Breakaway Books

Authored by Leslie Anderson; Published August 2024; Horror

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️

Is horror one of my favorite genres now? After decades of not watching a single horror film, just a few books have brought me closer to accepting this type of novel. The Unmothers is one of them.

The Unmothers follows journalist Carolyn Marshall as she ventures into a small town to discover the details of what seems to be a silly, throwaway story, assigned to her by her editor after the loss of her husband. Marshall is supposed to track down a boy who is allegedly the father of a human baby born by a horse. Ready to dismiss the story out of hand, Marshall quickly finds out there is something deeper going on in the town—especially when three human bodies show up in quick succession, and she learns about a legendary ritual to help the women of the town “take care of” unwanted pregnancies. 

Perhaps the reason I enjoyed this novel is because it walks the fine line between horror and psychological thriller. It isn’t full of jump scares or the like; instead, the characters are constantly asking themselves, “Did I see what I think I saw?” The novel didn’t beat me over the head with monsters or gore; instead, the creepiness factor slowly rises over the course of the novel. It almost certainly helped that, to me, small towns are already the ideal setting for horror: Everybody knows everyone else’s business, and there’s a certain type of loneliness and isolation that just can’t exist in a city. The community aspect of this horror story—the monster who protects the women of the town from the men who abuse them, whose legend is passed around through whisper and gossip—only added to my interest in the narrative.

Observing the events of this story through Carolyn’s eyes is a convenient lens: a clear outsider, her interactions with the townspeople demonstrate many of the oddities unique to the community. I got the sense that because she has recently experienced a tragedy, she is far more open to the supernatural phenomena she witnessed, and it is easier for her to connect to the young unwed mothers, who, like her, are ambivalent to the prospect of motherhood. She isn’t necessarily a character I want to spend more time with, and I found it odd that she seems to become more permanently attached to the townfolk at the story’s end, but her role as the periodic narrator certainly serves its purpose. The villain of the story—a seemingly wealthy man who has his hands in just about everything going on in the town—verges on the stereotypical, but is a satisfying scapegoat.

If you want to take a step into horror from the thriller genre, The Unmothers is a good one to start with. Taut and haunting!