helping.” The only reason I could think of for including this was to add drama to Grace’s and Jackie’s relationship (Jackie eventually finds out her secret), but otherwise it was just a distraction that didn’t do anything for the plot.

When I started reading, I thought I was going to get a horror/thriller story revolving around Grace and her mother, but honestly, most of their scenes together were pretty boring. Grace bends over backwards to make her mother welcome, even though Jackie is clearly gaslighting her. Things don’t get interesting until almost the end of the book, and by that time my head was spinning with everything going on: Covid, nightmares, Grace’s catfishing scheme, a weird scene in a beauty salon (where Grace has just started a new job) that had nothing to do with the rest of the story, and the side plot with Miguel. A burst of violence at the end should have added excitement, but it felt more confusing that thrilling, unfortunately. Plus, I was disappointed that the scissors on the cover of the book didn’t play a bigger role in the story. There was definitely a missed opportunity at the end, which I can’t go into because of spoilers, but it would have made the whole thing more cohesive.

Finally, the elephant in the room, the Covid storyline. Sigh. I understand that Stage wrote Mothered at the beginning of the pandemic, but three years later I’m sort of over reading about it. I felt as if I were reliving those early months, especially when Grace’s best friend Miguel gets Covid and winds up in the hospital on a ventilator. I just didn’t see the need for that storyline, and to be honest, Miguel was such an annoying character and the book would have been better without him.

Bottom line, it’s hard for me to recommend Mothered. I’d rather point you in the direction of a couple of Zoje Stage’s other books that I loved, Wonderland and Getaway (I haven’t yet read Baby Teeth but it’s on my list). Despite my complaints, though, I will always pick up a new book by Zoje Stage.

With thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

That was a very interesting book! I don't know what to say about it, except the main character was definitely unreliable. I really liked the ending, it will make me think about what actually happened for a while.

I thought this book was very reflective of the time it was written (during the pandemic) and captured the feelings that many of us had - hopelessness, despair, cut-off from our support systems, fear of the unknown, and that "groundhog day" syndrome.

The book was filled with flashbacks and dreams and dreams that were flashbacks of real or imagined situations, but it read like stream of consciousness in many parts. At times we don't know whether the mother or daughter has lost touch with reality or if they are experiencing a shared altered reality. According to Grace, all her troubles started when her mother came to live with her (and was so much nicer than she remembered her).

While I loved Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage, this book, while maintaining Stage's grasp of quirky and odd behavior, was not as enjoyable to me. But I think it accomplished what the author set out to do, to capture the feelings of a moment in time. I feel like there were definitely points the author was making that went right over my head! I am appreciative to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for an advance reader's copy.

✂️ 𝗥𝗘𝗩𝗜𝗘𝗪 ✂️

𝗠𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱
𝗕𝘆 𝗭𝗼𝗷𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲
𝟯𝟭𝟳 𝗽𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀
𝗣𝘂𝗯: 𝟯/𝟭/𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯

• 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿 • 𝗦𝘂𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗲 • 𝗛𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗼𝗿 •

📖 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸: Mothered is a claustrophobic, psychological thriller about one woman’s nightmarish spiral while quarantined with her mother.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Grace risks losing her newly mortgaged home after the loss of her job. As a solution, she moves her mother, Jackie, into her spare room to help make ends meet.

Grace and her mom have always had a tumultuous relationship. Grace was one half of twins, with her sister, Hope, having special needs. Hope was coddled and cared for, while Grace was often the brunt of her mother's wrath and emotional abuse. So Grace is less than thrilled with having her mother move in (especially because Grace has some very peculiar hobbies) but she's out of options and refuses to lose her new house.

With the new living situation, combined with the stress, isolation, and claustrophobia of the COVID-19 lockdown, Grace's grasp on reality begins slipping. She's losing chunks of time, having lucid dreams, hallucinating... She and her mother are both becoming unhinged. Grace (and the reader) can't quite figure out what's real and what's not.

💭 𝗧𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀: This was a wholy original mash-up of psychological thriller / claustrophobic thriller / suspenseful horror. It has great pacing and held my interest for all 317 pages. It does require the reader to suspend reality - so if you're able to do that, and enjoy more obscure, abstract horror / thrillers, this is definitely for you!

