User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
This book’s ultra eerie cover whispered to my ear “please read me and just in case wear your adult diapers to prevent any inappropriateness! )
Well, what can I say? I always keen on freaky-scary- spine tingling themes!
I was truly right to judge the book from its scary cover: especially the shocking opening: two little girls who are also cousins escape into the woods for playing a game and one of them go berserk, acting like she’s Bloody Mary.
Maeve leaves her cousin Andrea behind, being punished by one of her cult mothers, finding herself trapped in a closet. She hears screaming of a wounded animal inside the house. But unfortunately this is not a real animal. Her cousin Andrea returns back from the woods to soothe her at the other side of the door as the screams get louder. This one of the bizarrest book openings made me drop my ereader and gulp my whole drink to gather my senses!
We move forward to meet with adult versions of the girls. We understand that they fell apart. Maeve in her early thirties, building a life in Big Apple, having limited social life, no close friendships, no longtime relationship instead of no strings attached pattern she has with a bartender, working as publishing editor.
She keeps looking for her estranged cousin Andrea she’s lost when they were children. As a final result she applies to a DNA search site. Miraculously someone answers her email: yes, that’s her cousin: Wow! She became a very wealthy and successful business woman. CEO of a startup with groundbreaking contributions to lifestyle market named NewLife.
They contact and try catching from where they left things. Andrea is married with her beloved husband Rob. She still grieves from the loss of her child. After their meeting, Andrea invites Maeve to their Catskills mansion ( yes you may only call this place a secluded, huge mansion) Maeve accepts to this invitation without thinking any further. It’s better to celebrate her birthday weekend alone in her cramped apartment.
And she gets introduced to Andrea’s company latest production: Olivia doll: which helps both expecting and grieving families to connect with a baby. Andrea tells her this product matches well with their life coaching business. Maeve finds it bizarre but she keeps to herself.
As long as she starts spending time with her cousin and her inner circle, she slowly drifts apart from her normal life style. But being nearby her triggers the memories about her dark past in the cult and she realizes she’s a pawn of a very dangerous game. She’d better run to save herself but could she manage to do that?
Well: this book is breathtaking, one sit read! The pacing and execution of the story is marvelous and ending is jaw dropping!
It’s dark, it’s nerve bending, if you like to get scared and push your vocal cords for more screaming, this is a great choice for you!
I love dark stories and I truly enjoy this book!
Special thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan- Tor/ Forge for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest opinions.
Rating: really liked it
**4.5 Stars**
Dear Ms. Anne Heltel,
I would like to bring to your attention the book you have written will have me having nightmares at least for a week. Was it necessary to include dolls with AI intelligence? Dolls are already creepy, but you had to turn it up a few notches. Then to throw in a Motherhood cult is well played, ma'am. Enclosed you will find my cash app tag in which I demand payment for the upcoming therapy I will now need.
Sincerely,
Traumatized In Florida
Rating: really liked it
**3.5-stars rounded up**Twenty years ago, Maeve risked her life and fled the cult she was born and raised in. After that Maeve was swiftly adopted by a loving couple, but the transition to life on the outside was quite difficult.
Maeve feared boys and men. She had never been to a public school, or played amongst her peers of the opposite sex.
Now an adult, Maeve has done her best to build a normal life for herself in NYC. She works in publishing and has a guy she's kind of sweet on.
One thing she is missing though is a family. She doesn't want any children of her own, but Maeve misses being a part of a larger family nonetheless. In particular, she misses her cousin and childhood best friend, Andrea, who she hasn't seen since the night she fled the cult.
In an unexpected turn of events, Maeve is finally reconnected with Andrea via a DNA service. Thank you, 23andMe.
Andrea is wildly successful, an entrepreneur in the fertility industry. She's married, with a loving husband and big old house she just purchased upstate. A house she pretty much offers up to Maeve on a platter.
Maeve is excited for the opportunity to reunite with her cousin and become a steady part of her life. She travels to the house upstate, along with Andrea, her husband Rob and Andrea's work partner, Emily.
The more Andrea and Maeve interact, and Emily too, she can't be discounted in this assessment, the more uneasy the vibe becomes. There's clearly something off, but Maeve isn't really open to acknowledging that.
Maeve wants Andrea back in her life. She's willing to overlook any awkwardness. Even though Andrea and Emily both seem to disapprove of Maeve's lifestyle, she's not going to let that ruin everything. She dusts it off.
As things in Maeve's normal life begin to veer wildly off course, however, she's pushed even further into Andrea's orbit. That's when things start really getting intense.
