Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer * * *

I read Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer as my Pick of the Month for June 2026. What drew me to it was the premise. It was advertised as a story involving a cult and as part of the wider conversation around abortion rights and how legislation affects healthcare. Since I have read several memoirs by former cult members and watched many documentaries on the subject, that immediately caught my attention.

In the end, I give this book three stars. It wasn't bad. It was competently written, easy to read, and fairly quick. The story moved along well enough and kept me turning the pages. But for me, it never became particularly interesting.

The story follows a doctor who becomes trapped inside a religious community. The cult itself, however, felt very much like a cult by numbers. If you've watched a few documentaries or read books about groups like Scientology, FLDS, or other high-control communities, you can almost tick boxes as you go along. Isolation, manipulation, control, unquestioned authority. Everything was there, but nothing felt especially distinctive or memorable.

The same was true of the discussion surrounding abortion legislation. The book raises the issue that restrictive laws drive obstetricians and gynaecologists away from certain states, leaving pregnant women with fewer doctors and fewer options. That part certainly reflects real concerns, and I have read articles and statistics discussing exactly that. But I felt the novel merely stated the problem rather than exploring it in any depth. It never really examined the ethical questions or the doctor's perspective in a nuanced way.

The entire story was also very predictable. I could see where things were heading, including the ending. And the ending itself felt surprisingly abrupt. It almost felt as though the author had simply reached the point where it was time for the protagonist to be rescued and decided to wrap everything up. There was little sense that her relationship with the cult had evolved in a particularly interesting direction. I almost wished she had spent longer inside the community or become more entangled in it, because that might have created something more complex.

Overall, this felt a bit like a Lifetime movie. Not in a bad way. Lifetime movies are perfectly watchable. They are competently made, entertaining enough, and easy to consume. But they rarely surprise you or leave a lasting impression. Obstetrix gave me much the same feeling.

I think readers who are unfamiliar with cults and haven't followed discussions around abortion legislation may find more to discover here than I did. But for me, neither aspect went far enough. The book wasn't bad. It simply never did anything special.

Sometimes a perfectly competent story is just that. Competent. And sometimes that's not quite enough to make it memorable.