Natalie is struggling. She has a newborn but he is a fussy baby and she’s like a zombie. Enter Paul, the neighbor who is super helpful. Except he wants Natalie for his own devices and can she outwit him before he ruins her life?
I got super creep vibes oozing from Paul as soon as he entered the picture.
It’s a game of wits and I read quickly to discover who would out maneuver the other.

I must begin by stating that I loved Nora Murphy's debut thriller The Favor. I was so looking forward to reading her second novel, The New Mother. When we meet Natalie, she has just given birth to her son, Oliver, and is on maternity leave from a job as an attorney. Oliver is a difficult infant and Natalie appears to be suffering from post- partum depression. She is pulling away from her husband. A neighbor, Paul, who is a stay at home dad befriends her. The first half of the book dragged with the details of Natalie's sleeplessness and her difficulties soothing her infant. The second half of the book moved quickly and was more of what I was hoping and expecting. Although, I was disappointed in the story, I will read Ms. Murphy's next novel. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

Natalie is a new mother and she loves her son Oliver more than anything - but he also exhausts her past the point of exhaustion. Lonely, tired, and stuck in a new home that doesn’t feel like home yet while her husband returns to his busy work life, Natalie realizes that being a mom is not all she imagined it would be. Along comes her neighbor Paul, the stay-at-home dad that provides a calming presence for Oliver, allowing her to feel like she can take a little bit of time for herself. But Paul’s motives are not quite innocent as they seem and Natalie is too overwhelmed to see otherwise.

It has been a few years since my daughter was a newborn, but this book and Natalie’s experience sent me right back to those sleepless first few weeks. Natalie’s story unabashedly tells the experience that some new mothers feel but are ashamed to admit. The feeling of not being “good enough” or being judged as a “bad mother” is overwhelming and, on top of all of that, you have to actually keep a whole other human alive. This story allows new mothers to feel seen in their isolation and provides warning signs for postpartum conditions that can go unnoticed if you don’t know what to look for. It is also a great reminder to their partners to pay close attention and do more than just a cursory check in. It really does take a village and this book does a good job of reminding us of that.

The story is told primarily through Natalie's first person POV, but there are some bits told in other characters' third person POV, which feels like it increases the tension, anxiety, and suspense you feel as the story unfolds. It’s like that moment in a movie where you can see where the killer is hiding and ready to attack someone and you want to yell at the screen telling them to turn around. You want to yell at Natalie to run away, but she doesn’t have all the same information that you have and it’s deliciously frustrating.

Once I started reading this book, I could hardly put it down. It was incredibly relatable and anxiety-inducing and I found myself thinking about what was going to happen next even in moments I had to step away from reading. A page-turning thriller that doesn’t really keep you guessing but does keep the suspense and anxiety dialed up right through to the very end.

Natalie is a new mother who underestimated how difficult the newborn days would be with her colicky baby. She’s severely sleep deprived, exhausted, lonely, and a perfectionist who feels as though she is failing miserably. Enter Paul, the stay at home dad who lives on her street and eases her loneliness and helps her get through the long difficult days with her baby until her husband Tyler comes home from work. But Paul isn’t the nice neighbor that he appears to be. He has a sinister plan and unfortunately for Natalie, she’s the perfect hot mess of a mom to help him.

As a mother of 3, I was able to relate to so much of what Natalie was going through. I also suspect I suffered from a mild case of the “baby blues” and remember being totally irrational and overwhelmed when I had my 3rd child. I was disappointed at the way Tyler’s character was treated as he seemed genuinely concerned with Natalie’s welfare and repeatedly tried to help with his baby. The plot was simple and predictable and you could immediately tell what Paul was up to and how it would likely end. As a thriller, this novel was just ok. But I appreciated the attention the author brought to post partum depression and psychosis, a very real issue for so many new mothers, and an issue that many spouses and doctors aren’t always able to identify.

Many thanks to @netgalley @stmartinspress for this gifted ecopy.

Natalie Fanning just had a baby and just moved into a new neighborhood as well, and she is really having trouble adjusting. She can't sleep. Her baby cries all the time and/or always wants to be fed, and she has nobody to talk to or help her. Then, she is befriended by Paul, a stay-at-home dad who lives in her neighborhood only his motives may not be so innocent, and he may not be as helpful as he seems.

Even though there is not a lot of mystery in this book since you are told the story through both Natalie's and Paul's perspectives, it is still an exciting thriller because you are not quite sure how things are going to play out. However, it is much more than that. It is a cry for help not just for Natalie but for all new mothers. It shines a light on the chronically underdiagnosed problem of postpartum depression. It is a shout-out for more awareness of the issue and not just help and treatment for mothers who suffer from postpartum but help for mothers in general.

