Being a MegaFan of Hogarths first novel Motherthing, I was thrilled to get this arc opportunity and I’m happy to report that she is no One Hit Wonder folks. Normal Women is just as quirky and fun and our female mc is amazing! The mystery vibe had me on my toes the entire time.

Dani is a first time mom who is trying to embrace her new stay-at-home role. She finds herself an unlikely friendship and a possible side hustle in the seedier part of town. When her new friend goes missing, she takes it upon herself to get to the bottom of things. Nothing is as it seems in this one.

Her husband was the only one I kind of disliked; all the women characters were aces! And the unique premise of Dani’s side hustle left me wanting more details. Overall, not much to complain about :)

Instagram/Bookstagram link to come…

After giving birth to a baby girl, Dani moves back to her hometown for financial stability. She’s constantly anxious about motherhood and has a complicated relationship with her husband, whom she relies on financially. When a co-worker of his is diagnosed with terminal cancer, it sends her into a tizzy to find financial independence. Is she exhausted? Suffering from post-partum depression? Or is something even larger nagging at her? She does have a degree in philosophy, after all. While Barton Street used to be dangerous, because of gentrification, it’s changed. When Dani befriends a sex worker on Barton Street named Renata, they seem to forge a real friendship and Renata seems equally intrigued by Dani’s curiosity and asks her to come to the Temple, a yoga studio / place of worship / place where husbands married to women in Dani’s friend group go to sleep with sex workers. But when Renata disappears, Dani takes it upon herself to find her. The concepts in this novel are prescient: sex work, desire, women’s bodies, but the story didn’t grab my attention enough to invest in it. I was left feeling disappointed especially since I so loved Hogarth’s previous novel. Thank you to NetGalley and to Vintage Anchor for the advanced copy of this book.

Ainslie Hogarth's "Normal Women" captures the double-edged sword of being a stay-at-home mother — of being a Normal Woman. After married couple Dani and Clark welcome their firstborn Lotte, the two move to Dani's hometown of Metcalf for Clark's promotion as the town's newest real estate developer. With the money Clark's making, Dani falls into the role of stay-at-home mom, but when Clark's coworker is diagnosed with terminal colon cancer, Dani becomes riddled with anxieties about her future and life's purpose.

What you need to know about Dani is that she comes from a formerly wealthy family with a legacy deeply intertwined with the town of Metcalf and is now married to a financially well-off man. To be a stay-at-home mom is a choice for her — a choice that so many working-class parents can only dream of. Still, she feels deeply unsatisfied in remaining financially dependent on a man with a savior complex. Valid. At the same time, she feels she's above her fellow stay-at-home mothers/mommy bloggers, as well as any entry-level office jobs she could realistically qualify for. Dani's entitled, privileged, overdramatic perspective may bother some readers, but I feel Hogarth's offbeat humor and sharp writing balance out these potentially irritable qualities. For me, Dani's obvious flaws never overshadowed the book's overall feminist-leaning message of valuing female labor (in the workforce and at home).

In addition to its (somewhat surface-level) commentary on motherhood, parenting, marriage, momfluencers, and sex work, "Normal Women" delivers a scandalous mystery when Dani's new friend Renata goes missing and no one seems to care but her. During her existential crisis, Renata offers Dani the opportunity for salvation through her sex work-coded yoga center, The Temple. So when Renata goes missing, Dani's fears of never meeting her true potential amplify.

I thoroughly enjoyed my reading experience and found a relatable sector of women adeptly represented within these pages. I recommend you give it a try for yourself.

Thank you to NetGalley and Vintage Anchor for providing a digital review copy of Normal Women.

I had such a blast reading Hogarth's previous novel, Motherthing, so I had high expectations for Normal Women.

New mother, Dani, is back in her hometown and having a hard time adjusting to being a stay-at-home mom while her husband continues to build his career. Dani begins to fret about what the future might look like for herself and her daughter should something ever happen to her husband, and this leads her to consider ways she might be able to become financially independent.

While there were moments I enjoyed, overall this didn’t quite work for me. I can think of other readers who might be delighted by it, and I think I would especially recommend it to fans of Nightbitch. And I will still certainly pick up whatever Hogarth writes next!

