Name: MOTHERTHING.
Rating: 3.484126984126984 (63 reviews)
ISBN: 9781838957773

AINSLIE. HOGARTH

MOTHERTHING.

sani

Maybe touching someone is the kindest thing you can do; making a person feel like it’s okay to touch them, that they’re touchable and not disgusting, is the easiest and best way to make a person feel good in the world.

Eating, love's natural, bloody conclusion that can never, ever be indulged, because then the thing you love is destroyed. And maybe not destroying the thing you love, resisting that impulse, is the highest expression of love.

Ainslie Hogarth

Abby Lamb has done it. She's found the Great Good in her husband, Ralph, and together they will start a family and put all the darkness in her childhood to rest. But then the Lambs move in with Ralph's mother, Laura, whose depression has made it impossible for her to live on her own. She's venomous and cruel, especially to Abby, who has a complicated understanding of motherhood given the way her own, now-estranged, mother raised her. When Laura takes her own life, her ghost starts to haunt Abby and Ralph in very different ways. Ralph is plunged into depression, and Abby is being terrorized by a force intent on taking everything she loves away from her. With everything on the line, Abby must make the ultimate sacrifice in order to prove her adoration to Ralph and break Laura's hold on the family for good.

Motherthing

annalyse! 

Patrick Book

Ryan Mateyk

A gripping, gleeful horror tale. Follow Abby as she works through her family trauma with... unique techniques.

Liyah 🤎

Great spooky read! The narration was quick and incisive and I loved when it switched to stage directions. A very fun gory read. I will say the ending was slightly lack luster. It felt like a controlled explosion versus all hell breaking loose but! it was a fun ride the entire time.

look i have mommy issues as much as the next guy but Jesus Christ 

tbh i was really looking forward to this book so it was a pretty disappointing read, normally i can an enjoy horror as a metaphor for mental illness but when it’s mental illness for the sake of horror? meh.

Cici Pearson

look i have mommy issues as much as the next guy but Jesus Christ 

tbh i was really looking forward to this book so it was a pretty disappointing read, normally i can an enjoy horror as a metaphor for mental illness but when it’s mental illness for the sake of horror? meh.

Molly M

forgot to say this before but really not a fan of how this book makes people with bpd seem necessarily evil

it's like the opposite of gone girl but also the same

envie,

catalina

Grace M

“I bubble again with blinding-hot, spine-severing cumshitkill.”
How am I supposed to read a line as perfect as that and not immediately become obsessed?
I fell for this book from the first page, no exaggeration. Motherthing is tremendously hilarious, which was very unexpected considering the book starts off with a suicide. The humor is layered with macabre horror that genuinely had me unnerved while reading in a dark room. I have never encountered anything quite like this book and I don’t think I ever will again. What a gem.

Grabbed this during a 2-for-1 sale for Spooky Season, coincidentally didn’t realize that I also had NetGalley waiting on a review (sorry)! It’s a little different as a domestic horror, but I enjoyed. The narration is well done, and the character’s voice comes to life. 

First and foremost, this is kind of a dark comedy. Or at the very least, the artistic voice comes across as funny. A lot of the analogies and metaphors are witty, and something I have never quite achieved in my own writing. 

In a way, I would liken this to a fictional “I’m Glad My Mom Died” as it shows a lot of the darker sides of motherhood: abuse, obsession, and dysfunction. It also goes into depression and delusion in a very atmospheric way. 

Unfortunately the end did lose me for a bit, which is when it was supposed to be building to climax, but it did end with quite the surprise. Personally a 3/5*, a fun one.

C. J. Daley 

Grabbed this during a 2-for-1 sale for Spooky Season, coincidentally didn’t realize that I also had NetGalley waiting on a review (sorry)! It’s a little different as a domestic horror, but I enjoyed. The narration is well done, and the character’s voice comes to life. 

First and foremost, this is kind of a dark comedy. Or at the very least, the artistic voice comes across as funny. A lot of the analogies and metaphors are witty, and something I have never quite achieved in my own writing. 

In a way, I would liken this to a fictional “I’m Glad My Mom Died” as it shows a lot of the darker sides of motherhood: abuse, obsession, and dysfunction. It also goes into depression and delusion in a very atmospheric way. 

Unfortunately the end did lose me for a bit, which is when it was supposed to be building to climax, but it did end with quite the surprise. Personally a 3/5*, a fun one.

And I absolutely love the cover!

tori

‘Motherthing’ is justice for all daughters-in-law scorned. This book left me drunk with morbid satisfaction. Absolutely recommend if you have the stomach for it.

sybil

Maggie

A clever, disturbing read that made me laugh out loud and go a little nauseous. After the death of her mother-in-law, Abby seeks to pull her husband Ralph out of his depression, save her marriage, start a family, and rid their home of her mother-in-law’s ghost. We learn more about Abby throughout the book, following her relationship with her own mother, a childhood comfort couch she called “motherthing,” and a patient she works with who has taken on a mother role in Abby’s mind. With themes of delusion, obsession, trauma, and sacrifice, this book is perfect for anyone interested in the recent “unhinged woman narrator” trend.

This book is for fans of Touch of Jen and Nightbitch, two of my favorite books this year. And, for those involved in the recent book review discourse- this book has dark themes, gross humor, a amultitude of violence- I hate to say, but it’s like Ottessa Moshfegh with more charm and less vitriol towards fat people.

I loved the subtlety used in divulging Abby’s backstory- it felt realistic and not overwrought, which left room for the devastation the information deserved. Hogarth’s narrator is unreliable and (somehow) charming. I was throughly impressed with this new take on a the “monster-in-law” trope, which seems to take generational trauma into consideration.

MOTHERTHING.

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