There’s something primal and untethered to be expected from A Mother Always Knows. The cover entices being watched, and the synopsis unsettles with horror rooted in folk lore. This was the Hoboken Public Library’s Horror/Thriller Book Club February pick.
Stella O’Neill is working at the local public library, and no one suspects she’s living under an assumed name, a tactic to keep herself hidden after witnessing her mother’s murder as a ten-year-old in a Vermont cult. The crime is still unsolved, but when her peace is upended, she is forced to flee Boston and revisit the fear of the cult she grew up in. She heads to the off-the-grid retreat to confront the leader and guru, Radcliffe MacBeath. Stella has both determination and a supernatural gift guiding her to outwit the charismatic leader and uncover the identity of her mother’s killer.
The book delivers a first-person suspense story that, while lacking a bit in its promise of terror through forced community and tradition, delivers on a few heart-wrenching scenes of close quarters and manipulated folklore ready to repeat itself.
I’ll admit, we were a bit fooled, but I say this so that you, the reader, can set your expectations. Here is the question the story actually presents: What do we actually want from the people we meet through our lives, authenticity or belonging, and do these two go hand-in-hand?
Imperfection is human, and this story’s protagonist, Stella, certainly has her flaws, including the troubling tendency to fall into traps of her own making. The effect is more “why would anyone do that?” But hindsight is twenty-twenty, and perhaps if we were in the situation Stella finds herself in, anxiety constantly pumping and fear forever looming, we too wouldn’t realize these blind spots.
What struck me most were the recurring patterns in the story that showed the cult’s cold hands holding its members.
The author includes sharp one-liners and some self-aware comedy to break the tension, though it sometimes deflates it. But humor under pressure is a very real human response, so in that sense, the effort is worthy. A Mother Always Knows achieves a different type of thrill that one of our readers put’s perfectly:
“A Mother Always Knows felt like a horror novel written by someone who only cared about a twist. After investing so much time into the cult, we’re left with an ending straight out of Scooby Doo.” – Michael Schmidt
For readers who prefer their suspense stories character-driven and with much internal monologue, this book may be for you. I finished A Mother Always Knows, and I’m a bit uncertain about the answer to its question, but then again, with these types of stories, uncertainty can be intentional. This story is for readers who want tension presented efficiently through different POV lenses in a first-person thriller, who don’t necessarily need their horror ancestrally folkish or Manson-esque.
Interested in the Horror/Thriller Book Club? Please email reference@hobokenlibrary.org, or register for our next meeting by searching under Events on our website.
Have you read A Mother Always Knows? What did you think? Comment below.
You can reserve it in the BCCLS system here, or access the ebook and audiobook on Hoopla.
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Written by:
Sean Willey
Information and Digital Services Assistant
Hoboken Library Staff Picks 