New mom Natalie is overwhelmed and sleep deprived. Her husband has good intentions but is mostly clueless. Her stay-at-home dad neighbor, Paul, understands exactly how she feels and knows how to help. But Paul's help comes at a price. Will Paul cause Natalie to lose everything?

Every mother will relate to Natalie's new mom anxiety, guilt, isolation, and loss of autonomy. Additionally, it is easy to understand how Natalie and her husband struggled to settle into their new roles as parents. This setting makes an interesting backdrop for murder.

The New Mother is very much a slow burn, more so than Nora Murphy's debut, The Favor. The book's first half focuses almost exclusively on the background of Natalie and her husband as new parents and does so very convincingly. The author has personal experience with postpartum depression, which shows in the real and raw depiction.

While this is a domestic suspense/contemporary fiction novel (definitely not a thriller), I would have loved to see the cat-and-mouse game portion of the story given more focus since it provided much-needed tension. Doing so might have made the ending feel less rushed, particularly after the slow build to get there, and more satisfying.

Overall, I liked this twist on murder and motherhood.

I received a gifted copy of this book.

This was a slow burn but a pretty good story. New mom Natalie moves into a new neighbor and becomes friends with her neighbor Paul, who is a stay at home dad. Paul is a lifeline for her as she struggles with a her difficult baby, but Paul has an ulterior motive for befriending her that becomes more apparent as the story moves on.

While the book does a good job as showing what those first few months of motherhood are like, I really felt for Natalie who was clearly struggling with postpartum depression, and no one around her even noticed. I do feel that some of this did slow down the story and was a little redundant. However, the second half of the book really picks up. We learn there has been a murder in the woods behind Natalie’s house. The Detectives on the case, questioning all of the neighbors about their alibis and if they had seen anything strange that night.
Looking at this book as a whole, I think that I would have put this in the “Domestic Drama” rather than a “Thriller” category. I feel that to a thriller lover may be expecting something more. Overall, this was a good read and I would recommend it to others.

A special thanks to NetGalley ,St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books and the Author, Nora Murphy for sharing this stunning digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.

This book did a great job of highlighting post-partum depression. Sadly, it was done in a way that instead of making the mother feel relatable, it made her feel overly controlling. I know many new mothers are stuck in a position where they have no support system, but this woman did and she actively refused to use it. I'm trying to not victim blame but I felt like that part was pushed a bit too far and I don't want people to think that all new mothers struggling with depression are like this. Like I said, this book did a great job of highlighting how Natalie had problems with motherhood. Sadly, this focus took away from the mystery. By the time we get to the actual thriller/suspense portion of the book, the reader is as worn out as Nat and pretty much knows what is going to happen. It is just a matter of waiting it out to see how the whole thing is resolved. But at just over 300 pages, this is a quick read and would be good for a time when you couldn't read in long blocks of time as it is easy to pick up and get back into the story.

Forget the mild-thriller piece of this for a minute; this is the raw account of motherhood I so desperately needed, yet am so grateful I didn’t have. Though my first hazy days of having a newborn are more than 16 years old, this story brought it screeching back - the anxiety, the confusion, the resentment - all of it is so painfully genuine.

The story itself was a bit slow moving at first, but picked up about halfway through, and I was sucked in until I reached the (slightly anticlimactic) end.

*ARC provided via NetGalley

The birth of baby Oliver upends Natalie's life in ways she never expected- both of them are miserable. Neither of them can sleep, for one thing. Natalie tries to go back to work as an attorney but makes a big mistake and ends up "on sabbatical" while at the same time, her husband Tyler makes partner at his firm. Her only solace comes from Paul, their neighbor who is a stay at home dad but Natalie doesn't know about Paul's relationship with his wife Erin. Paul's able to calm Oliver but he's got an ulterior motive in befriending Natalie. Know that this is more about Natalie's post partum issues (both mental and physical) than it is about what Paul does. That portion of the novel ends implausibly and abruptly- I was surprised when I found myself at an epilogue. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. It wasn't the novel I was expecting but I turned the pages nonetheless.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
The premise of the book drew me in but once I started reading it, I just couldn’t get into it at all.
I wish the author, publisher and all those promoting the book much success and connections with the right readers.

DNF at 30%. I've been bamboozled. This is not a thriller, but a book about a woman's postpartum hardships while struggling with postpartum depression. There's no murder or thriller aspect in this book, so I'm throwing in the towel vs suffering through it.

**Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me an advanced copy of this book and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion. I am posting this review to my Goodreads account immediately and will post it to my Amazon & Instagram accounts upon publication.

Well, I have a few thoughts swirling around my head. First, what I love about Murphy is she knows how to make you work for the story. OMG! I was beginning to worry that I was never going to find out what was really going on, and then BAM! She slaps you right upside the head. My, my, my!

Natalie and Tyler just became the proud parents of baby Oliver. He’s cute, sweet and all that goodness rolled up into one, except there’s one problem. Oliver refuses to sleep. If Natalie got an hour of sleep, if at all, she was to the good. She and her husband are lawyers and trying to juggle practicing law and being parents was proving to be too much for Natalie. Tyler’s life went on as usual, but Natalie was forced to make sacrifices and made to feel guilty for having made those choices. Unfortunately, the plight of many women.

So, it was decided (not Nat’s wishes), that she’d stay at home and nurse their baby while Tyler continued to work at the law firm. Not only was Nat brain dead and downright tired, but now she’s lost herself and her life that she once had because she became a mother. Life wasn’t fair, and especially not in Natalie’s case. The only thing Natalie did was nurse baby Oliver. She fed him, coddled him, watched him, breathed him, bathed him, and repeat the cycle day in and day out. It soon became apparent that Natalie had no life at all besides being Oliver’s daily source of food.

One day while she’s out walking Oliver in his stroller, one of her neighbors who resided in the cul-de-sac, took notice of her, and thought she was in distress. Of course, Natalie was in distress. Oliver cried nonstop. His screams were blood curdling, and she was embarrassed walking by her neighbors’ homes for fear they’d hate her and the baby. No worries because Paul Riley was here to save the day.

Oh, who is Paul, you ask? Paul is Natalie’s neighbor. He took one look at poor Natalie struggling with Oliver and he asked politely if he could hold the baby and voila, just like that, Oliver cooed and enjoyed being held by Paul. Well, will wonders ever cease? How in the hell did he manage to get Oliver to stop crying when she, as his mother, couldn’t seem to do so successfully. Paul was her hero in disguise. The heavens opened up and Natalie had drunk Paul’s Kool-Aid and became emotionally attached to the man who could comfort her son and help her when her own husband had seemed to abandon her for his career. The nerve of him. When Tyler offered to pay for a nanny or even get bottles so that Oliver could suckle them instead of her, she flat out refused. So, Tyler was doing the best he could to help his wife, but she turned him away at every turn. After a rather uncomfortable run in with Paul’s wife, Erin, things began to go left. And that, readers, is where things get very interesting.

Oook! This was a good book, but I must say going through the nursing phase with Natalie throughout the entire book was a bit excessive and nerve grating. OMG! I was screaming at my Kindle because Nat was supposed to be the victim here, but was she really? There were so many bad choices she made, and I couldn’t help but to wonder what made her go there. Murphy truly made the reader wait almost to the end to find out what was really happening and for a minute I didn’t think I was ever going to figure out what was going on. But, when the picture started to come into view, oh my did I enjoy it!

Murphy is the “queen of slow-burn!” She really knows how to keep you guessing and waiting until the moment finally arrives and the reader is left in awe. I have to say I would have much rather not go through every single moment Natalie did, but this is the way the book was written. Having said that, though, I found the story interesting.

This is a thriller that’s slow-building, but so good! A friendship with an ulterior motive. The exhaustion of a mother to a newborn with colic. A sinister desire to get rid of someone. This one had all the makings of a good thriller!

The New Mother is a chillingly accurate portrayal of the early days of motherhood, where it is so easy to lose your sense of self and sanity, running on little to no sleep and racing hormones. Natalie Fanning is a new mother to a difficult baby, who from the outside appears to have it all; a job as an attorney, an equally successful husband, and new home in a desired neighborhood. However, she has fallen victim to the pressures of society to exclusively breastfeed her newborn son, and is tethered to him day and night. After a failed attempt to go back to work, she takes an extended sabbatical until her son hopefully grows out of his excessive crying and poor sleep schedule. In steps her neighbor, Paul, who is a stay at home day and aspiring novelist, while his detached wife Erin works as a financial planner to support their family. Paul seems to be a baby whisperer, and his gentle touch allows Oliver to calm down and Natalie to get some much needed rest. Having already had an affair with the woman who previously lived in her home, Paul only sees Natalie as the missing puzzle piece and answer to his prayers to escape his unhappy relationship. He fully takes advantage of Natalie's desperate state and attempts to pin his jealous wife's disappearance on her. Once Natalie realizes his true intentions, she must pull herself out of her fog in order to save herself. The men in this story are 🗑️, philandering Paul preying on vulnerable Natalie and Natalie's husband Tyler taking her sacrifice as a mother and wife for granted. This was a scary yet highly relatable story for any mother who has felt internal and external pressure to be "the perfect mother".

