A creepy spine-chiller perfect for autumnal nights. Dwyer joins Simone St James and Wendy Webb in her ability to deliver a story about how the past isn't really past. This is a tale about a family, a house, a tragedy, an unraveling. An excellent pick for someone looking to be spooked without much gore.

The narrator portrayed Lilly perfectly. There weren't any shocking twists to the story but it hit it's beats exactly how I wanted it to. I would also have purchased this house in Lilly's position. I also appreciated the creepiness started quickly and Dwyer didn't make us wait.

Ghost Mother is a haunting story that is perfect for those who like a mystery and ghost story combined in one. I loved the eerie vibes of this book, while not being too creeped out, which made it much easier to devour. The main character is such an interesting character that is complex and perfect for this story.

I listened to the audiobook version of this story at 1.75x speed (my normal audiobook listening speed is 1.75-2x speed). The narrator did a fantastic job bringing the main character and the story to life.

Thank you Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for this advanced audiobook copy.

I wasn't sure I was going to like this book, it moved a little slow for me in the beginning. I liked the story well enough and most of the characters, but the main character did get on my nerves. I guess that makes it a good book when a character gets to you. I thought I had figured out the ending but no, it was definitely a surprise! Well done Kelly Dwyer, I will be looking for your next book. Thanks to NetGalley for the audio and the narrator did a great job.

I absolutely loved everything about this book. It had a high focus on the paranormal and a creepy old house. I loved that so much of this book left me unsettled and I didn’t know if I could trust the narrator. In the beginning Lilly, our main character, is really annoying and insufferable but stick with it. It’s worth it to dig more into her story. The writing was simple and easy to follow. Every chance I got I picked this back up. When I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about it. Yes, I will definitely read more by this author. I also thought the performance of the book was fantastic! The voices and narration was one of the best I have listened to.

Title: Ghost Mother
Author: Kelly Dwyer
Pages: 336
Time Length:
Dates: 8/6-8/10
Format: Audiobook
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Summary: Husband and Wife decided to buy a run down mansion that used to be owned by the Circus Society. Lilly deals with the struggles of trying to conceive a baby. She has a strong feeling she would get her baby moving into this home. She got way more then she expected.
Review: This was an ARC given by Netgalley for an honest review.
This was a very slow paced read. The book moves in and out of reality, it keeps you wondering what is going to happen. Read the trigger warnings as some of the topics are quite hard to hear about. The ending wasn't what I expected. This story will stay with me for awhile.

This was a good book. It's very different but entertaining. I would be interested in knowing more about the ending as I do have some questions. The mystery of what happens to the original owners of the house is a very interesting part of the story.

This is my first time listening to an audiobook and I loved it. It was so fun to listen to it while taking my dog out on walks!!

On the other hand, I think I expected something else from this book. I went into it thinking it would be a horror story, but in my opinion the horror wasn't really.... present? It was mostly focused on the mc's mental health and want/need to have babies. And sometimes you have ghosts. It's not a bad thing in itself, but when you expect to listen to a horror story, and you get this, it's a bit disappointing.
The main character wasn't really likeable either. She repeated the same mistakes over and over, and was just overall a bit annoying because of this. And don't even get me started on the husband (Jack? I'm not sure I remember his name correctly) and their broken marriage.

Not a bad book, but I think it wasn't for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for the advanced copy!

Wow! I really enjoyed this one. I love stories that make me wonder what the heck is going on. This one was a mind bender. Our FMC was well written and made you love her but hate her. This story was great pacing and loved the ending

A creepy haunted house with creepy vibes plus a wannabe mom of dubious sound mind equals a great ghost story. I was disappointed that the title kind of gave away one of the twists in the end because it would've been a better reveal if I hadn't suspected the identity of the ghost all along. Oh well. The gaslighting was intense in this story and there were a lot of characters to like and dislike, the women and men respectively. The dual timeline was good, but got a little weird at the end as Lilly was shown what happened. The book was predictable in a few ways if you are a true crime girlie but the ending was satisfying.

I have to add, as a library employee, her depictions of her work at the library was so close to reality that I looked the author up on Goodreads to see if she'd worked in a library herself. I do like when authors have the good sense to represent libraries accurately.

