Anne HeltzelCritiques

Possible Triggers: Rape, Imprisonment, Abuse, Loss of Body Parts
This is a very creepy story about the young survivors of a "mother-worshipping" cult, who grow up to be damaged and potentially dangerous adults. I wasn't at all surprised. I thought the description sounded like "my kind of story" but quickly learned that this book was more disturbing than necessary...even for me. We have the two main characters, Maeve and Andrea who were raised by a group called "the Mother Collective"...a fancy name for "cult". The cult was raided and disbanded after 8-year-old Maeve runs away and turns them in. Now we move forward, and adult Maeve is a talented editor, but lives a lonely, disconnected life, until a DNA test reunites her with Andrea once again. Andrea is the head of a tech and lifestyle company with a limitless fortune, and of course she wants nothing more than to spend time with Maeve, but they can't speak of their early years...that is strictly forbidden. Maeve begins to spend more and more time with Andrea and her husband at their isolated country home, and things begin to get weird. That’s all I’ll say about the plot. I will say that the story from here goes in a frightening direction, but I couldn't find any of it to be remotely credible. I think it's supposed to shock and disturb the reader, but it didn’t present enough insight into the characters or their situation to make any of it truly believable. I never did understand Andrea’s company and how she came to be so successful...but it does involve robot baby dolls, which in themselves were scary and weird. I read some really weird things and but this was just overload...even for me. I think the author was probably going for "terrifyingly and creepy", but missed the mark that would have held the reader's attention enough to find out what happened.

Mommy Dearest



Have you ever gotten so excited by a book cover that you couldn’t wait to read it?
This cover is chef's kiss! It is so freaking creepy I could barely contain myself! Add the fact that I have over 70 porcelain dolls in my bedroom, this book was a beautiful combination for everything I love.

This book follows two cousins who are separated when they are younger and through a DNA test website are brought back into each other’s lives after over 20 years. What follows is some pretty creepy stuff.
This book gives you small glimpses into the cousin's past to show you basically why they are the way they are in the present. I felt the main character Maeve was so strong! I loved when she talked about why she didn't want to have children and embraced the fact that all women do not have to give birth to be valuable, or an asset to society. I think people are allowed to go on their own adventures. Maeve was only a child when she stood up to the "Mothers" who were basically in a cult-like entity where birthing more girls was their mission in life. So yea even with all her "issues" she kept that stuff together and knew what she wanted out of life. She is my favorite kind of protagonist. The way the story ended was nice and not what I was expecting. I really felt it was wrapped up with a creepy little bow at the end.

Wild woman-lead cult story. I’m surprised the main character ignored SEVERAL red flags but it came to a satisfying conclusion.

Really creepy horror....

Creepy and culty - love that. The twists were a little predictable but still enjoyable.

**Review originally published in SCREAM Magazine**

On the outside Maeve seems like an ordinary thirty-something single woman. She owns her own apartment, works as an editor in the publishing industry, and has a relationship with a bartender that’s mostly physical. But behind this average facade lies a past that Maeve is desperate to hide: specifically the strange cult she was raised in, as well as the intense loneliness and sense of displacement that has plagued her all her life. When Maeve’s cousin Andrea, who was also raised in the cult, suddenly contacts her out of the blue, Maeve thinks she might have just found the belonging she’s been missing. What she doesn’t know is that Andrea is harboring some dark secrets of her own.

The novel has a fantastically odd and intriguing premise. Andrea is the founder of a tech company called NewLife, which creates creepy realistic dolls to help both expectant and grieving mothers, and much of the story is set in the massive, ancient, and remote estate that she and her husband Rob own. Andrea has recently lost her own child, and now she’s intent on purchasing Maeve’s fertility (by buying an egg from her). Then there’s the Motherhood Collective, a cult pledged to the superiority of mothers and dismissal of men to an extent that is both violent and disturbing. Why exactly is Andrea so eager for Meave to stay with them? What lengths will she go to in order to secure Maeve’s “cooperation”? What horrifying memories from the past has Maeve buried deep in her subconscious? And has the Motherhood Collective been banished for good?

Unfortunately, the book takes too long to answer those questions, and much of my interest was lost until the final quarter. To be fair, the final act is full of twists (some expected, some surprising) and shockingly gruesome scenes. But does such an ending make up for the laborious trudge that it took to get there?

There are moments of tension throughout that bloom to full on suspense and horror towards the end. I enjoyed learning about the cult, especially through the chapters written in flashback when Maeve was a child. The revelations in the final act had my heart thudding in anger at the injustices done to Maeve. And the lifelike doll concept and cult-like adoration of Andrea by her followers was pretty creepy.

And yet, like I mentioned, much of the book moves at a snail's pace. I had a good idea of where the book was heading, so it felt like torture waiting for things to kick off. I’m a fan of dread and slow burn stories, but this one lost me. It also felt like the characters had to voice their opinions on motherhood every few pages. I’m not sure if this was the author beating me over the head with a message, or just repetitive writing.

Just Like Mother has some of the same sinister and unnerving elements that make stories like Rosemary’s Baby, The Invitation, and Westworld so good. When its sci-fi, gothic, and cult horror elements are working, they work well. But overall the book felt like it would be better suited as a short story, at least in its current form. I will also admit that, not being a woman or a mother, I may not have been the best target audience. If you can connect to these characters then I would say it’s worth reading to see what happens at the end. Long live the Motherhood Collective.

There has been no shortage of great horror in the past five years. Just Like Mother is no exception. In fact, it's an encapsulation of what makes psychological horror so effective when written effectively. It's devastating and disturbing. It twists the knife more than it stabs you. That's what makes it an agonizing read, even if you guess the twists ahead of time. It's like watching a looming storm approach, knowing you're powerless to stop it.

Heltzel's prose is perfect here, too. As with some of my other favorite horror authors, like Zoje Stage and Alma Katsu, she manages to find the perfect balance of descriptive detail without slowing down the book's overall pacing. As such, the more gruesome scenes take on a haunting, vivid quality and barrel forward at the pace of an unmanned freight train.

I feel like a broken record saying this, but I am very excited to see what Heltzel writes next. Just Like Mother is a masterful work of horror, crafted by an incredibly talented writer.

So I was gonna 2 star this.
THEN THE ENDING!!!! was glorious. So I was going to add a star JUST for the ending.

...thennnn I read that it was that way because a sequel had been planned.

This required too much suspension of disbelief for me.

Ya’ll. This book is creepy as hell but in a good way. If you are a fan of cults and true crime, you will probably enjoy this dark and twisty thriller of fiction.

This could have been my jam. It has a great premise, a good plot, I was so excited. Nothing but a lovely jumble of scary plot points in this book at first glance.

But.

Animatronic babies, replacement kids, it's all neat. Love it. Replicas of lost babies for sterile women and grieving women. I love this idea. Yes. Please. Artificial intelligent babies are such a scary concept to make.

First off this is full of female-on-male rape and murder. I have no issues with that. It's horrifying. It's well-written terror fuel. Obviously everything these women do is evil.

They're transphobic, sexist, homophobic, and very violent about infertile females are. Attacking people who don't continue violating men and treating them absolutely horrible for how they were born. They also insult all women who miscarry or abort their babies, calling them bloody Marys.

I like the cult, the deaths, the brutality.

I love the childfree by choice main character. I adore her. She's not interested in having babies. Unfortunately it's because trauma as no woman can ever choose to not have kids for their own reason.

Ugh.

This is where it's all downhill.

There's like five twists rapid pace firing off at the end so try and take all of this back to back..

She's childfree until the end. There she realizes she finally fits in and pops out a baby. Not quite, see Andrea has been drugging maize and letting someone have non-consensual sex with her while she's asleep and hope she'll get pregnant and realize she likes babies. Which is absolutely terrifying, but abortion does exist. But by the time she's free and goes to an abortion clinic she's informed it's too late to perform an abortion, so now she's pregnant by force. So by the end, she's a mom now... And I hate it. She's such a happy mother now! Destroying her being childfree rep and making the message of this book muddied horribly. Maeve was standing up for herself early on, but her strong convictions often waver and fall flat on themselves. She's the voice of childfree women and the end of the book destroys this.

It's not a woman's job to have children if they don't want to.

Women don't exist to create more kids.

Women can be more than a baby making body.

And then on top of all of that, she finally marries a man, settles down, and has more kids. Willingly has kids because she wants kids suddenly now. Ugh.

One angle I take away from this ending is Andrea and Emily won and brainwashed Maeve into wanting and having kids and it's absolutely horrifying because we know what Maeve believes in during the book, but we see her broken and remolded like the Stepford Wives, where she's doomed from the start. This angle is brutal and destructive though. And it still robs of of our childfree protagonist.

It sounds like it's just saying by this end that once they have therapy and get over their trauma, they'll want to have kids. Which devalues the entire rest of the book and upsetted me.

Either way, I didn't like the ending.

2.5 stars, an ending that definitely damaged it strong self.½

This book was crazy and not what I thought it was going to be. I was on the edge of my sit the whole time. I figured out what was going on in one part, but man that ending blew me away.

OMG! I felt watched while reading this, it definitely freaked me out a bit. Uncovering secrets with Maeve was crazy, she should have trusted her instincts. And the ending, oh my it was unexpected but then again the mother's are everywhere.

Just Like Mother is horror story told by Maeve, the survivor of a cult ran by women. They felt that they had the divine power of motherhood and it was there sole duty to live up to this expectation.
Maeve has left all this behind but still misses her cousin Anne whom she was separated from when the cult was shattered by the police. A chance DNA ancestry alert reunites her with her cousin who is now a successful business woman.
I really enjoyed this book. I normally don't ready many thrillers but the plot intrigued me. Definitely could see some of how this story was gonna go down but there were many twists that kept me on the edge of my seat. Will definitely be recommending to friends and library patrons who enjoy a good thriller.

When Mae was a child, she escaped from the only life she had ever known, having been born into a cult referred to as the Mother Collective. She was quickly adopted by parents who loved her, but were not prepared to deal with the level of emotional trauma she had suffered. Mae did receive some counseling but was taught that it was best to just let the past go rather than actually process her feelings. Throughout the years she never gave up searching for her cousin Andrea who was raised in the cult with her, and who she had not seen since the day of her escape. When she finally reconnects with Andrea, her wealth and success are intimidating and she refuses to let Mae speak of their past. Despite this, she is excited to have found her family, but the closer she gets to Andrea, the more isolated she becomes from her own life. Is it a series of terrible coincidences that leave Mae with no choice but to turn to Andrea? Or has Andrea orchestrated these events for her own nefarious agenda?

I loved Mae from the start. She seemed to look down on herself but I was proud of her accomplishments. She is stronger than she knows, even if I did want to scream at her to run away! Some of the occurrences were predictable, but knowing that they were going to happen did not detract from my enjoyment of the story and maybe even increased the dread I felt since I saw what was coming but I couldn't warn Mae. The way that Andrea and her friends interacted with their husbands fairly screamed that they had been drinking the Kool-Aid. yet somehow the ending managed to take me by surprise. This is a must read for any fan of psychological thrillers.

My thanks to Tor Nightfire for the review copy.

A really dark novel that starts with cousins who grow up in a cult negative to men and controlled by a woman who goes by the title Mother Superior. The cult is exposed and the cousins are separated. Later in life they reconnect and things are rosy for a while but go south when the older one (Andrea) asks the younger one (Maeve) to be her surrogate. Andrea lost her first child and she can no longer can have children. Then things get really wacky. My issue is I figured out most future twists early in the book.

The Publisher Says: A girl would be such a blessing...

The last time Maeve saw her cousin was the night she escaped the cult they were raised in. For the past two decades, Maeve has worked hard to build a normal life in New York City, where she keeps everything—and everyone—at a safe distance.

When Andrea suddenly reappears, Maeve regains the only true friend she’s ever had. Soon she’s spending more time at Andrea’s remote Catskills estate than in her own cramped apartment. Maeve doesn’t even mind that her cousin’s wealthy work friends clearly disapprove of her single lifestyle. After all, Andrea has made her fortune in the fertility industry—baby fever comes with the territory.

The more Maeve immerses herself in Andrea’s world, the more disconnected she feels from her life back in the city; and the cousins’ increasing attachment triggers memories Maeve has fought hard to bury. But confronting the terrors of her childhood may be the only way for Maeve to transcend the nightmare still to come…

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.½

This is definitely not a book I should have been reading right after my daughter gave birth to twins, but in spite of the creepy topic, I could not put it down. A mash-up of the Stepford Wives and a few other similar tales, this included an old house with hidden corridors, and was just too tempting to pass up.