In a new house and with a new baby, a first-time mother struggles with doing her best; when a friendly neighbor offers some respite she thinks nothing of it but the neighbor has his own plans for which the mother would be helpful in The New Mother by Nora Murphy.

A new mother, Natalie is happy that her son, Oliver, is here, but she worries about doing everything right as she cares for him. With Oliver’s seemingly constant demands to be held and nursed, Nat is quickly overwhelmed and run ragged by lack of sleep while her husband’s life appears, in contrast, to not be impacted in the slightest by the addition of their son. Trying to balance the demands of motherhood with those of her job prove to be too challenging for Nat as time and details slip her mind, so she’s encouraged by Tyler to take a sabbatical for more time to recover and care for Oliver. Alone with Oliver all day in their new neighborhood, Nat meets Paul, a stay-at-home dad with a work-focused wife, who provides support Nat needs through calm, reassuring words and actions, alleviating her concerns and offering opportunities to get some much-needed rest. But Paul has his own agenda for befriending Nat as the young mother will serve perfectly in his plan, so long as she doesn’t realize exactly what he’s planning.

Thoroughly depicting the impact that the significant changes to body chemistry, not to mention societal pressure, have on trying to do and have it all after having a baby, this story explores Nat’s sleepless struggles to provide for her son while trying to manage her own needs postpartum, too, as the primary focus while periodically including chapters from Paul’s perspective to slowly introduce some suspense related to the murder teased at the book’s introduction. The story is ambitious in its aim to tackle a serious, and often overlooked, issue of postpartum depression, and postpartum psychosis, as well as incorporating a murder to be solved; though there’s necessary set-up needed to put the pieces in place so they can be put together, the murder element is introduced in earnest far too late to temper the perpetual complaints and descriptions of sleep deprivation and breastfeeding, which, while valid, would be better presented in a literary or women’s fiction narrative but in the marketing that presented this as more of a mystery or thriller it fell short of the mark.

Overall, I’d give it a 3 out of 5 stars.

*I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I tried several times to get through this novel.

I was sold on it being a mystery/thriller with perhaps a controversial bend.

It was a difficult subject matter (postpartum depression) but its execution was NOT mysterious or thrilling.

My two star review reflects that disappointment.

Had I wanted a character portrait of a mother’s depressive struggles perhaps I could have geared my expectations appropriately.

I didn’t.

So I haven’t.

The kind of book I kept wanting to sneak back into during my workday.

The New Mother was wholly absorbing. After a slow start, I found myself not wanting to put it down. And, once I had, I wanted to pick it right back up again.

It centers on Natalie, who's recently given birth to a difficult baby -- a frequent crier who will only be soothed by her. On leave from work and married to a busy lawyer, Natalie doesn't really have a support system to help her through these tough days. That is, until she meets the neighbor who's been through it himself, and is suddenly there with a kind word.

My biggest critique with this one was the pacing, which I'll put behind a spoiler tag (perhaps overcorrecting after someone spoiled a major plot point for me). Even still, I'm always going to want to read a thriller that I find this hard to put down. Nora Murphy is now 2/2 for me, with enjoyable books incorporating real issues (that too often go unnoticed).

I thought Dylan Moore and Lee Osorio were well cast. Moore was easier to understand at 3x speed (I think her diction?), but I didn't have problems with either at 2.5x.

Natalie Fanning and her husband move into a new house and a couple months later they welcome their first child. Natalie is struggling being a first time mom, thinking she can go back to work after 8 weeks, having a newborn is harder than she thought, especially when Oliver is so hard to settle. Natalie’s relationship is also not the best after having the baby.

Then enters Paul, the neighbour. He is her saving grace. Paul is a stay at home dad and can relate to Natalie. He is able to soothe her baby, he’s always there to talk…what an amazing neighbour. Until Paul thinks he can use Natalie in his master plan. She’s the perfect girl for it.

This was a very slow burn book, and the end fell flat for me. There just wasn’t enough. I also found that the secondary characters in the book were incomplete. They were present in the book but could have built them up more, as there wasn’t enough about them to really make the story. There could have been a bit more suspense


Thank you NetGalley and St Martins Press for a DRC. The New Mother available May 30.

I am so over books that make new mothers out to look like the crazy ones! It's not original. If I would have known the author was going to make the main character look like a deranged lunatic, I wouldn't have read this.