📍Note: Like Baby Teeth, this book is very dark and contains some disturbing content. Check TWs.

Thank you Thomas & Mercer and @netgalley for the gifted eARC.

✨This is currently available on Kindle Unlimited.

Rating: 3.5 rounded to 4 stars

This is my third Zoje Stage novel, and I have had nothing but praise for the first two books I read by her. I loved Baby Teeth and Getaway, and I recommended them to everyone I see (I still share a link with all of my reader friends when Baby Teeth is on sale.) Her latest book, Mothered, is a pandemic book, and I realized quickly that books about Covid-19 and isolation are going to irritate and anger me.

The story starts in the middle of the shutdown, with Grace losing her job and spending most of her time talking to her friend, Miguel, and a group of girls that she is catfishing on the internet, using male avatars to make these girls feel attached to her. (She has also skewed her thinking that she is doing these girls a favor by catfishing them because all she is being charming and trying to help them with their lives.) When Grace’s mother, Jackie, convinces her that she can move in to help with the house while Grace is unemployed in the middle of a lockdown, things quickly turn. There are memories of Grace’s childhood, and her twin sister, Hope, and the reason why Jackie has been distance from Grace since Hope’s death.

Zoje Stage has written another Mother/Daughter/Sisters codependency book. This is okay, but the setting is what bothered me the most, the actions that Grace in particular takes. I know that the lockdown was difficult for almost everyone, and many people struggled. Getting outside did not bother me. Them sitting on the porch is a nice way to get out of the house. Even walking around the neighborhood as long as Grace avoided contact with someone. These are solutions that could help Grace cope with the things she was feeling. When Grace thinks about calling an ambulance and checking herself into the hospital or having her mother go to the hospital just to get away from her, this is when I have my biggest problems with her. There are times when she is supposed to be quarantined because she is exposed but wants to go to the grocery or the drugstore to get something. Even though Stage has written Grace as someone who is careful about spreading Covid, there are moments when it feels like she is not very careful at all. The passages about her contemplating going to the hospital as a solution to her problems made me want to throw the book across the room. I am a frontline health care worker who watched hundreds of people slowly die on ventilators and throughout the hospital. The hospital is never a place she would ever want to be, especially because she is fighting with her mother.

I did not like these characters. I did not like the situation. I did not understand the point of the throwaway prologue and epilogue, but I still like Zoje Stage and her novels. Maybe this one hit too close to me, and I tried very hard not to nitpick about the character’s pandemic behavior, but I found myself growing more and more irritated with Grace and her life decisions as the book progressed.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book hit me really hard because I feel like the insanity & cabin fever we all felt during pandemic, compounded with the fear & heartbreak of people dying around us from COVID (and other things intensified by it) could lead any of us down a dark path. It was realistically haunting & morbidly tragic. The main character falls apart in front of your eyes but you also don't know if you can fully believe in her perspective as the narrator. I was thoroughly enthralled and was still questioning things as I finished the last page of the book.

I was so disappointed with MOTHERED after having quite liked BABY TEETH, Stage's debut. While there are several truly horrifying moments in the novel (the 'calfskin bag' dream comes to mind!), I ultimately wasn't compelled by the plot, which got muddier by the chapter. I really liked the exploration of an ace woman's very tender relationship with her gay best friend, and I found Grace's catfishing hobby to be an interesting plot point. Unfortunately, the central tension of the book seems like it was meant to be Grace and Jackie's dysfunctional relationship, but I struggled to care (and similarly struggled to follow the disease, which was sometimes metaphorical and sometimes not?). The framing device was unsatisfying, and the repeated dream sequences lost their punch after the first.

Mothered by Zoje Stage

Grace isn’t exactly thrilled when her newly widowed mother, Jackie, asks to move in with her. They’ve never had a great relationship, and Grace likes her space—especially now that she’s stuck at home during a pandemic. Then again, she needs help with the mortgage after losing her job. And maybe it’ll be a chance for them to bond—or at least give each other a hand.

But living with Mother isn’t for everyone. Good intentions turn bad soon after Jackie moves in. Old wounds fester; new ones open. Grace starts having nightmares about her disabled twin sister, who died when they were kids. And Jackie discovers that Grace secretly catfishes people online—a hobby Jackie thinks is unforgivable.