Huge fan of Motherthing so i was super excited to see Ainslie back at again! Unfortunately, this one was not for me. She kept her usual humor but the story just did grab me. And it made me want an affogato real bad which was the most that the story aroused a feeling in me. perhaps worth reading if you’re into dark commentary on society, motherhood, and sex work but in an excruciatingly slow pace. I still enjoyed the bits of signature dark humor but all in all felt that this sophomore book didn’t hit the right horror spots and the pacing was drug along too many times.


loved the cover btw


thank you NETGALLEY for the free arc in exchange for an honest review

DNF at 30%

Super disappointing.

I absolutely loved Ainslie Hogarth’s 2022 debut, Motherthing. The dark and snarky plot absolutely won me over. In fact, it was a five star read. Therefore, I couldn’t wait to read her newest mystery and it was one of my most anticipated reads this year!

In Normal Women, Dani is trying to figure out her role as a new stay-at-home mother. Motherhood isn’t working for her like it is with her other mommy friends. She doesn’t think she is very good at being a mom and keeps obsessing about her husband dropping dead. She meets Renata, the guardian of The Temple, a yoga center, whom she believes can help her reach her full potential. But is The Temple just for yoga? When Renata disappears, Dani tries her hand at being a detective. What happened to Renata?

Why did I only made it through 30% of this book? While Normal Women contains the same snarky tone as Motherthing, the book’s very slow, confusing start took way too long to get to the plot and felt more like a chore to read than fun. It contains 90% social commentary (which I can relate to), but it felt like way too much without more action moving the plot forward. Btw, the plot hadn’t even started to take off when I called it quits.

I think Hogarth could have had a good book here, but the presentation didn’t work for me. As a reader, the whining and complaining became annoying and tiresome, leading to my own disinterest.

However, I am still a fan of Hogarth and will definitely read her next offering.

2/5 stars

Expected publication date: 10/1/23

Thank you to NetGalley and Vintage Anchor publishing for the ARC of Normal Women in exchange for an honest review.

Between 3 and 4 stars! I started out really enjoying this one, but I did struggle a little bit with the pacing (especially when it came to the ending), and felt like there were so many interesting plot points explored throughout the story, but not enough time spent on some of them. However, I loved Hogarth's writing style and the commentary on gender and motherhood, and thought Dani was a fascinating, well-developed character! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

In this post-partum affogato-obsessed novel, Hogarth explores stay at home moms, sex work, and hating men. Being a mom is a full time job! And who the hell dreams of labor! What is a woman to do in a capitalist-pumped patriarchy?! All themes explored in a novel that spends too much time circling through characterization without fully fleshing them out.

Our protagonist Dani is lost! I get it. She's looking for reason, purpose, beyond womanhood, beyond self. She wants to belong, be part of something larger, whether that be through something macro like the world or something micro like community, a "yoga studio" called The Temple. But Hogarth stops short, too busy dissing the patriarchy and then shifting the novel in some odd directions, tonally, that full-stops the book in a rushed, flat-lined ending.

I would've wanted Hogarth to take on a Kajillionaire (by Miranda July) move with our protagonist's bond with the life-changer, Renata, but Hogarth remains strictly straight, showing us the heartsick horrors of hetero life. Here, the foils would've been fantastic in opening Dani up, but Hogarth's plot choices rob Dani of any kind of bridge for empathy for readers.

I'm sooo glad I'm still single and not bored enough to be bounded by marriage! Thanks homegirl Hogarth for validating this little life of mine! Yipee!

i started out really enjoying this one but unfortunately got a bit bored with it around 40% (where i expected it to really start getting interesting). i felt like some of the plot points fell flat and were unrealistic and over the top and i just overall stopped caring about where the story was going after a while. i can't really pinpoint what it was that this book got 'wrong' for me but it sadly just wasn't my vibe. that said, i loooove hogarth's writing style a lot and definitely always will - that's definitely what got me through this one.

3.5 stars for me but sadly rounding down to 3 ~

thank you netgalley & vintage anchor for the arc!

Thank you Netgalley and Vintage Anchor for giving me the opportunity to read this ARC!

Summary: Dani is a new mother who has moved back to her hometown with her husband who took a very lucrative job. Dani is going through a lot mentally after having her daughter, Lotte. She is majorly depressed and confused about her purpose in life. One day she notices a place called The Temple, which holds yoga during the day but really is a brothel at night. She is intrigued and decides to scope it out without her husband's knowledge. She befriends one of the workers, Renata, who winds up missing. Dani becomes more confused and carried away about herself, her husband, and what happened to Renata.

