I haven’t done a proper book review in a while oh my goodness!

• Author: Jacquie Walters
• Series: Standalone
• Genre: Horror
• No. of pages: 303
• Dates read: 19.09.24 – 21.09.24
• Star Rating: 3.75 stars

Plot: Flora is a new mom enamored of her baby girl, Iris, even if she arrived a few weeks early. With her husband still deployed, Flora navigates the newborn stage alone. But as the sleepless nights pass in the loneliness of their half-empty home, the edges of her reality begin to blur. Just as Flora becomes convinced she is losing her mind, a surprising guest shows up: Flora’s own mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken in years. Can they mend their fraught relationship? Or is there more Flora’s mother isn’t telling her about the events that led to their estrangement? As stranger and scarier events unfold, Flora begins to suspect the house is not as empty as she once thought. She must determine: is her hold on reality slipping dangerously away? Or is she, in fact, the only thing standing between a terrifying visitor and her baby? 

Thank you to Zaffre for sending me a copy of this book to review.

One thing that is so great about the horror genre is it truly allows you to dive into the deepest parts of yourselves and allows you to put onto page manifestations of your darkest thoughts or moments. It’s a genre that I think, more so than any other, really allows authors to be raw with themselves and the reader in a visceral way.

This book to me felt like one big metaphor about how scary early motherhood can be, how you don’t feel that you can do anything right, how some things don’t come naturally the way people tell you it will, and how much you change as a person after going through the 9-month ordeal of pregnancy and labour.

This book was able to put the fears of motherhood out there right from the first page and you watch as the main character slips more and more away from herself. The writing so easily plots the downward spiral of Flora and you are genuinely scared to turn the page as you have no idea what to expect next.

I felt this was a really good look into post-partum depression and post-partum psychosis and I felt the supernatural horror elements of this novel served as more of a metaphor for complex post-partum experiences and through this novel were we able to address the experiences of mothers going through those kind of things.

It’s not THE representation of post-partum experiences but I do think through this book you can see the connections the author is trying to make. It was that part of the book that I found the most engaging. It is a raw study into early motherhood as well as a horror novel as well.

It also serves as a novel to unpack complex mother-daughter relationships. The relationship between Flora and her mother Jodi is a relationship that I feel many people will connect with, the toxicity, the passive aggressiveness, and the lack of agency as your own being. Merging this complex dynamic in a book with strong PTSD themes makes for one emotional and slightly volatile novel that had me engaged from the first page.

That being said the only reason it didn’t reach the 4 star rating is due to the plot having an element of predictability about it.