What a wild ride this book turned out to be. I think it was a great take on motherhood, generational trauma/passing on generational trauma and childhood trauma. Having a literal devil child might have been a little on the nose, but the author managed to find an excellent balance of horror and humor in Tantrum. I really enjoyed the way the author wrote Thea overcoming her childhood trauma and accepting her daughter for who she is, rather than making Lucia go through what she did.

The shorter length of this novel made it a really enjoyable and quick read, I'll for sure be recommending this to my friends once its out!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group for this eARC!

Thea is a mother of 3. Two boys, and a 13 week old baby girl named Lucia. Thea thinks Lucia is a monster. Like a literal monster. She acts different from the other two children. Maybe even violent?

I will say no more about the plot, as to not give anything away. This should be experienced knowing as little as possible.

This was a great take on childhood trauma, motherhood, and breaking generational curses. It was a very fast read that able you immediately. There’s humor, and gore, and honestly, sometimes that’s all you need! Highly recommend reading this one! You can get through it in a couple hours and it tells a very compelling and powerful story dealing with abuse.

3.5 rounded up! Although the concept of this plot line of having an evil child is a bit redundant, I found this novella very entertaining with original work throughout. It's feminine rage, breaking generational curses, romance, and self-discovery all in one! I HATED the main character in the beginning, but the development was so concise and detailed, that I grew to love her so much in the end. My biggest complaint about this book, is that I needed more about Lucia. There felt to be a few instances that the mother was terrified of her, but I almost wanted more. The love Thea feels for her in the end and the urge to protect her from her own mother would've been that much sweeter. Other than that, this was a great and fast read!

Thank you to the publisher for an ARC of this wild ride!

What a quirky, dark and fun read. It's the trials and tribulations of motherhood told in a no-sugar-coated way, mixed in with an adorable demon daughter. While I am not a mother, I found myself laughing at the way this mother was speaking and can just imagine,this is what parenting is like, but most will gloss over the negative.

If you are a fan of mild horror, mixed with a mother's downward spiral (but told in a humorous way), and a little bit of fantasy, this book has it all.
Note: some offensive language, but it totally fits for the story to work.

This book is out there, in the best possible way! Like a fever dream induced by too much NyQuil 😂
Though the characters aren’t terribly likable, you end up rooting for the MC, to uproot and demolish her past traumas.

This book dives headfirst into maternity horror, when our MC (Thea) thinks something is up with her newborn baby girl… and by ‘something is up’, I mean that she believes her daughter to be the devil incarnate, and begins to fear for the safety of her two other children and her family as a whole.
As the book progresses, the author does a really good job of maintaining the tension that makes you not be able to put it down. Thea, with the help of her ‘demon baby’, initiates the unpacking of generational trauma and the anxiety that is induced and compounded by motherhood. I do feel as though the book ended a bit abruptly and was left wanting more. I’m not sure if it’s because certain parts were left without being excavated to my personal liking, but enjoyed it overall.

What the hell did I just read? I'm trying to figure out how to convey the absolute genius, horror, and just brilliant writing this book reeks of.

This author is new to me and I'm sincerely blown away. I thought the story was going in kind of a traditional scary way and then it did a somersault in my brain. I kept rereading paragraphs, to make sure I had read them correctly. This author scares the hell out of me and I love her for it.

This was unexpected for me. I thought it was going to be a psychological horror, but I ended up relating to it so much. This was a great way of showing real traumas that are so common but almost never addressed and conquered. I love the trip this book took me on.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

I found this to be a pretty fun read. While a familiar story, it's told with a bit of humor. I'm no prude, but thought the constant swearing was a little overboard.
The novel tackled many topics--abuse, generational trauma, mother/daughter relationships.
It felt like the book was divided into two halves totally, and never quite did what I was hoping. I think I was hoping for a different type of story-- something a little more unique and consistent.

A wonderfully weird exploration of female rage and the horrors of pregnancy, motherhood, and the cycle of childhood trauma. The story felt a little disjointed at times, but I'm glad it was written as a novella because it makes for great pacing and really packs a punch.