Ugh, this is a hard one for me to rate. I highly enjoyed Ainslie Hogarth's book, Motherthing. It was a great horror novel because it was dark and comedic; and it escalated...spiraling out of control with a crazy ending. I feel like that was the main idea here, but it missed the mark for me, unfortunately.

The plot itself was confusing to me from the beginning. I couldn't tell if this was another horror, mystery, or just literary fiction. I think, by the end, it felt like mostly literary fiction with a touch of mystery. It says it contains dark humor, but it really wasn't that humorous. It felt a bit all over the place. The writing was very dense, especially at the beginning. Almost too much description and ramblings with little to no dialogue. This is a shorter story and it shouldn't feel so hard to get through. And I felt like I was reading two stories/writings merged together, because once we got to the part where Dani meets Renata for the first time, the story actually picks up pace and becomes interesting....only to end up going back to being dense and boring in between.

I liked the main idea and mystery. And I actually would have rated this at least another star if the ending was more exciting or something that was more impactful. However, it was highly anticlimactic.

I understand what Ainslie was trying to convey regarding themes of postpartum depression, postpartum body complications, women's everyday struggles with inequality of parenthood, life, etc....but it was not executed well enough for me in my opinion.

I was a fan of Motherthing and Hogarth’s dark humour and quick wit, so Normal Women was on my radar the second it was announced. Unfortunately this ended up being a huge disappointment for me and a stark departure from the qualities I enjoyed in Motherthing. I am certainly grateful to receive the ARC from the publisher and NetGalley, but sharing honest feedback is definitely important to me!

The novel focuses on Dani navigating the tribulations of motherhood and the social pressures of parenting, marriage and inequities in the roles of motherhood versus fatherhood. Her dissatisfaction with her life draws her to The Temple, an organization of sex workers who Dani slowly integrates herself into for its promise of independence and financial freedom it can provide to her and her daughter. Beyond that, there is an odd fascination with affogatos which get mentioned literally dozens of times throughout the novel.

The pacing of the book is very slow, with much of the book circling around the same topics and doing little to develop the characters beyond the exaggerated tropes they represent. Though I recognize I won’t ever be able to relate to motherhood nor the unequal social pressures women face, the depiction of both motherhood and sex work in this felt at times to be a bit of a mockery rather than satire. The book delves very little into some of the broader discourse at play here (like gentrification, sexism and capitalism), but the dark humour ultimately didn’t land for me. The representation of internet culture, modern stay-at-home moms and gender roles just felt very literal without much exploration, and lacks the sharp wit behind the commentary which made Motherthing so successful. Several subplots are introduced and quickly abandoned with little to no impact on the events of the book.

The plot of the book teases a dark direction (along with several other heavy handed red herrings), but ultimately ends up flatlining and ending in a very obvious and unsatisfactory way. Dani was a very bland and unlikeable protagonist for me, and ancillary characters only existed to push the narrative forward without offering much else. There is certainly allusions to horror elements and an underlying mystery (which the synopsis heavily advertises yet is a very minor part of the book), but ultimately the book is very much a simple domestic fiction with an abrupt and unrealistic ending. I wouldn’t call this a horror or mystery at all.

Certainly not my favourite book this year but may be loved by a target audience I just don’t belong to! Thanks again to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Thank you to Vintage and Netgalley for the e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

This was a dark comedy that was upsettingly *too real* at times. However I felt some of the pacing a bit rush and the ending a little unrealistic to how the story had been set up. (Whereas with Motherthing it gradually got weird AF)

It was another story of a woman slowly unraveling and I am always here for those.

do affogatos symbolize gentrifier-core now?

In Normal Women by Ainslie Hogarth, new mother Dani is haunted by her family’s legacy, the thought of losing her husband and all the horrors of wifeluencers.

Normal Women, like mother thing, slowly wades through a domestic life. Unlike motherthing which has a wild third act, normal women tried to cook up way too many ideas into one that concluded in a rushed and unbelievable ending. How can a book be centred on a cultish yoga studio and the MC only hang out in the parking lot? Overall the pacing and commentary didn’t work for me. A lot of things felt random and abrupt.

