Early Review – Just Like Mother by Anne Heltzel (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Thriller
Length: 320 pages
Publisher: Tor Nightfire
Release Date: May 17, 2022
ISBN-13: 978-1250787514
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: eGalley from NetGalley
Rating: 3/5 stars
“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…”
Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got an eGalley of this through NetGalley to review.
Thoughts: This is basically a cult/thriller story about a woman in her 30’s who thought she left the strange cult she grew up in in her past. Then someone from that cult reaches out to her to rekindle their friendship. You can imagine things kind of go downhill for our protagonist from there. There is a quite a bit of abuse, rape, general violence, drugging people, etc. I am not a huge fan of reading about that kind of stuff, so just a warning on content.
This was a very engrossing read and I was enjoying it up until the last third or so. I think my main issue here is how predictable this all is, the foreshadowing was too heavy and didn’t leave enough mystery/thriller in this story. I kept reading hoping things were going to play out differently than I thought and when they started playing out exactly as I thought they would, I lost interest. The big mysteries of the strange animal in the girls’ house growing up, the non-working toilets, etc….they all ended up being there for exactly the reasons I thought they were going to be there.
This is written in a very readable style and it was hard to put down for the first 60% of the book or so. Once things started happening exactly as predicted, there was no more mystery and I completely lost interest. The protagonist makes one bad decision after another and some of the other story elements were pretty far-fetched, there just wasn’t much here to keep me engaged after the mystery went flat.
My Summary (3/5): Overall this was a very engaging read for the first ⅔’s of the book but things kind of went downhill from there. There was just too much foreshadowing and it made the mystery/thriller of this story too predictable. This isn’t a subject matter I really enjoy reading about much, for some reason I thought there was going to be some fantastical element here but there wasn’t…it was a straight-up cult thriller type of story. I don’t plan on checking out any more of this author’s books.