After reading the snypsis I got very intrigued by this book and excited to read it.
And then I actually started reading it...and it didn't meet my expectations.
It is about struggles motherhood brings to most mothers, and I was expecting that. But the sense of (dark) humour in this story didn't work for me.
I actually think there is too much humour - I wanted a horror story, like spooky horror, but at best this book sounded to me like a comedy horror with discussions on motherhood and how women are treated or supposed to behave as mothers.
It is different from a lot of 'motherhood' books I've read before, I'll give you that. Yet, it wasn't what I expected or wanted to be.
Let's just say I'm not the right audience for this book, but I'm sure other readers will enjoy this.

Thank you, NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Putnam, for providing me with a free eARC of this novel in exchange for my honest opinion.

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**spoiler alert** Wowowow! I’m so thankful to Putnam Books, Rachel Eve Moulton, and Netgalley for granting me advanced digital access to this horrific narrative centered around motherhood, generational trauma and demonization of women from womb to walking. As an expecting mother myself, I only found it fair that I consume this media, and boy oh boy did it resonate. I am eager to hear what pals say about this read when it comes out to the public on August 5, 2025.

Thea, a mother of three, with a freshly 13-week-old is struggling in her post-partum era. Her husband is fairly hands-off, her eldest sons are desperate for comfort, there are chores to complete and meals to cook, and let’s not forget that she’s pretty certain her infant daughter, Lucia, is a demon… not in a colicky way, but like she was born with teeth, musters words and phrases, and even tried to pry out her brother’s eyeball and eat it… that kinda way.

Full of fear and curiosity, Thea is eager to figure out what makes this little child tick or if she’s truly losing her mind for good. Over the course of many flashback explorations, readers discover Thea and Lucia aren’t all too different, as we watch Thea’s childhood play out in bittersweet narratives where her own mother was ALSO frightened of the child she had produced. We come to find out that Thea’s abusive upbringing was rather intentional, as this generation of women come from a line of monsters so terrifying and consuming, and not even metaphorically.

But on the metaphorical spectrum, I totally understand the writing on the walls. Women are vilified from the moment they are sentient enough to make their own decisions and fall “outside of the line” — we are a problem that society can’t seem to control. I feel many expectant mothers fear for their newborn and growing daughters for how the general public will perceive them, but if this book taught me anything it’s that it’s NEVER too late to break generational trauma and patterns that have broken and beaten us down for so long

this was such a strange book!!! It was a motherhood horror book, and the creepy things were scary, and it was just an uncomfortable read. I could see the themes of motherhood, gender norms, and love, but it was weird

Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for this complimentary ARC in exchange for my honest review!!!

This book was not what I expected. I didn't enjoy the narrator or the story itself. I think this is just a case of "it just didn't fit me".

In this unique take on the maternity horror genre, we follow Thea as she navigates her worries and anxieties while adapting to adding a third child to her family. Unlike her two other children, who are absolute angels, her new baby is showing signs of being different - almost monstrous.

I am a sucker for a good maternity horror book, and this one started off typical of the genre. We have a mother who believes her daughter of 3 months is something sinister and she starts to fear for her family. But then the book escalates quickly into what feels like a fever dream.

On the surface, it’s a great horror story. It invokes anxiety and has an overwhelmingly creepy vibe throughout. But what I love about this book is its underlying themes of generational trauma, family camaraderie, and feminine empowerment. Although I felt the characters in this one weren’t the most likable, I found myself cheering for the main character in the end as she faced her own demons and became her true self. It does an amazing job of highlighting the importance of facing past traumas and how that can strengthen future generations.

Overall, I loved this one. I found it to be fun and meaningful. I do have to mention that this book is really out there and feels like a massive fever dream after the halfway mark. You have to embrace the weird to really enjoy this read. If you enjoy maternity horror or weird girl fiction/horror, I think you’d appreciate this one as well!

Thank you to Netgalley, Penguin Group Putnam, and the author for giving me access to this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This is a weird book.