When Jackie makes an earth-shattering accusation against her, Grace sees it as an act of revenge, and it sends her spiraling into a sleep-deprived madness. As the walls close in, the ghosts of Grace’s past collide with a new but familiar threat: Mom.

Zoje is a master of writing creepy family/ suspense drama books. Did you read Baby Teeth? That remains my favorite Zoje Stage book.

March 1

This is a 2.5 rounded up. I struggled a lot with how the story was presented, current timeline mixed with both flashbacks and dreams. Frankly, I got lost. I know it would have ruined the element of surprise when the reader first comes across a dream sequence, but I think maybe a different font to indicate it is a dream versus a flashback would have made it a more enjoyable read. And while the story takes place during the height of Covid, I wish we had gotten to know Grace before so we knew her before her mother moved in and all the nightmares, etc. It was hard to see how she was falling apart since we didn't know what she was like beforehand. And finally, I am not opposed to strong language and swearing, but it seemed incredibly excessive throughout this book and I was startled with how frequently Grace and her mom cursed at each other. I think Ms Stage just may not be the author for me.

ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

I found lots of aspects of this story disturbing yet also fascinating! The story takes place in the early days of the pandemic and a woman has to have her mother move in with her to make ends meet after recently purchasing her first home. I really enjoyed all the flashbacks/dream parts where her twin sister is really discussed in depth and the brutality of young children is shown. I’m sure there’s quite a few trigger warnings in here for those sensitive to certain subjects but it doesn’t really affect me or my opinion of the story. If you like disturbed psych thrillers with unreliable narrators, be sure to check it out!

#happypubday to @zoje.stage_author & her newest, horrifying psychological thriller!

Grace is thrilled to have just purchased a new home—unfortunately, she buys it just in time to be stuck in it, as the COVID-19 pandemic enters the world. while struggling to find consistent work as a hairdresser during a time when people are staying 6 feet apart, she reluctantly agrees to let her mother move in & help with the expenses.

as soon as her mother moves in, the atmosphere in Grace’s home changes; not only is their relationship rocky from the start, but she comes bearing the many memories of Grace’s disabled twin sister, who died when they were children.

Grace begins to feel an overwhelming sense of unresolved nostalgia, & her sleep becomes disrupted, filled with constant nightmares of her past that are so realistic, they begin to blend with the present & leave her in a constant state of apprehension & disarray. this, on top of a global pandemic, is enough to make anyone suffer from complete hysterics, threatening to wreak havoc on this mother-daughter duo.

so this book….was absolutely insane lol. i felt like I was in one big, effed up lucid dream. as a reader, I was always questioning whether Grace was in a dream-like state of mind, or in her current reality. the whole tone of this book was so dark & dreary, which was due in part to the pandemic content, but also bc it was based in Pittsburgh (waddddup 412!!) ((pam beesly voice, IYKYK 🤙🏽))

that being said, it was soooo weird & fun reading about places I’ve been to or resided in myself (s/o to Pamela’s, University of Pittsburgh, & Mt. Washington)!!

but what was even more bizarre was reading about the pandemic as it takes place in this book. being 3 years past the mass hysterics, it felt like some real sadistic nostalgia reading about the way we lived with such restrictions just a few short years ago. I remember the feeling of impending doom quite well, & thinking that we would never really go back to normal; this book did a great job of bringing back all those feels.

for lovers of horror, psychological thrillers, repressed memories, & trippy nostalgia! thanks @netgalley for the #arc!

DNFing this one. I just can’t keep going. An unreliable narrator is taken too far. So far the main character Grace is having a lot of weird dreams and the story moves so slowly. I just getting annoyed and bored, unfortunately.

It's the pandemic and Grace's mother, Jackie, moves in with her. Grace knows it is going to be uncomfortable. She and her mother don't have the best relationship and Grace enjoys her privacy. But the mortgage must be paid, and relationships need to be mended.

Grace is having vivid nightmares about her sister, Hope, and she also has some online habits that her mother does not approve of. As the past and present collide.

This book was a slow burn which I do not care for. I struggled with this one. I finished this just to see how it was doing to end. There is also a HUGE element of “is this real?”. Is this a dream/nightmare? I know exactly what this is - Bizarre.

This one just didn't light my fire. Too slow and not enough to fully win me over. [book:Baby Teeth|35410511] was a 3 star book for me and this I enjoyed less. Perhaps I am not the reader for her books.

