Motherthing - Ainslie Hogarth

Horror

Rating: 7.5/10

With a book hook that went something like this; a darkly funny domestic horror novel about a woman who must take drastic measures to save her husband and herself from the vengeful ghost of her mother-in-law, I was caught.

And that, my fellow reader, only barely scratches the surface of this deeply weird and wonderfully written book.

Our narrator, Abby, is a dedicated employee at a nursing home who in a stroke of misfortune, finds herself a live in caregiver for her mother-in-law. An absolutely abhorrent woman she puts up with because of her love for her husband Ralph.  Who somehow turned out to be a lovely human being.

But when mommy not so dearest dies, Ralph plunges into a grief induced depression. Good riddance I say, but to each their own.

And then things get much worse when it turns out the motherthing is, well let’s call it lingering. And she is not going to release her maternal death grip on Ralph without a fight. Abby goes to extreme, and rather unsettling lengths to shake her husband loose from this hags’ clutches.

A book that will have you laughing at highly inappropriate moments and feeling profoundly grateful your own mother-in-law doesn’t seem nearly as bad anymore.

My thanks to NetGalley, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and the author for the advanced readers copy.

Book Pairing(s): Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder, Bunny by Mona Awad, A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers