I personally love Dystopian settings and I like Ivy alot as a character, and the male characters are also well done (I like how they are distinctive in their personalities//love our boy Wraith) And if I'm being honest, I'm a bit picky with Omegaverse stuff. Not always my go to but I gotta say this book hits all my checklists (masked bois, military theme, action, nuce build up....and yes, some spice with this dish 👌✨️♥️😤) all in all its a book for me

My Selling Pitch:
Ballerina Farms told as the horror story it is.

Pre-reading: The UK cover for this book is pornographic.

(obviously potential spoilers from here on) Thick of it: A me!

Did the husband and the producer have an affair? (Nailed it.)

It’s very Ballerina Farms coded.

The writing style kind of reminds me of The Favorites because of the interspersed interview content.

God, I love Target.

Title drop

I’m an east coast third floor walk up philanderer.

Yeah, we are, baby. We’re smarter than you, and we’re not gonna say hi to you in the grocery store. I love it here.

Oh, she doesn’t have a mirror? Then she’s either someone else or she’s aged. (Nailed it.)

I like that girlypop has recognized that you get fucked over if you do the career woman thing and you get fucked over if you’re a housewife, but she’s failing to do the math that the common denominator isn’t women failing, it’s men causing these problems.

I do think this is an attempt to understand why the right appeals to some women. They get sucked in as pick mes like they’re finally going to wrestle some control away for themselves but fail to realize they’re doing themselves more harm than good.

Man’s best friend, baby.

I think a lot of women pretend they’re lifestyle vloggers to get through it. That’s very relatable. Who doesn’t fake beauty YouTuber when they do their makeup? How else are we gonna justify a 45-minute full beat routine at 6am to sit in math class next to Axe 3in1.

The turkey baster pregnancy is a little much.

This is a very good story, but it is not coming at this from an impartial viewpoint. It is not trying to understand the tradwife mindset. This is firmly written by a feminist who probably escaped some religious trauma of her own. So like I’m very entertained, but the angry vitriolic anti-patriarchy tirades in this are not feeling authentic to the character. They’re correct tirades; I just don’t think she would wake up from delusion that early or quickly.

You know, I always say if you’re gonna include it in books, make it hurt. She made it hurt. That was a heavy I love you to read.

I don’t think you read femme horror without the labor song blasting in your head the whole time.

I don’t agree that all women lie to each other. I think this generation especially is calling shit out, but we didn’t get here in a vacuum. Grandma, and great grandma, and every bitch since the dawn of time has been demanding more.

Please tell me he’s not doing weird shit to the kids. (We’re safe.)

Some of her tone struggles with communication give autism, but the rest of her doesn’t. It just kind of feels like an inauthentic representation of a character again because the traits don’t align. And all the masking fatigue. It makes me more suspicious that this is something the author goes through and she’s writing what she knows.

She reminds me of Dorothy from A Certain Hunger, and they’re both just wannabe Gone Girls.

I dunno, it’s a hard ask to convince me that all the right-wingers are just ignorantly masking. I don’t think that’s true.

I like this bit about men’s weaponized incompetence

Poor Maeve.

Called it. I like that it’s not magical realism though. She’s just a psychotic bitch.

Can you serve a warrant like this without the police?

Welcome to Plathville lol

Oh boo, I was hoping we would get more about Reena’s family.

It’s like a 3.5 that I’ll round up to a 4.

Post-reading: This was entertaining as hell, but it falls a little flat on the social critique. It’s at a disadvantage to everyone who’s been here reading the femme horror genre for a while. It’s a great, great debut, but it’s hard to compete with the veterans. I think if you like this book, you have to read Girl Dinner. It pushes the envelope farther.

But that being said, this is an excellent gateway drug. It’s incredibly palatable. It’s made for a suburban book club. I think it’s gonna do a lot to bridge the gap between popcorn thriller readers as they progress towards reading lit fic and maybe eventually make it into dystopian horror territory. But that means it’s more of an introduction to intersectional feminism, and I think that’s gonna disappoint a number of people picking this book up.

It’s also incredibly skewed. This is not approaching its portrayal of mommy influencers in good faith. It knew she was a villain from the jump and did little to genuinely empathize with her character. I think it’s negligent and purposely ignorant to suggest that any woman romanticizing homesteading is just pretending and masking for an audience. It’s very these influencers are all commodified pick mes which I think is a gross oversimplification of the cultural phenomenon. It’s a story of clawing for agency and being too stupid to realize you’re throwing it away, which I don’t think is fair. Not all of these women are stupid. I think Blake’s novel nails it when it says something along the lines of stop asking if I’m an idiot and start asking why I’m okay being seen as one. This book misses that. It touches on the failure of #girlbossing, but then it fails to present the alternative. It suggests you can be miserable in a capitalistic boys club or you can be miserable as a trad wife shill of the patriarchy, but if women just thread that needle between the two, they’ll find a beautiful progressive future! …And then it fails to illustrate that future. It’s not enough.

The book thinks it’s a little more clever than it is. I think the twist is gonna catch out and delight a lot of the more casual readers, but seasoned readers are gonna eyeroll at it because it uses a pointed lack of mirrors to accomplish it. That’s the oldest trick in the book. You may as well flash a neon sign saying look here to see what I want readers to assume so I can gotcha! them later. It’s so obvious it borders on lazy. The main character’s tone aims for Gone Girl’s oozy coolness, but Natalie just doesn’t have the IT factor balls to pull it off.

There’s a sloppy foray into the Manosphere and weaponized incompetence as well as a brief political interlude, but it feels reactionary to trendy news articles rather than genuinely interested in investigating the correlation and causation between the two. The book bites off more than it can effectively chew.

The almost mixed media writing style keeps the pacing moving. There’s no lulls. You will blow through this book. I’m loving the documentary confessional trend that’s cropping up in these domestic thrillers. The book gets a lot right, especially for a debut. I just think a lot of people are gonna gush that this is some must read feminist manifesto, and I’ve gotta be here to nip that in the bud. Is this feminist? Absolutely. Is this a fair critique? Eh… it’s the start to social commentary. It’s the feminist lite, sanitized for mass market appeal Barbie movie’s monologue. I need you to want to have deeper conversations than that.

It’s worth the read, and you should pick this up because I do think you’ll be seeing it everywhere this summer, but read it with a critical eye to the commentary it’s actually giving. If you sit back and treat it like an amusing thriller, I think you might enjoy it more. I’m looking forward to the movie though, and I would absolutely pick the author up again.

Who should read this: Feminists Little House on the Prairie fans Suburban book clubs

Ideal reading time: Spring or Summer

Do I want to reread this: No, I’ll remember

Would I buy this: Yes

Similar books:

• Girl Dinner by Olivie Blake-dark academia, mommy horror, lit fic, social commentary
• Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer-domestic thriller, mommy horror, social commentary
• Normal Women by Ainslie Hogarth-lit fic, mommy horror, domestic thriller, social commentary
• A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers-lit fic, horror, revenge thriller, unreliable narrator, queer
• Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter-satire, lit fic, psychological horror, family drama,
• Piglet by Lottie Hazell-lit fic, family drama, social commentary
• Murder Bimbo by Rebecca Novack-political satire, revenge thriller, unreliable narrator, social commentary
• Educated by Tara Westover-memoir, religious cult, social commentary
• Corinne by Rebecca Morrow-lit fic, romance, family drama, religious and social commentary
• The Favorites by Layne Fargo-classic retelling, lit fic, thriller, family drama, mixed media

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.