Just Like Mother is a sort of
Rosemary's Baby for the modern age. It's definitely channeling those vibes and I'm not mad about it at all.
While I will admit, for me, this started slow, it did leave me with one of my favorite things: an evil smile on my face!
Heltzel's writing was engaging and I did like how Maeve's character was built out using both past and present perspectives. Understanding her past in the cult was pivotal to understanding her life path and choices involving Andrea.
I liked Maeve. I definitely connected with her decision not to have children of her own and some of the other characters reactions to that choice actually infuriated me. I feel like my strong reaction to those topics is a clear sign that Heltzel delivered these ideas believably.
This was super intense towards the end. After the initial build-up, once it starts spiraling, it really starts spiraling.
I feel like this would make a great selection for a book club, or a buddy read. There's a lot of solid discussion topics held within these pages. If someone is looking to deep dive, there's plenty to keep them occupied. I will remember this one for a long time to come!
Thank you so much to the publishers, Tor Nightfire and Macmillan Audio, for providing me with a copies to read and review.
This one definitely kept me intrigued and I look forward to picking up future works from Heltzel!
Rating: really liked it
NOW AVAILABLE!!!
inseparable cousins maeve and andrea, along with several other girl-children, were raised by The Mother Collective, a feminist commune (*koff*
cult) in vermont, where a group of Mothers presided over a house full of secrets where strange grunts and moans leaked out from beneath locked doors and boy-children were barely-tolerated pets.
girls born to The Mother Collective were well-fed, educated, and self-sufficient, and at the age of thirteen, each girl would
...receive the ritual and become a Mother. It is the greatest privilege, the only way to know love, says Mother with the red hair. It is the fundamental reason for life.
maeve never made it that far—following an incident on her 8th birthday, an escape attempt that ended in tragedy, the cult was raided, the mothers arrested, the children scattered into foster care. maeve was adopted, trailing clouds of trauma, and she spent many of her adult years unsuccessfully searching for her much-missed companion andrea before giving up hope.
until one day, andrea finds her.
andrea is happily married and professionally thriving; the ceo of multi-million tech start-up NewLife, whose wealthy donors have enabled her to cultivate a successful lifestyle brand around family planning and parenthood, although she has recently suffered the loss of her own daughter.
maeve, on the other hand, is resolutely unmarried and childless, struggling to live in new york on a fiction editor's salary, and "as unattached as it gets" apart from a friend-with-benefits entanglement with a local bartender.
Andrea's professional life was, admittedly, intriguing. Even in my childish imaginings I had mostly assumed she'd struggled too. It hadn't occurred to me that she'd be wealthy, accomplished, renowned, and loved. My cousin had made a real life for herself. What did I have to offer, after all these years? If my life was a lazy river, Andrea's was the Autobahn. I couldn't help but feel that all those years I was looking for her, she'd been busy leaving me behind.
but, far from leaving maeve behind, andrea is eager to resurrect the sororal intimacy of their childhood, and the women fall back into old patterns, their lives intertwining as easily as if they've never been apart. andrea uses her wealth and influence to help maeve, generously offering her a home away from home in her sprawling catskills estate, absorbing her into her life of moneyed ease, introducing her to her baby-obsessed friends and colleagues, offering maeve a safe haven where she can plan her next moves as her life back home begins to skid off the rails.
and there are only a few spooky and worrisome red flags marring the idyll. it's like they've never left. no, really—it's like they've never left.
Just Like Mother is a very modern brand of gothic horror, but it doesn't stray far from the genre expectations. there are a number of jump-scares and plot twists, and they're all predictable enough that you wanna sit maeve down for an intervention, but even though it's clear where all this is heading, it's a spooky-fun journey filled with creepy dolls and creepier humans, the veneration of motherhood and the inescapable burdens of the past.
and best of all, i now have a magnetic notepad that's gonna make me not even want to
look at my to-do list, let alone accomplish anything on it, which is going to save me so much time! like maeve,
I'd spent my life reaching for something bigger but wanting something easier. ignoring all my self-appointed tasks will certainly be easier.
creeeeeepy baaaabiiiieesss
come to my blog!
Rating: really liked it
This was a wild ride for sure! I’m not easily rattled, but there were definitely parts of this book that creeped me out and the ending is absolutely skin-crawling!
I really enjoyed the overall message of this book and found it incredibly creative how Heltzel portrayed it. There’s a lot of pressure and expectation of women surrounding life choices and I can appreciate the feminist undertones and message it delivers.
There are some gory parts of this book, so if that isn’t your thing you might want to reconsider reading this one.