Other readers are enjoying this book and I encourage you to read their reviews as well.

2.5 stars

Zoje Stage is a favorite writer and Getaway remains one of my favorite books of all time but Mothered just hit differently. I think it’s because I never knew exactly what was going on with Grace, like the song Bohemian Rhapsody - Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? I felt a bit confused throughout and the constant quessing took away a lot of the enjoyment for me. Plus there were some plot aspects that I found confusing and not sure how they fit into the story.

As I said before, Zoje’s books are some of my favorites but Mothered won’t be making that list. I’ll still be looking forward to whatever she does next.

This author has quickly become one of my favorites and I've only read a couple so far. However of the ones I've read, this one seriously blew my mind.

The blurb did nothing to prepare me for the rollercoaster ride I was going to be taken on. I didn't even bother trying to figure out what was going to happen because I would have been completely wrong.

And just when I didn't think I couldn't be any more shocked, boom, that ending proved me wrong

No one can push your buttons quite like family. Set in the middle of the pandemic, Mothered finds Grace (who has a really odd/creepy hobby) reluctantly allowing her recently widowed mother to move in with her. She’s not thrilled with the idea, as they don’t have the best relationship, but she could use the help with her bills. Seems like a simple enough premise, right? Well there is nothing simple about this one. This is one wild twisted story, a tense slow burn descent into madness. Honestly the less you know going into the better. I’d like to thank Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an eARC of Mothered.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R2NPSWDFXW8YFU/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

Just as we have come to expect from Stage, this blew my mind. It was creepy, unsettling, and got all the way under my skin. I was hooked from page one until the end and will continue to read everything this woman pushes out!

REVIEW

I'm going to be honest: there's not a lot in Mothered that I particularly enjoyed. The pacing, story, prose, and characters were not at all what I want from a horror book. There were exactly two characters I liked seeing on the page (which is stretching it, since one of them is a cat) and one horror moment that I found to be memorably creepy. While it was a fast read, if I hadn't gotten this book through Netgalley I almost certainly would have DNF'd it pretty quickly (and that is if I had picked it up at all, since it would have failed the page 99 test).

STRUCTURE AND PROSE

As it opens and ends the story, I may as well discuss the prologue and epilogue. These two follow a therapist named Silas, who claims he is excited to work with an unnamed patient due to the brutality of the murder she committed. It's obfuscated which of the two women, Jackie or Grace, committed homicide. (Keep a pin in this as we'll be returning to it.) As the prologue concludes, we are told that “[Silas’s] job, as it often was, would be to filter the drop of truth from a waterfall of magical thinking” (13). This setup, with Silas being directly indicated to be a character who would engage with the narrative about to be told, indicates that the main bulk of the narrative would be in a narrative frame. Grace would speak to Silas to confess her life story and convince him of her point of view (a la Frankenstein, the reason why I love a good frame narrative). This is not the case. Rather than being nested, the narrative is delivered by a close third person narrator, with Grace’s story bookended by Silas’s. The prologue and epilogue might as well have not been there; they add little to nothing to the narrative. All that was achieved was disappointment.

The completely normal third person narration was. A Choice. Look, I’m a fan of close third person. It works fine, but it was a disappointing choice, espcecially after that prologue setup. Grace as a character does have interesting elements to her that I feel would have been far more interesting to me as a reader had we navigated the narrative directly through her eyes.

Speaking of characters, wasted potential is the name of the game in Mothered. Characters have features and traits, but aren’t well-rounded. Part of that issue is with the dialogue; it is middling at best, and stilted, awkward, or shallow at worst. Additionally, there's not as much of it as one would think for a story about a toxic mother-daughter relationship stuck in close quarters.

The standout issue with the characters for me is that they are their role in the story before they are a character. Silas is not a character who is a therapist, he is the therapist character (and, upon a re-read of the prologue, is I think supposed to be some sort of reader stand-in? Which I also am not a fan of). Miguel isn’t a character who is the main character’s best friend; he is the best friend character (worse, he falls into the gay best friend trope). Jackie isn’t a character who is Grace’s mother; she is the mother character. Grace, by virtue of being the protagonist, somewhat escapes this issue, but still is not well-rounded or developed by any means. She’s supposed to be an unreliable narrator, something I normally love, but in her found to be unengaging.