HAPPY PUB DAY!!!!! (8/6)

Big thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the ALC copy of this creepy read!

I truly enjoyed the creepy atmosphere and setting of this one. I found myself at times being annoyed with the MC, but honestly it played into her role so well. I had a sense of where this was headed, but didn't fully figure out all of the pieces. Lilly's obsession really made this work and I loved how it wrapped up so nicely. With a touch of extra creepy for the last line!!

The audio was done very well for this and I appreciated the extra sense of creepy that it provided to the story.

I would recommend this if you're wanting a creepy, haunting type of story!

Thank you Dreamscape Media, Kelly Dwyer and netgalley for the audio Arc of Ghost Mother.
Narrated by Renata Friedman

I was super intrigued when I read the synopsis of Ghost Mother. What can go wrong when you buy a Murder house from the 1950s!
After listening to Ghost Mother it has a lot to unwrap. Lily who is the MC desperately wants a baby and has her own issues to face. I do feel that there could of been some trigger warnings placed at either the front of the audio ( I know some are at the back of physical copies ) as there is come graphic content of baby loss Luckily for me I haven't got any triggers but it did provoke some intense emotions. I felt very empathic towards Lily, as well as handling her deep seated emotions surrounding her life. She is also being haunted. As with any mystery/ thriller, lily starts digging about and tries to find out what really happened.

The plot line itself, is a slow burn. It did however, hold its own and took off in an interesting direction, which I didn't expect. It's interesting to see how Lily and Jacks relationship develops and how the hauntings affect them, I wasn't the biggest fan of her husband, Jack. I felt like he gaslighted her, which probably didn't help her mental state. There are some very creepy and atmospheric parts within this book with some horror elements.

Overall, I did enjoy listening. Renata Friedman who narrated this book had a lovely voice tempo for this book and it couldn't have been easy to talk around the triggers which she did very well.

3.75 for Storygraph. 4 stars for Amazon, Netgalley and Goodreads

Lily and Jack move into a broken down old mansion after Jack gets a new job that relocates them. Lily has been unable to have a baby. Deep in her heart, she knows this mesmerizing mansion will be the answer to everything. Jack is hesitant about living there, but she is insistent that they stay.

Almost immediately, eerie things begin to happen in the house; but only to Lily. Jack thinks she is losing her mind. Their relationship is struggling at this point. She begins obsessing about the history of the house and those who inhabited it many years ago. She finds out a domestic murder/suicide happened back in the 1950’s in the house. This does not make her want to move out.

Carefully sidestepping spoilers; Lily encounters supernatural entities, and some are quite up close and personal. I was surprised that the story went there, but it worked. Instead of being scared, she began to embrace their existence. I think Dwyer did a phenomenal job bringing forth the otherworldly aspect of plot. The idea of human beings and ghostly beings co-existing is fascinating.

If you like haunted houses, paranormal stories, psychological thrillers and dramatic domestic issues, then this book is for you. Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the ARC of this book.

I enjoyed the creepy and atmospheric setting of the murder mansion. The main character Lilly Bly has a lot of trauma in her past, tons of triggers like suicide and miscarriage, and her trauma enables her to connect with the Lawrence family that died in her new home. Lilly wants nothing more than to be a mother and distracts herself from her fertility struggles by diving headfirst into the mystery of the Lawrence family. I loved the dual timelines that unravel the mystery and I also liked the ending. Also, Renata Friedman is an excellent narrator.

There are many ways to become a mother, and Dwyer really delves into that in this eerie haunted house story. My headphones were absolutely glued into my ear holes while I was listening to this one, and the narrator, Renata Friedman knocked it out of the park as well.

Ghost Mother felt like it danced around the edges of a lot of different horror tropes (think Rosemary’s Baby meets Amityville Horror) BUT it was wholly its own story. I genuinely didn’t see some of the twists coming and went “okayyyyy then” multiple times while listening to this one.

This one is PERFECT for spooky season, or if you’re like me and can’t wait - this one releases tomorrow. Check this one out if you like haunted houses, ghosts, circuses, and creepy children!