There were a few loose ends I thought were going to be tied up by the end and a of couple instances I thought were going to be revisited or more thoroughly explained and weren’t hence the 4⭐️ and not 5.
I did thoroughly enjoy reading this one though and was actually really sad when the book was done. I had the hardest time putting this book down and I look forward to reading more from this author!
A big thank you to NetGalley for providing me with this ARC.
4⭐️
Rating: really liked it
⭐️4.5
This is the first time where my friends have rated this 3 stars and I'm going to give it 5 stars.
I had such an amazing time reading this book. What a wild ride. It isn't scary necessarily. It's deeply unsettling and eerie. The tension peeked and didn't let up.
These are things I've heard women say in my real life. The terrifying thing is that this isn't outside the walls of reality. I know plenty of women who feel this way and would go to this extreme if given the opportunity. It just gives a voice to the cult that could form at any moment but miraculously hasn't yet.
This is my type of literary thriller/horror. That's a very specific genre to fill but what can I say? the vibes were just ✨💖✨
Rating: really liked it
Just Like Mother delivers on all the creepy vibes oozing from its cover.
Since she escaped from the cult she grew up in, Maeve has built a fortress of walls around her. One of the only people she lets marginally close is her casual boyfriend.
Maeve’s quiet life gets disrupted when her long lost cousin Andrea, who grew up in the same cult, contacts her. Maeve learns that Andrea has made a successful career for herself in the lifestyle and tech industry. Soon, Maeve spends most of her time at Andrea and her husband’s historic estate, despite the general disapproval of Maeve’s single life from Andrea’s inner circle.
I can’t say much more than that, except things start getting super creepy and snowballing out of control for Maeve.
Suspension of disbelief is a must when reading this book. The plot gets pretty wild and makes one wonder how someone can be so oblivious. I don’t mind books that lean toward the dramatic side, so it didn’t take away from enjoyment of this novel.
The writing style is very engaging, making this a quick read. Maeve’s voice instantly captured my attention.
A heads-up that this book has a lot of spice and open-door scenes.
Overall, I had fun with this one and will definitely read future books by the author.
CW: for everything associated with cults.
As a total aside: this book reminds me of Cher’s iconic 90s interview.
Jane Pauley: “You said, ‘a man is not a necessity. A man is a luxury.’”
Cher: “Like dessert, yeah. A man is absolutely not a necessity.”
Jane Pauley: “Did you mean that to sound mean and bitter?”
Cher: “Not at all! I adore dessert, I love men. I think men are the coolest. But you don’t really need them to live. My mom said to me, ‘you know sweetheart, one day you should settle down and marry a rich man.’ And I said, ‘Mom – I am a rich man.’”
Thank you to Tor Nightfire for providing an arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
https://booksandwheels.com
Rating: really liked it
MOTHER…
Anne Heltzel has given a frightening meaning to this term associated with female empowerment and caretaking.
Maeve is born into a cult called The Mother Collective, a Vermont based commune with a fanatical perspective on motherhood. She and her older cousin Andrea are tightly bonded and make a pact never to be apart from each other.
When Maeve hears strange noises coming from a locked room in their house, her curiosity gets the best of her. After she discovers what the MOTHERS have locked in the room, she escapes the commune with BOY, the only male child.
Years later, Maeve and Andrea reconnect after matching on a DNA website. Surprisingly, both women have been living in New York. However, while Maeve has been struggling to make ends meet as a book editor, Andrea has made a fortune in the tech and fertility industry. By the time Maeve learns more about Andrea’s business and true interests, it may be too late to escape!
This book can best be described as The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Stepford Wives.
The plot has a dark dystopian quality that will leave you very unsettled. I was intrigued by the misandry aspect, but do wish that more time was spent in the past timeline learning about the cult. The creepy grief dolls that Andrea invents are terrifying. Just look at that amazing book cover!
The plot kept my interest, despite the very predictable twists. I also have a few issues with believability, but this book still intrigued me with every flip of the page.
Please note the trigger warnings, as this book may not appeal to everyone.
Trigger warning: Cults, rape
Expected publication date: 5/17/22
3.5/5 stars rounded down
Thank you to NetGalley and Jordan Hanley from Macmillan-Tor/Forge Publishing for the widget of Just Like Mother in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: really liked it
2.5 stars. This started out really promising: creepy cult, creepy Stepford husbands, creepy dolls, creepy new age startup. But as it ramped up it got more clunky, and I never actually bought anything that was going on.