Andrea and Maeve grew up in a cult called the Mother Collective. The women believe motherhood is the ultimate goal in life and that men are useful for only one thing—and that would be supplying the sperm. If that was all there was to it, maybe it would not have been so bad, but the Mothers took things to a horrific level. When the authorities discovered their secrets, Andrea and Maeve were separated and ended up in foster care.

Having been apart since they were children, they managed to find each other as grown women. Suffice it to say, Maeve was in a better place before she reunited with Andrea. Their entire relationship was odd, eventually proving to be dangerous.

The ending was chilling! I’m not much of a horror reader, but this was tame enough for my tastes. I do think readers who may be sensitive to anything related to childbirth, child abuse or a few graphic details may want to pass this one by.

Many thanks to NetGalley and MacMIllan-Tor Forge for allowing me to read an advance copy/. I am happy to give my honest review.

"We were so much alike, she and I. It was hard to tell, sometimes, where one of us ended and the other began."

I admit that I mainly selected this book because of its creepy cover. But the story did not disappoint. The story builds slowly until the final third of the book, which is excellent.

We follow Maeve, a woman who is traumatized after running away from a cult when she was a child. She was forced to leave behind her cousin Andrea, and the two are separated for years. But they're reunited after their matched on a DNA website. Andrea immediately welcomes Maeve into her life, and makes her a part of her company, New Life. Andrea specializes in making dolls that help grieving families heel after their baby dies. Andrea experienced her own loss. Maeve is overjoyed to be reconnected to Andrea and be part of a family again.

I finished the last third of the book in one day, I just couldn't put it down.

Thank you netgalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for giving me an advance review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A horrifyingly horrifying read. This book has more trigger warnings than I can possibly list. This book will keep you up nights while reading it. I mean, really, a Matriarchal cult? Isn't that enough to give you the creepy crawlies? Overly realistic baby dolls to help you learn about being a mother (okay, I can almost see that)or help you grieve your lost child? The grieving issue with a doll with your dead child's face is just a tad too freaky for me.*I'm shivering in my pj's! with this!*

Great book through about the first three quarters, but it lost something in the last quarter. It gets a tad repetitious and a bit predictable. That's why only 4 stars.

*ARC supplied by the publisher Macmillan-Tor/Forge, Tor Nightfire, the author, and NetGalley.

I was drawn to Just Like Mother by Anne Heltzel because of the cover, but I decided to dive in because of the synopsis. This is the type of suspense book that I really don’t want to say too much about because I want you to be just as creeped out and disturbed by the twists throughout the book… and that ending, as I was!

If you are strangely interested in the Handmaid’s Tale, and yet disturbed at the same time, Just Like Mother is one you should check out. And if cults, stepford wives, or women's bodies being regulated and used for breeding are things that you find you can’t look away from no matter how many horror stories you hear about them, then, yes, Just Like Mother is one that you should add to your TBR.

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got an eGalley of this through NetGalley to review.

Thoughts: This is basically a cult/thriller story about a woman in her 30's who thought she left the strange cult she grew up in in her past. Then someone from that cult reaches out to her to rekindle their friendship. You can imagine things kind of go downhill for our protagonist from there. There is a quite a bit of abuse, rape, general violence, drugging people, etc. I am not a huge fan of reading about that kind of stuff, so just a warning on content.

This was a very engrossing read and I was enjoying it up until the last third or so. I think my main issue here is how predictable this all is, the foreshadowing was too heavy and didn't leave enough mystery/thriller in this story. I kept reading hoping things were going to play out differently than I thought and when they started playing out exactly as I thought they would, I lost interest. The big mysteries of the strange animal in the girls' house growing up, the non-working toilets, etc….they all ended up being there for exactly the reasons I thought they were going to be there.

This is written in a very readable style and it was hard to put down for the first 60% of the book or so. Once things started happening exactly as predicted, there was no more mystery and I completely lost interest. The protagonist makes one bad decision after another and some of the other story elements were pretty far-fetched, there just wasn't much here to keep me engaged after the mystery went flat.