Apparently Ainslie Hogarth, like Mona Awad, is just not for me - despite the fact that both women write books that sound like they should be right up my alley from their blurbs. One of us is apparently too smart for the other and for the life of me I can't tell which...

There were some delightful snarky moments here, but there was also an awful lot of squinting off to one side as I tried to figure out what was actually going on and why I was supposed to care enough to continue to read about it. There was a lot of randomness that I felt like was trying really hard to be snarky and clever - and as I said in the beginning, either it was succeeding and I wasn't getting it or it just wasn't succeeding (again, I have absolutely no idea which).

I was flummoxed by this one, I was not the right reader for it at all, and was not able to finish.

Ainslie Hogarth is wildly inventive in this twisty, turnt, trippy novel for fans of Ottessa Moshfegh and Mona Awad. I really enjoyed it, but it was also viscerally unsettling as a woman who is very close to becoming a mother herself, with all the anxieties that includes.

Just as with her last novel, Motherthing, Ainslie Hogarth has written a truly strange/entertaining/relatable/feminist work of fiction this time around with Normal Women. And it maybe won’t be for everyone, but I winced and laughed and nodded my head with recognition throughout; and while straight married women might benefit from seeing themselves in this, men might benefit even more by getting a peek inside their wives’ secret thoughts. I loved the whole thing.

After absolutely loving Motherthing, I was so excited to read Normal Women - and I really liked this one too!
The way this author writes is so addictive and I love reading it. All the characters were interesting and unique yet somehow relatable too. I really loved Dani and how Hogarth wrote her - I could feel her paranoia and struggles and definitely felt for her at times. This book is definitely more character driven and I enjoyed the exploration of these characters lives and their world.
I think the commentary on motherhood and gender was super interesting to read about. It is definitely very relevant to today’s society and gave me some new perspectives on things.
The overall plot was what made this a four star for me - it was very different from what I was expecting it to be. I dont know what genre you would categorise this as because it is definitely more of a ‘no plot just vibes’ book. I still enjoyed it but I think i wanted more weirdness or drama especially at the ending.
Overall this was a very well written book that I got sucked into. It was hard to put down, funny but also had some very serious topics. I liked how it ended and I would definitely recommend it to people!

While I loved Hogarth's Motherthing, I didn't care for this book. I love odd, off kilter stories and funny, biting humour but there was something missing in this book. It lacked the heart of Motherthing and just seemed like over the top satire. I will definitely try her future books but, ultimately, Normal Women wasn't for me.

Motherthing: mommy issues

Normal Women: I'm-a-mommy issues

Motherthing leans into domestic horror whereas Normal Women leans away from horror (unless you count Momfluencing as horror) and focuses a little more on mysterious new additions to a hometown that is becoming less recognizable.
Men are creatures with pain.
Baby only sleeps when dead.

Normal Women is the story of Dani and her husband Clark’s foray into parenting as they move back to Dani’s hometown, where she is something of a local celebrity. Normal Women explores what it means to find meaning in your life inside and outside of motherhood.

Ainslie Hogarth is a master at writing dark humor with an unsettling tone that will make us consider the way we’re living. After reading this, I can confidently say that Ainslie Hogarth is one of my favorite writers, and I’m excited to read anything she puts out (and I wish I could get my hands on her backlist).

The opening line of this book was among the most disarming intros I’ve encountered in my recent reads; whenever a single line can simultaneously imbue cold dread and nervous laughter with no context, you know you’re in for something interesting.
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Pacing toward the central conflict was a bit slow, albeit well-developed. At times I’d hoped it would move faster; it didn’t reach peak velocity until halfway through, but I also felt rewarded for earning the payout of the mystery.⁣
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Strong anti-capitalist undertones shape a lot of character interactions. Bashing health mavens, momfluencers and the politics of urban revitalization (gentrification) play a central role. At first I was put off by the frequency, but when I realized it’s not just for the sake of being critical and that it adds up to a sharp irony by the story’s finale, I found it to be more clever than I had assumed.

I'd strongly recommend this book for fans of dark humor, light horror, absurdity and satire. Trigger warnings include: anxiety/panic, body horror, childhood trauma, postpartum depression, and recurring intrusive thoughts.