Watching my wife go through pregnancy, birth, and now parenthood has been enlightening. The whole thing has been much more difficult and complex than either of us expected. Getting and being pregnant isn’t easy for everyone, and sometimes it seems divine intervention is needed. There are so many experts out there providing advice and help. Some is excellent; some is just weird (such as eating McDonald’s fries to help with pregnancy). The tougher it is to get pregnant, the more desperate people get. It’s easy to see pregnancy and conception as a mystical process. Add to this the religious beliefs of “go forth and multiply,” one could see how motherhood could become a religious devotion in and of itself. In Anne Heltzel’s Just Like Mother, Maeve survives such a cult. Eventually she reconnects with her cousin from the cult. Her cousin is a life coach for people trying to get pregnant and dealing with the loss of children. Maeve, because of her childhood, doesn’t want children. Will Andrea accept Meave’s decision?
TRIGGER WARNING
This book contains child abuse and sexual assault on an adult. Both subjects are not treated lightly. I believe both were handled appropriately.
Disclaimer: The publisher provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Any and all opinions that follow are mine alone.
© PrimmLife.com 2022
TL;DR
Anne Heltzel’s Just Like Mother follows Maeve as she attempts to reconnect with her cousin years after escaping a cult of motherhood. As expected, growing up in a cult has affected Maeve’s adulthood. She’s built a life for herself, but as she find Andrea, she learns how that cult continues to affect her life. Highly recommended.
From the Publisher
Spine-chilling and sharp, Anne Heltzel’s Just Like Mother is a modern gothic from a fresh new voice in horror, and “is set to be one of the year’s most talked about books” (Andrea Bartz, New York Times bestselling author).
*A Most Anticipated Title by LitReactor, Bloody Disgusting, Book Riot, The Line Up, CrimeReads, Goodreads, and more!*
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…
Review: Just Like Mother by Anne Heltzel
Maeve escaped a cult as a child. In doing so, she gained a freedom to live the life that best suited her and, at the same time, lost a cousin, who was her confidante and only true friend. This cult dedicated itself to the idea that motherhood was the highest ideal of humanity. Women’s role in life was to have children. Men were tools to facilitate pregnancy. When Maeve escaped, the cult fell. Her and her cousin, Andrea, were separated and placed into the foster care system. Maeve has built a life for herself in New York. She’s an editor at a publishing house, living on her own, and has a regular hookup. Like most people in publishing, Maeve works long hours, too many long hours. Also, her trauma has made her reticent to have many friends. The scars of the cult never left her. Neither has the trauma of being separated from her cousin. Maeve has spent her adult life searching for Andrea. One day, thanks to a genetics website, the cousins find each other. They make a date to meet and fall back into the easy relationship they had in the cult. Except Andrea doesn’t want to talk about the past. It’s as if their lives pre-rescue never happened. Andrea has a career as a life coach and head of a start up company. Her and her husband just moved to upstate New York in a huge, secluded house. Maeve is invited to the house to reconnect with Andrea and meet her husband. Maeve soon learns that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The joy of Andrea’s return is quickly balanced by Maeve’s life taking a turn for the worst. She loses her job. Her hook up dies. She can no longer afford to live in New York City. Maeve begins to rely more and more on Andrea to support her through this tough time. She spends an increasing amount of time outside of NYC and isolated from the few friends she does have. Maeve struggles with depression throughout and as the novel progresses, she continues deeper into a depressive state. Andrea and her husband provide a space for Maeve to recover; yet, they are very controlling in how she recovers. It quickly becomes clear that Andrea has ulterior motives when it comes to Maeve. Or has Maeve’s past in the cult made her too suspicious?
Just Like Mother is a third person, close point of view novel following Maeve’s life. It features a mostly linear narrative with a few flashbacks to Maeve’s life in the cult and as a foster child. Heltzel does a good job making everything just a bit odd and a little sinister. While I was able to guess the direction things were going, I was surprised by how it got there and how Heltzel ended the novel.
The Cult of Motherhood
Heltzel writes the cult of motherhood quite well. And by well, I mean terrifying. She’s taken something wonderful – child bearing – and extended it to a religious, almost divine, act. The women subject to this cult believe that there is no higher calling for a woman. This ability elevates women over everyone else who are incapable of bearing children. (There are concerning real world corollaries – see Josh Hawley defining women as those who give birth and Madison Cawthorn labeling women as “earthen vessels.”) For these people, procreation is the purpose of life, and anyone who rejects that life is a ‘Bloody Mary.’ Women, like Maeve, who choose to live a childless life, betray their sex, betray humankind, and are simply selfish. (Again, the real world has many, many examples of this as well.) Now, there would be nothing wrong with this philosophy IF it is freely chosen. But once it is impressed upon someone, it is a tyranny of biology. A person should be able to choose their own path in life. That is freedom. When forced to parent against their will, a person is no longer free. Thus, this philosophy is not about parenting or children and the joy they bring, it’s a philosophy of power and control. Period. Controlling the female body is what anti-choice, pro-forced birth activists want. (Even to the point of being anti-contraceptive, but that’s beyond the scope of this review.)
Heltzel approaches this difficult subject well. Maeve doesn’t want children, but she interacts well with the sole child in the book. She’s happy for anyone who gets pregnant in the novel. She’s also made up her mind about her own reproductive future and wants that decision to be respected. Heltzel captures the pressure from others to become parents. In Emily – an employee/client of Andrea’s – Heltzel portrays the complexity of motherhood as well. Sometimes, women don’t connect to their kids or sometimes they feel forced into a pregnancy. But in our society, we don’t talk about this enough, or at all.
You See It Coming, You Can't Stop It
A Binary View of Birth?
To be fair to Heltzel, I want to put this in here. For much of the book, it seemed as if Just Like Mother was dedicated to a binary view of parenting. Women were mothers, and men were the tools through which women became mothers. In terms of dealing with a cult dedicated to motherhood, this makes sense. Since Just Like Mother deals with the aftermaths of this cult, that simplistic view pervades the novel. But, late in the novel, Maeve makes the realization that the cult of motherhood excluded many people, including trans people. The cult enforced a binary view, but it wasn’t a binary view of biological sexes. It was a binary view of those who could give birth (superior) and those who couldn’t (inferior). In today’s world where trans people are increasingly visible and simultaneously increasingly bullied, it’s important to note that Heltzel does acknowledge them in relation to her world. Based on real world corollaries for the cult of motherhood, it makes sense that those involved would be hostile to, or, in this case, dismissive, to the point of ignoring, of trans people, the same way that anti-choice people tend to be hostile to trans people. However, that is the view of the book, and I don’t ascribe it to that of the author.
Conclusion
Anne Heltzel’s Just Like Mother is a slow burn horror novel that doesn’t disappoint. I couldn’t tear myself from the page wondering what would happen to Maeve next and how she’d get herself out of it. Come for the horror; stay for the woman extracting herself from the cult of motherhood.
Just Like Mother by Anne Heltzel is available from Tor Nightfire on May 17th, 2022.
© PrimmLife.com 2022