My Summary (3/5): Overall this was a very engaging read for the first ⅔’s of the book but things kind of went downhill from there. There was just too much foreshadowing and it made the mystery/thriller of this story too predictable. This isn’t a subject matter I really enjoy reading about much, for some reason I thought there was going to be some fantastical element here but there wasn’t…it was a straight-up cult thriller type of story. I don’t plan on checking out any more of this author’s books.

Review of Uncorrected Digital Galley

When eight-year-old Maeve escapes the cult where she’s spent her entire life, she leaves her best friend/cousin, Andrea, behind. And, for the next twenty years or so, she tries to make a normal life for herself in New York, working as an editor for a publishing firm.

When a DNA test for an ancestry website unexpectedly reunites her with Andrea, Maeve is delighted. Soon she is spending more time in the Catskills at Andrea’s estate.

But there’s something untoward happening with Andrea. Will Maeve continue to excuse Andrea’s strange behavior or will she find herself forced to confront her childhood terrors?

=========

Told from Maeve’s point of view, the twisty story is an unsettling descent into depravity, filled with horrific events and unlikeable characters. Readers will find that the unfolding events are often predictable,

Definitely creepy, especially those dolls, but readers will be disappointed to learn that the details concerning the Mother Collective are sparse; despite its centrality to the telling of the tale, the cult remains shrouded in mystery, with no information about it except for some flashbacks that provide minimal insight into the Mother Collective where the girls grew up.

The insidiousness just creeps along, creating an undercurrent of apprehension to accompany the frustration over Maeve’s overwhelming naïveté. As the evolving story becomes more and more implausible, readers will have no trouble identifying the “big reveal” long before it occurs. Astute readers will see where this story is going well in advance of its denouement.

I received a free copy of this eBook from Macmillan-Tor/Forge, Tor Nightfire and NetGalley
#JustLikeMother #NetGalley

Full review to come!

I went into this book with high expectations. I like psychological books that have a mystery to them so this book seemed like it was right up my alley. I thought this book would make me think about what had happened to Abby--however the only thing it made me think was WTF is going on.

You know when someone tries to be really "deep" about a certain subject and they just can't get there? Well that's what happens here.

I have to admit that I have never read Dante's Inferno (it's on my list!) but I have studied the general gist of it through my university English classes so I know the ideas and purpose behind it. Perhaps if I knew more about it, I would get more out of this (but I doubt it). From what I can see, it doesn't play a major role in the story other than providing some context with regards to Hell so if you are looking for a retelling or adaptation of Inferno, you aren't going to get it!

This book was just a little too out-there for me (read: it was Weird). While I can appreciate the motivation to write this novel and I understand the message the author is trying to convey, I find it falls flat.

I think the worst part is the ending--it just happens so suddenly and I felt that there wasn't any closure. I really think that the ending of the book is the perfect opportunity to accomplish the message the author set out to give and that she lost her chance to do so by ending it as she did. An epilogue or something would have been great. I can honestly say I don't remember too much about this novel other than the fact that I HATED the ending.

Overall: Stay clear of this one! There are better amnesia stories out there if that is what you are looking for.

Check out more spoiler-free book and series reviews on my blog SERIESous Book Reviews as well as read book series recaps!

Charlie is gone. His father's plane was found crashed, his jacket was found bloodied and torn, and there is no sign of his body. Lena is heartbroken over losing the love of her life. And at Charlie's funeral, she adds more heartbreak: she discovers Charlie's other girlfriend Aubrey. As the two girls talk, they realize Charlie was a different guy for each of them; for Lena, loud and boisterous, for Aubrey, quiet and bookish. And the more the girls talk, they begin to suspect there was more the Charlie than he let on to either of them. Lena even suspects Charlie isn't really dead. And she is determined to find out the truth of what happened to Charlie. She convinces Aubrey to go on a search for Charlie so they can both have closure on their relationships with Charlie. AS they travel, they discover more and more of Charlie's secrets, and realize he was not at all the man he made himself out to be for either girl. And he has engineered suffering for both of them that they will have to use all their strength to escape. This was an interesting story. It was told in alternating perspectives of Lena, Aubrey, and Charlie, so with each chapter, I got a little more of the story. The whole time, I was wondering who was telling the truth, if anyone, and if anyone was crazy or had a mental disorder. Even by the end of the book, I was still wondering what the "truth" of the story was. None of the characters were really likeable, but maybe that was intended to make us wonder who was reliable and who wasn't. Pretty good story.