Grace as a protagonist could have been interesting; she has a lot of childhood trauma, but does genuinely try to help those around her. She’s kind towards her friend Miguel and drops everything to help him when he gets sick. While has the bizarre hobby of catfishing women (which she calls damsels) online, she describes it as intentionally trying to help build these women’s self esteem and help them improve their lives. The interesting elements of her, however, aren't really fleshed out enough. The damsels plotline especially had a lot of very interesting potential that’s completely unfulfilled. It really only exists so that Grace has something to feel guilty about and hide from her mother.

The pacing. God, the pacing. The pacing was strange, due to the fact that a bulk of the narrative is dream sequences. The narrative jumps forward in time rather suddenly in order to dump the reader into a dream without indication. Not only does this make the pacing feel jerky and inconcistant, it also means that the dream segments are also far less effective. While suddenly jumping from reality to a dream can be a valuable strategy because it puts both the reader and the character into a state of uncertain reality, most of the time it did not work in Mothered. The only time I did find it effective and memorable was the first; after that, since I knew what the author was trying to pull, the strategy was ineffective because I knew it was a dream, even if Grace did not.

The pacing during the non-dream segments was jerky as well. It often felt like the narrative was just trying to hurry to the next dream sequence. For example, chapter fourteen ends with Grace texting her best friend Miguel; chapter fifteen jumps to her having been hired by her old boss and visiting the new salon space. From that first paragraph, it's obvious that it's a dream. As a result, the non-horror section of the dream dragged on for far too long (since the conversation the characters was having was not only not real but also completely banal) while the horror section of it was not horrifying (as the physical danger, social rejection, and reality break Grace was experiencing was obviously just a dream). During most dream sections, especially during the second half of the book, I was bored.

For a mystery/thriller novel, Mothered is not very mysterious or thrilling. While there is certainly a hidden past tragedy that is eventually revealed, the actual reveal is... kind of boring. The narrative takes, in my opinion, the most uninteresting route. In the prologue, Silas muses that the case is “a good puzzle… one that look[s] on the surface like the gory movies he still so loved” (13). But this isn’t a puzzle. All the answers are spoonfed to the reader, and if the narrative makes an attempt to hide it, it does a terrible job.

One example of a very unmysterious mystery is the intentional obfuscation of who killed who in the prologue. My thought process during the first half of the novel was this:

A) Because the narrative follows Grace in close third person and

B) never follows Jackie,

that would normally indicate to me that

C) Grace, as the POV character, will be the surviving party.

However, because the identity of the patient in the first chapter is intentionally and carefully obfuscated from the reader, then

A + B might not equal C, but instead equal either

D) an upset of expectations (for example, Jackie killing Grace)

or

E) a third act twist revealing a previously unknown actor or plot element that reveals that the killer, the victim, Grace, and Jackie are in a more complicated configuration than first presented.

As I continued reading, it became clear to me that the narrative was not going to pull anything that interested. Despite this, I held out hope that the final chapters would have some kind of twist. That hope was futile. That setup of not knowing who dies is never cashed out. It just follows the most basic, obvious route: Grace is the protagonist, and because she is a protagonist, she can’t die so she has to be the murderer. Why bother to intentionally hide who kills who and then just not do something interesting? Especially when that problem is directly presented as being a puzzle!

Speaking of basic, the prose in general was boring. It’s all very direct and blunt, which can sometimes be a fantastic way to write a horror/thriller, but it just didn’t work for me here. The prose relies so heavily on telling over showing I felt as though the narrative was spoonfeeding me. Look, I don’t always need purple-literary-Romantic-big-words-long-sentences prose to enjoy a novel, but I do need something to chew on. If I’m not finding that in the structure, characters, horror elements, or central mystery, then by god at least give me some chewy prose.

THE DREAMS

I love dreams in horror. Exploring unreality, watching the line between waking and dreaming blur, having one encroach into the other. I love it all. Therefore, believe me when I say that the premise of incorporating horrible nightmares into a horror story isn't the issue. The issue with Mothered’s dreams was the execution.

