Unapologetic Reviews

I read The Villa by Rachel Hawkins for the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge, for prompt #38 “A book with any type of fruit on the cover or in the title”. The cover is full of bright lemons and Italian sunshine, but the story underneath is much darker. This is a thriller about murder, complicated female friendships, creative ambition, ownership, and the way a story can become more powerful than the truth behind it. The novel is told across two timelines, both centred on the same villa near Orvieto, Italy. In the present day, Emily is a writer whose life has stalled. Her marriage is ending, she has spent much of the previous year suffering from a mysterious illness, and she is struggling to finish the tenth book in her long running cosy mystery series. Emily is not a huge bestselling author, but she has built a real and dependable career. Her books sell consistently and provide her with a decent living, yet her soon to be ex-husband Matt now believes he deserves a share of that income be...

I read The Rose and the Yew Tree as the July selection for the 2026 Read Christie Challenge. The theme for the month was “Best Kept Secret,” referring to the novels Agatha Christie published under the name Mary Westmacott. Christie used the pseudonym because these books were very different from the detective fiction that had already made her famous, and her identity remained hidden for around fifteen years. That separation allowed the Westmacott novels to be read without everyone immediately comparing them to Poirot, Miss Marple, or the elaborate mysteries readers already associated with her name. The Rose and the Yew Tree is certainly a departure from the Agatha Christie books I normally read. Despite a synopsis that left me unsure about what kind of story I was entering, this is not a mystery. There is no murder to investigate, no collection of suspects, and no final scene in which every clue suddenly falls into place. Instead, it is a psychological character study, a political nove...

I read The Housewife by Natalie Barelli as the final book in my Trad Wife Reading Project, and it turned out to be something of an outlier. Most of the books in this project dealt directly with tradwife influencers. Yesteryear , Trad Wife: A Novel , The Trad Wife , and Everyone Is Lying to You all explored women constructing some version of traditional femininity for an online audience. Their homes, marriages, pregnancies, recipes, and carefully chosen dresses became part of a public performance. The Stepford Wives obviously predates social media, but it examines the darker fantasy beneath the same ideal. The Housewife is different. There are no influencers, no social media empire, and no ideological community built around traditional gender roles. Its protagonist simply enjoys being a housewife. Jodie loves cooking, cleaning, and maintaining an immaculate home. Cleaning genuinely calms her. She is meticulous about everything, from the arrangement of the house to the meals she prep...

As part of my Trad Wife Reading Project, I picked up Everyone Is Lying to You by Jo Piazza. This was the fifth book in the project, and it turned out to be quite different from the others. Rather than leaning into psychological horror or domestic suspense, this one is first and foremost a murder mystery set in the world of trad wife influencers. It uses that setting to explore power, control, religion, and the carefully curated lives people present online. The story follows two former college friends whose lives have taken completely different paths. Lizzie is a journalist whose career has been steadily declining, while Bex has become one of the internet's biggest trad wife influencers with six children and millions of followers. After years without speaking, Bex suddenly reaches out to Lizzie and offers her an exclusive interview. They arrange to meet at a convention for mom influencers, but before they ever get the chance, Bex's husband is found murdered. From there the nove...

I read The Trad Wife by Carrie Hughes as part of my Trad Wife Reading Project. This was the fourth book in the project, and it ended up being one of the stranger entries. It blends domestic thriller, cult fiction, and religious manipulation into a story that is less about the idealized trad wife lifestyle itself and more about the systems of control hiding behind it. Melissa is a single mother living in New York with her seven year old daughter, Willow. She works in social media and hosts a podcast, and she has become fascinated by Faith, a wildly successful trad wife influencer whose perfect family life is broadcast from a picturesque ranch. When Faith unexpectedly offers Melissa a job as her social media manager, the opportunity seems impossible to refuse. Housing is included, the pay is good, and it also gives Willow a chance to escape the relentless bullying she has been experiencing at school. The catch is that Faith and the entire community are Mormon. Melissa grew up in the chu...

I read Trad Wife: A Novel by Saratoga Schaefer as the third book in my Trad Wife Reading Project, and this was easily the darkest one so far. The book has been marketed as a modern Rosemary's Baby, and that comparison is very accurate. Instead of focusing on a woman forced into a horrific pregnancy against her will, this story follows a woman who desperately wants a baby, even if she has to make a deal with something she doesn't fully understand to get one.  The main character, Camille Deming, has built her entire identity around becoming the perfect trad wife influencer. She lives in a large country farmhouse with her husband, Graham, spends her days cooking, cleaning, homesteading, and carefully curating her online image. The only thing missing is a baby. In Camille's mind, motherhood isn't just something she wants personally. It's the final step towards becoming the successful influencer she dreams of being. When she discovers an old wishing well on her property...