Like a Mother A Thriller

This thriller preys upon one of new mothers' worst nightmares: that your partner might die while you are pregnant, leaving you to navigate your new family solo. This tragedy befalls Sarah when she loses her husband, Adam. Now alone with their three-year-old daughter, Ellie, and her and Adam's unborn child in her belly, Sarah and her synagogue community sit shiva, and then the hits keep coming. Insurance money disappears, Adam's business partner attempts to sign over Ellie's guardianship, Sarah's house floods. Sarah has no better option than to leave home and live with Adam's mom, Candace, in Ohio. But everything is not what it seems. Candace is paranoid and hiding big secrets about her relationship with her son, her late husband, and the church they used to run together. Sarah will have to fight to uncover the truth and protect herself and her children before Candace's delusions change her life forever. Full of twists and playing on all the most relatable fears, Hardy's (We Knew All Along, 2022) latest is chilling and masterful.

Her husband's premature death is only the beginning of an expectant mother's nightmare. At a shiva call after Adam Granatt's funeral, Sarah Granatt, Adam's widow, is approached by Ava Morgan, the childless wife of Graham, Adam's old friend and business partner, who confides that they would be happy to adopt Sarah's unborn baby--adding that, indeed, that's what Adam himself would have wanted. Appalled, Sarah demands that Ava leave, but Graham steps up the pressure. He won't give Sarah the payout she's due for Adam's share of the firm, and he's had himself appointed the trustee for Adam's life insurance policy, which is no longer payable to her. Desperate for cash, Sarah puts her house on the market and accepts a lowball offer from a holding company that turns out to be a front for Graham. Sarah's only recourse is to accept an offer she never thought she'd accept: an invitation from Candace Granatt--her mother-in-law, who showed up soon after Adam's funeral, though Adam had always said she was dead--to leave California with her 3-year-old daughter, Ellie, and live in Candace's place in rural Ohio. Candace's hospitality is suffocating and increasingly demanding. Candace can't understand why Sarah insists on keeping kosher and won't accept Jesus into her life. She goes on and on about her late husband, Peter, the pastor of Blood of the Lamb Church, who'd pressed Henry (Adam's birth name) to follow in his footsteps. As her pregnancy approaches 39 weeks, Sarah realizes that Candace is even more dangerous than Graham was. Hardy paces her revelations so sharply that every implausible new twist will make you gasp instead of scoffing, just like the ones in your own nightmares. A poisonous treat best consumed in a single breathless sitting. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.