You don't have to give me something totally believable in a horror novel. It is a given that we are going to stretch the rules of reality. Our protagonist, Maeve, is just fine, it's her long-lost cousin Andrea who doesn't work at all. The two grew up together in a matriarchal cult but were separated after Maeve escaped and the cult was brought down by law enforcement. Maeve has built something of a life for herself, though she's rather aimlessly floating through it, but she's surprised when she's reunited with Andrea to find that her cousin is the head of a motherhood-centric startup, with a perfect husband and a seemingly-perfect life.
We never get a full picture of exactly how the cult worked (boo!) and as we get more into the obviously-going-more-than-it-appears-to-be startup we never really get to understand what it does or what the appeal is. Something about motherhood coaching? Something about bonding with your baby before birth by using a super creepy doll? As both the cult and the startup become more and more important to the plot as Maeve gets more intwined with Andrea, everything just gets more blurry and the raising of stakes just fell flat for me. It's unclear what all of this is that Andrea cares about so much.
I was willing to go with it and was even speeding through it for the first 2/3 or so. But oh boy did it lose me in the last third. Each new twist didn't have me creeped out but instead reacting with, "Ummm okay I guess?" A whole lot happens, not much of it makes any sense, and it got less creepy instead of more creepy. I know a lot of horror has third act problems but here I never understood what it was all about. Like yes society is obsessed with motherhood and perfection but I couldn't see how this was commenting on that or playing with the themes.
I did read it really fast, though.
Rating: really liked it
I thought this book was just ok pretty much throughout the whole thing until the end. I really enjoyed the ending and the slight twist that it had.
Maeve and her cousin Andrea were part of a cult. They escaped when they were little and haven’t seen each other since. Years later, Maeve is living in New York City. She has a great job and really worked hard to rebuild her life.
Maeve reconnects with Andrea and is overjoyed to be with her again. She soon starts spending time at Andrea’s mansion in the Catskills. Andrea has made tons of money with her fertility company. She and her friends disagree with Maeve’s single, childless life.
The more time Maeve spends with her cousin, the more she feels so something isn’t right. Is history about to repeat itself?
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for my honest review.
Rating: really liked it
Maeve and her cousin, Andrea were raised by a group of women, “Mothers" on a commune. That is until one night when Maeve flees the commune with BOY. Leaving both the commune and Andrea behind. But Maeve and Andrea find each other again after being matched by a DNA website. Maeve is an editor who keeps others at arm’s length. Andrea is a successful woman working in the technology and fertility industry.
They soon reconnect and Maeve finds herself immersed in her cousin's life and when Andrea asks a question of her, Maeve is unsettled. When memories begin bubbling to the surface, she must face that the past might not be as terrorizing as her present.
I did feel that insta love with this book that others found. I found it to be an okay read from beginning to end. I often wondered if I was reading the same book that others had read. We can't love them all, and this was the case with this book. I listened to the audiobook and had a copy of the book on kindle so I could dive in to either when I wanted.
I would put this in my good not great pile. Enjoyable but left me wanting more. The creepy factor fell short for me.
Thank you to Macmillan-Tor/Forge, Tor Nightfire and NetGalley and Macmillan Audio who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.
Read more of my reviews at www.openbookposts.com
Rating: really liked it
Real Rating: 3.5* of five, rounded down because Maeve is so irritating to me
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: The opening scene...Maeve, locked in a closet (!), hearing hideous screams of agony and being quietly comforted by her cousin Andrea as they go on and on, had me riveted. And that is that! No more folk-horror goodness.
All the momentum drained out of the story for me as we went from following her child-self to the chase narrative laid on for adult Maeve. The reason? I don't like adult Maeve. She's either a bit simple or she's got The Most Trusting nature ever plopped in a human being. Either way I want to shout at her, shake her until the missing connections in her brain click together, until she sees the simplest manipulations are being used on her with appalling regularity and success.
In the story universe, Maeve is one of the girl children in The Mother Collective whose purpose is to control matrilineally all the money and power that men have always controlled. They're using that power and wealth as men always have, to oppress and abuse their opposite numbers. Maeve's rescued/kidnapped by the Patriarchy at the ripe old age of eight and, unsurprisingly, is a Survivor and PTSD sufferer for the rest of her life.
When we rejoin her first person narrative, she's a never-was in her thirties, making her meager crusts of bread as a fiction editor. She's naturally quite wary of relationships, having very few...until Andrea comes back into her life. Andrea, her cousin from childhood, is fabulously wealthy and living a dream life as the big boss of a fertility start-up.
If you've read horror novels, you pretty much know what's coming.
It occurs, over the course of some thirty chapters. I'd say if you don't already have a grasp on the end of the book it will come as a shock to you. It did not do so to me. I was along for the ride, though, because I started to want this idiot woman Maeve to suffer some more right here in front of me as Andrea manipulates and sets her up.