First off: the horror elements were almost completely restricted to dreams. Although there were one or two moments of horror that I found genuinely intriguing, memorable, or creepy (for example, the "Mona needs a calfskin bag" dream), most of the rest of them were tropey, predictable, or overdone. While I bought that these dreams were upsetting for the character, they were not particularly upsetting to me. At some point it just got old. The use of dream horror is, to me, something that has to be done subtly, carefully, and sparingly, especially when we have a protagonist presented as unreliable. It's none of those things in Mothered.

The few horrifying elements outside of dreams are hallucinations. Grace dismisses them as such pretty quickly, and the hallucinations themselves fail to be credible from the get-go because they aren’t believably slotted into Grace’s reality. Horror-wise they aren't even good ones; they're even more tropey than the dreams. Even the horror of Grace and Jackie’s toxic relationship and the childhood trauma was restricted to these dreams as well; while there were some good moments of toxicity, gaslighting, or emotional manipulation in the waking world (such as Jackie letting Coco outside), almost all the detail and nuance we get about their history is dreamed.

Even the dreamed details about their past that do carry over into the real world aren’t fully fleshed. For example, during a dream, we are introduced to the paper dolls that Hope and her sister Grace used to play with. Later, while rummaging through her mother’s things, Grace finds her sister’s doll but not her own. While the doll imagery comes back in later dreams, that doll as a symbol of her mother’s favoritism and her relationship with Grace never beomes a point of conflict between the two. There isn’t ever a conflict about it, even when those dolls get brought up in conversation. I wanted a blow-out fight about those dolls; I wanted those dolls as an element of gaslighting; I wanted those dolls to be something that lead to a direct conflict that further develops Grace and Jackie’s current day relationship. But they don’t, and neither does much else.

The book’s summary claims that moving in together makes “old wounds fester” and “new ones open.” Sure, old wounds get re-opened, but calling what happens “festering” is a bit of a stretch. Grace is reasonably stressed about her mother being a bad roommate at times and Jackie occasionally apologizes for being a bad mother to her (though those conversations are rather surface level and nowhere near as toxic as they could have been). The only “new wounds” that open are are the ones that kill Jackie, with nary a new psychological wound in sight. As a result, the level of intensity between the two never quite reaches the fever pitch needed to make that final snap believable, narratively satisfying, and sharp.

One final complaint about the dreams I couldn’t shoehorn in elsewhere, so I’m shoehorning it in here. Sometimes (typically during dreams where Grace is reliving a childhood memory), Grace calls Jackie “Mommy.” I get why—as a child, she certainly did not call her mother by her first name—but it really did not work for me. Grace was a child forced to grow up too soon; I could buy her calling Jackie mom, maybe, but mommy? I certainly can’t see an overworked, exhausted Jackie referring to herself as “mommy” to her children. It was just weird and off-putting and out of place because it was so infantile, and, to be honest, came off as funny and unserious.


All that said, the dream scenes were far better written than the scenes that took place in reality. If they'd had better connective tissue and were more subtly handled, they could have been very effective. As it is, they're disappointing.
REALITY

From the premise, title, and setup of Mothered, I expected a book about a toxic mother-daughter relationship. I expected the narrative to explore that relationship in-depth and push the tension of it to its very limits. I wanted to watch them try to navigate an enclosed space. I wanted overtures of forgiveness turning nasty. I wanted conversations about Grace's childhood! I wanted them to have small disagreements that balloon out of control! I wanted a slow build of tension and complex hatred! I wanted gaslighting, damn it!

There were a few times—for example, the dinner party with Miguel—where there was subtle friction between actions and intention between Grace and her mother. Grace questions who her mother is now and how she relates to the woman who raised her. Jackie is the traditional boomer parent and brings up grandchildren. Miguel and Grace share the occasional bemused glance. It was a good early scene, which I thought would lead into later, complex, more dramatic scenes. For the most part, though, Grace and Jackie’s interactions were not all that complex, did not have subtextual implications, and were so direct and unnuanced it just was never all that interesting. While Grace certainly had reasons to doubt the reality around her, as a reader, I did not have any reason to believe what she was being told by her mother was untrue.

As mentioned earlier, most elements of the novel’s central mystery—what happened to Grace’s twin sister—were introduced in dreams, then (maybe) introdced into the waking world. The only piece evidence that emerged from a direct confrontation between Jackie and Grace was the box. While what it revealed wasn’t particularly funny, I couldn’t take the contents seriously because it just gave me Assassin’s Creed 2 flashbacks.