If you ask me if I liked it, I’d have to say that I’m not sure. But I enjoyed the experience of the read.

The story is incredibly surreal. I spent much of the book not knowing what was and wasn’t real – and boy was I surprised in the end.

It’s also a very biting and sometimes caustic look at mother daughter relationships – the very, very bad ones and the ones in which mothers and daughters will do absolutely everything for each other.

I will say, if you like normal, this may not be for you. But if you’re willing to step into a very weird world where anything can happen, you’ll want to give this one a try.

• ARC via Publisher

An interesting read for sure. A quick creepy horror books that sucked me in! During the first portion of the book it seemed pretty status quo for what I was expecting and I was wondering what was going to happen that would make it a horror book. I was delightfully surprised with the turn it took! Definitely recommend this for fans of Nightbitch and American Horror Story.

Thank you to Netgally and G. P. Putmans’s Sons for providing this ARC.

This book was a very interesting and chilling ride, especially because I had NO idea what to expect. It is a very dark and weird take on motherhood with a monster baby that left me reeling a bit at the end. It definitely had a little bit of Rosemary's Baby vibes!

Tantrum was a quick, eerie dive into a mother's spiral as she wrestles between her relationship with her daughter who seems to be more evil than she seems, and her own mother with whom she has a fraught relationship. While at times this felt like it was struggling to nail down the genre it wanted to be in, I still found it enjoyable.

Thea is a mother of three, married to her loving husband Dennis and mother to two boys and most recently, her daughter of 13 weeks. Her mental state is already not great as she is a stay at home mother, but her husband often works from home, making her have to juggle household responsibilities while working around Dennis who can't really contribute during working hours. But this is compounded by strange realizations about Lucia, her daughter. Firstly, Lucia seems to be developing abnormally fast. Not only physically, being born with teeth and being able to walk at 13 weeks, but also she seems to have shockingly high intelligence, being able to form words and basic sentences while so young. But more disturbingly, she seems to have a penchant for violence. We start the book with Lucia gleefully decapitating a chicken. She often bites her brothers, and enjoys drawing blood. Thea's emotional turmoil comes to a head when she "confronts" Lucia and simultaneously confronts her own horrific childhood with her abusive, narcissistic mother. But it is through Lucia that she physically confronts these traumas, and Lucia seems to be the key to destroying the most harmful parts of her past. But when confronting her mother, it becomes apparent that all three girls have equally sinister pasts.

This was an odd read, the first half of the book felt very much like a typical contemporary fiction book about a mother struggling with aging and motherhood. It was sarcastic and funny at times with a lot of "mom-humor," but then VERY abruptly took a turn to the sinister and surreal with Thea's confrontation with Lucia. After that it became extremely heavy on topics like abuse and sexual assault, as well as extremely violent. I don't dislike either of these genres on their own, but I did find the transition to be quite jarring, even though I suspect it was a stylistic choice. I did enjoy most of the latter half of the book more as we learned more about Thea and the mystery both deepend and revealed itself more, but I wasn't completely satisfied with the ending, which I think over-explained itself. But regardless, I still thought this was a quick, fun read that touched on a lot of deep themes, rich for reflection and contemplation. This probably resonates much more with a different demographic of folks, but I still found it to be enjoyable.

well that was a rocky ride. i had heard of this book, but I'd never known what it was actually about. I think this probably aided my overall enjoyment of the book, because essentially I went in blind.

this book had me from the outset. it was atmospheric and chilling, without being overly so, which always kept me guessing what might happen next. I enjoyed how the author used slow-burning tension, without everything happening all at once.

the characters were well crafted and so unlikeable. the writing was wonderful, easy to understand, and very effective for the story.

the only thing I didn't love was actually the ending. it was a little anticlimactic for me, but apart from that, a creepy but fun read. modern day horror at it's best.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

What a beautiful story. It really threw me for a loop in terms of where it was going, and I loved reading it, especially as someone who hopes to have a daughter one day. May all our daughters be monsters that can protect themselves and their families ❤️