#HorrorForLibraries Giveaway 110: Mothered by Zoje Stage

Today I am offering a an ARC of a highly anticipated psychological suspense-horror hybrid by a rising star author. I reviewed this title in the January 2023 issue of Library Journal. But first, here are the details on how to enter:

1. You need to be affiliated with an American public library. My rationale behind that is that I will be encouraging you to read these books and share them with patrons. While many of them are advanced reader copies that you cannot add to your collections, if you get the chance to read them, my hope is that you will consider ordering a copy for your library and give away the ARC away as a prize or pass it on to a fellow staff member.
2. If you are interested in being included in any giveaway at any time, you must email me at zombiegrl75 [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line "#HorrorForLibraries." In the body of the email all you have to say is that you want to be entered and the name of your library.
3. Each entry will be considered for EVERY giveaway. Meaning you enter once, and you are entered until you win. I will randomly draw a winner on Fridays sometime after 5pm central. But only entries received by 5pm each week will be considered for that week. I use Random.org and have a member of my family witness the "draw"based off your number in the Google Sheet.
4. If you win, you are ineligible to win again for 4 weeks; you will have to re-enter after that time to be considered [I have a list of who has won, when, and what title]. However, if you do not win, you carry over into the next week. There is NO NEED to reenter.

Click here to see giveaway #109. Our winner was Aaron from Altadena Library [CA] District. Now on today's giveaway.

I have enjoyed everything Zoje Stage has written since her debut, Baby Teeth (and as you see below I think this book is especially good for fans of that title). Her last novel-- Getaway-- catapulted her into the mainstream. (Side note: for the record Wonderland is my favorite of hers.)

I read her upcoming novel Mothered (out 3/1) for my January 2023 Library Journal Horror Review column and greatly enjoyed it. As you can see from the review, this is a book that you can easily hand out far and wide to a large swath of readers. 

Here is that draft review with extra reading notes: 

Three Words That Describe This Book: claustrophobic, escalating dread, almost unbearable tension. 

Draft Review: What turns a person into a monster? That question is at the heart of Stage’s latest claustrophobic novel. When the Covid-19 pandemic begins, hairdresser Grace is laid off and her widowed mother, Jackie, moves in to help pay the bills. Grace and Jackie’s relationship is strained, dating back to childhood when Grace’s twin sister, born with cerebral palsy, was still alive. Told from Grace’s clearly flawed but sympathetic perspective and fueled by the disorientation of Covid isolation and frequent flashback dream sequences, readers watch helplessly as Grace’s mind completely unravels, leading to shocking violence. Opening with an ominous prologue, where a criminal psychologist is about to meet his newest patient, and closing with the same doctor, in an epilogue, whose observations terrifyingly hammer home the supernatural aspects of the story, Stage thrusts dread upon readers from the first sentences and continue to escalate the tension with every turn of the page to near busting proportions. 

Verdict: Stage latest feels like a nice bookend to her popular debut, Babyteeth. A great choice for fans of intense psychological horror, where nothing can be trusted, and where no one can look away from the emerging nightmare, such as in Now You’re One of Us by Nonami or The Unsuitable by Pohlig

Reading Notes: A pandemic novel with serious psychological horror. Unreliable narrator but also very sympathetic. The supernatural touches are just enough to add fear beyond the unraveling of Grace's mind. Lots of dreams and flashbacks that disorient Grace and the reader very well. Super ominous prologue and epilogue [but ominous for different reasons]

General comment: If you have read Baby Teeth, this novel feels like a parallel story. It is not a sequel in anyway, but they bookend each other well.

You gotta be in it to win it. Enter now and you stay entered in perpetuity.