**Thank you to NetGalley, Dreamscape Media and Union Square & Co. for the ALC of this haunting title!**

I do love a good haunted house/ghost story, and this one was deliciously creepy, with atmosphere dripping off of every page (or, well, every audible section). I thought it moved along well, with a pace that kept me engaged while still teasing out details and building eerie tension to the breaking point. The resolution felt a little over the top, but that's not necessarily a bad thing in this type of book. With the narration done so well, it worked. I felt the fluttery "what's real, what's not" tension while listening and couldn't wait to see how it would all play out, and that's really all I want in this type of story!

WHY AREN'T THERE CONTENT WARNINGS IN THIS AUDIOBOOK?!?! Please stop doing this, publishers. I beg you. Audiobooks need content warnings just as much as print books! I cannot say if the print book does indeed have content warnings, but I'll never know because I got an ALC, not an ARC.

Content Warnings: Miscarriage GRAPHIC, abortion, suicide, child death

Lilly is desperate for a baby, and she and her husband have just moved into a rundown mansion. Oh and it's probably haunted.

To me this book didn't feel like horror, unless you consider mental illness to be horror. Lilly isn't very likable and very untrustworthy. And while I do enjoy an unreliable narrator, I did not enjoy her. I also didn't enjoy her husband Jack, who read as borderline abusive at times. I wasn't scared by this book, but I was horrified to read GRAPHIC miscarriage scenes without any warning that they were coming.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ALC. Renata Friedman was a fine narrator, but this book definitely wasn't for me, and I should have DNF'd it after the miscarriage scenes.

4.5 stars rounded up - thank you the the publisher for an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This book reminded me of almost every haunted house book I have come across and that’s not necessarily a bad thing and in this particular case I ate it up. There were times I felt it got a little repetitive and drawn out, but overall I stayed invested throughout. While the storyline itself isn’t very unique, I did find it to be very enjoyable and entertaining. With the dark vibes of the home, the hiding of the truth from the husband, and crippling debt catching up to the couple, there is a pretty quick descent into madness and I couldn’t look away. There was one aspect to the storyline I had a little trouble getting on board with and found slightly cringe, but with the conclusion of the story turning out the wild way it did I do think it made a lot of sense and could look past it.

2 Stars
This started off really interesting to me - I related to Lilly a lot with her fertility struggles and her strong desire to be a mom and even how she worked at a circulation desk lol, but as it went on it was harder for me to understand the choices she was making and I was sad to see her spiralling instead of finding growth. I don’t love how this ended at all, I feel like her husband really did his best with what he had and Lilly really did not help at all and I don’t think he (or she) deserved that ending. This was a little bit gothic but I would say it was more of a psychological thriller than anything.

Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the ARC!

A trigger warning is warranted for this title: infertility, miscarriage, abortion, suicide, child death

Ghost Mother introduces us to Lilly Bly, a Chicago native that has just moved to small town Wisconsin with her husband, Jack. Lilly is hoping to become a mother in her new home - a dilapidated mansion that she soon finds out is affectionately known as 'The Murder House' by town locals. In need of supplemental income due to years of irresponsible spending, Lilly gets a job at the library and soon learns more about the history of her home.

I found Ghost Mother both compelling and a bit annoying at the same time. Lilly is a bit insufferable in her expectations surrounding work and fertility. She talks about feeling pregnant the day after having sex with her husband.... um it does not work that way. I also felt this may be a tough book for a lot of women because adding an abortion onto infertility is a bit messy. Working with women struggling with infertility, I know that it would likely be very hard to read about the main character having an abortion and then going on to complain about her lack of child.

Logical questions tend to get in my way of enjoying a book. I was aghast at the financial situation the couple found themselves in. How did they get approved for a home that they had no hope of paying the mortgage on? There was also the fact that this small town had the busiest library I've ever heard of. I've been to libraries in cities and I don't even think they get as much traffic on a weekday afternoon as Hampton, Wisconsin does.

Listening to Ghost Mother was enjoyable because it was a bit of a slow burn type book and the audio kept me interested. Renata Friedman did a great job narrating and creating differentiation between the different character voices.

Thank you to NetGalley, Dreamscape Media, the author Kelly Dwyer, and the narrator Renata Friedman for an ALC of Ghost Mother in exchange for an honest review!