Anyway.

On all accounts, even down to the title, Mothered is supposed to be about a toxic mother-daughter relationship. It's also about:

The pandemic (which didn't really work for me. If it had been a book set during the pandemic, it might have worked. The difference between the two is a bit difficult to explain, but it's something that made a huge difference)

Her career as a hairdresser

Growing up being the primary caretaker to a disabled sibling

A weird disease that causes nightmares and turns you vegan

An ace woman’s relationship with her sexuality and desire to be a mother herself (complete with guilt over telling a teenager to have an abortion so her life wasn’t ruined!)

The close friendship between two queer people

That same woman’s hobby catfishing other women, pretending to be a man so that she can help them improve their self-confidence

The book just tries to juggle too much in the 300-ish pages it has. While a novel of that length certainly can incorporate that many or even more plot points, Mothered just doesn’t pull off weaving them together as cleanly as it could have. As a result, the narrative becomes muddled and shallow, with the titular mother-daughter crowded out by the rest.

Before I close out, I just want to complain about the whole mystery illness plot point. It's another unnecessary, underdeveloped plot element that muddies the narrative waters even further. The final hook it provides in the epilogue (the therapist is like "oh no I'm having nightmares... just like Grace did!!!") was so cheesy I actually laughed out loud. It became doubly funny when I realized one of the symptoms of the disease is becoming a vegan. I'm sorry, but I genuinely cannot take the narrative seriously enough to be thrilled or frightened.

FINAL THOUGHTS

In writing this review, I had the opportunity to sit with the novel’s themes and really consider: what are they saying? What do they mean? It’s interesting to me that initially I read this book as (at least attempting to be) feminist. Yet after ruminating on how the book handles themes such as abortion and birth, motherhood, disability, and childhood trauma, it surprised me how shallow and at times contradictory it all ended up being.

While I can see why other folks enjoyed this novel, it's absolutely not to my taste when it comes to horror, thriller, or adult fiction. Further, in my opinion, I think it's ineffective in its exploration of mother-daughter toxcicity and childhood trauma. I requested Mothered because I always heard such great things about Baby Teeth; unfortunately, I think this has indicated she's not an author for me.

Thank you again to Thomas & Mercer for providing a digital advance review copy through Netgalley.

Thank you, Netgally and Amazon Publishing, for the ARC in return for an honest review.

Picture it, pandemic 2020. The world is on lockdown.
Grace has just closed on her new home when the world became plagued by the pandemic. She lost her job, like many others, and she asked her mother, Jackie, to move in to help with the finances. Grace knew it was a bad idea, but her stepfather had just passed. Her mom wouldn't be alone, and Grace would keep her house.
Immediately after moving in, Jackie started changing the house to suit her needs. She also puts up pictures of Hope, Grace's dead twin sister. Grace has spent many years trying to block her traumatic childhood. How is Grace going to survive the pandemic with her mother?
I put this book off for so long. It hits too close to home. I invited my ailing mother into my home during the pandemic because that's what a good daughter would do. Even though she's narcissistic, I wanted to help. Eventually, I put her into a home. Read Mothered to find out Jackie's outcome.

Mothered by Zoje Stage is set during the start of the pandemic. Grace has lost her job as a hairstylist and is compelled to live with her recently widowed mother, Jackie when she moves into Grace's house. Their relationship is strained because Grace's twin, Hope was born of cerebral palsy and died when they were kids. Jackie begins to tell terrible things about Grace that Grace does not believe or understand. She starts having nightmares and begins to lose her mind as everything starts falling apart in quarantine.

I loved Zoje's debut novel Baby Teeth and this one has the same creepy vibes.
The author in her note calls her book 'batshit crazy' and that is what it was but in a good way. The scenes where Grace has vivid nightmares were grotesque and felt terrifyingly real. Zoje really has great talent at writing the creepy, unsettling events but sometimes it was difficult to tell the difference between a dream and reality. The plot was fully driven by Grace who was an interesting, complex and a flawed main character.

To add to it we also get to relive the horrific moments of feeling trapped, stressed and alone during the pandemic. Overall, a nerve-wrackingly tense and creepy psychological thriller with a twisted ending.