The actual ending of the book was pretty clearly telegraphed from the start. I kept hollering at Maeve, "just
LOOK AT ANDREA for ten seconds and you will see it!" But she didn't, and I began to suspect her intelligence truly was subnormal.
When, at around the half-way mark, Maeve's friend-with-benefits pays one hell of a price for her vague, unconnected relationship to life, I was ready to say "sayonara." I decided to do something I don't usually do: I read the epilogue. There was another vile w-bomb aimed by Maeve, there was a moment of clarity for Maeve, and there was something so deeply schadenfreude-inducing that I had to get there step by step.
This is a horror novel for those, like me, who aren't in the Cult of Mother, and whose belief in the goodness of Woman is so frayed and chopped that it can no longer be discerned from a streak of extra-dark dirt etched on my skin. I think Author Heltzel has created a dark, dreadful mirror of the life men have forced, and continue to force, women to lead. There is nothing innate in the desire to Mother someone for many women. Uteruses are not always the only important organ in a woman's body, and her existence should never be presumed to revolve around that organ's use in any way.
If you can read this book and not see that the nightmare is very real, and that its fictionalization is merely cosmetic, then you're at Maeve's level. I don't think I know many folk like that. But if one reads this: Go back and look carefully at every decision Maeve makes. What that will tell you is all you need to know.
Rating: really liked it
Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review. Expected publication date: May 17, 2022 *infertility, child loss, S&M sex and rape featured* Anne Heltzel’s new novel, “Just Like Mother” is creepy and twisted, and reminded me of “The Handmaid's Tale”
(in reverse).
Maeve hasn’t seen her cousin Andrea in years, ever since she fled the matriarchal cult they were both living in. Now, many years later, Andrea reaches out and, desperate for reconnection and to make amends, Maeve agrees to meet. Andrea is now the super successful head of a tech company, married to her doting husband, Rob, and living in a huge mansion. When Maeve’s life starts to fall apart, Andrea takes her in, no questions asked. However, Maeve quickly realizes that Andrea is not the person she claims to be, and that she is keeping deep, dark, perverse secrets that she will go to any length to protect. “Mother” is told from the perspective of Maeve, both in present day and in the past, when she was living with Andrea, in fear and wary of men, being raised entirely by a group of females who identified themselves as “Mothers”. Maeve’s childhood recollection of her time spent in the cult was eerie, and when she casually referred to the females in her life based on their identifying marks
(“Mother with the blond hair”, “mother with the lazy eye”), it sent chills up my spine. Immediately, I empathized with young Maeve and her compatriots, who lived a life so far from normal it was both disturbing and terrifying.
I could not put this novel down, and each page was more engaging than the last. When Andrea and Maeve reconnected as adults, it was bittersweet and emotional, and yet there were hints that something was “off” about the successful Andrea and her followers. “Mothers” builds the tension from the first page, and when the ending comes, it is unexpected and tense, leaving the reader in a state of shock.
“Mother” is Heltzel’s third novel, but it is the first novel I’ve read by her. If this is any indication of her level of creativity and writing prowess, I am not going to let another one of her novels slip by. I loved everything about this utterly haunting, cult novel, which turns the idea of feminism on its head, revealing a deeply disturbing dark side to femininity and reproduction.
Rating: really liked it
3.5 stars.
Look at that cover! It’s creepy, right?
I could not resist getting a copy.
This was a great ride, after all.
I thought that the plot was great and the writing was dry gripping.
The opening of book was terrific and got me hooked right away.
The structure is good, although I wished that there were more chapters about the cult, and alternating chapters clearly identifying “then” and “now”.
There were some really good creepy moments but it lacked the element of surprise, as I found a bit predictable.
I found the creation of A.I. dolls brilliant, but unfortunately it was not the main event.
There isn’t enough information about what really happened in the cult, and we learned a bit during the last 25%.
The last part became a bit crazy and unbelievable, but overall I had a great time reading this book.
For the concept, entertainment level and for keeping my interest from the beginning until the end, I give it 5 stars.
This is a very fast read, because it’s very gripping, well paced and the writing is very simple.
This book had a great potential for being a terrific dystopian story, if the author wanted to take that direction.
Rating: really liked it
Great story idea! It was refreshing to read something different and unique.
I definitely wouldn't categorize this as "horror" though. And I really wish we had gotten into Maeve's childhood and the Mother Collective more.
Overall, enjoyable and quick read. Can't wait to see what Anne Heltzel comes up with next!
