My mother.

At night, my mother creaks. The house creaks along with her.

Through our thin shared wall, I can hear the makings of my mother gurgle through her body just like the water in the walls of the house…

Teenage Aoileann has never left the island. Her silent, bed-bound mother is a wreckage, the survivor of a private disaster no one will speak about.

Aoileann desperately wants a family, and when Sarah and her three young children move to the island, Aoileann finds a focus for her relentless love.

A horror story about being bound by the blood knot of family.

This is a really difficult book to review. On the one hand, I get why so many people like it, but on the other hand, I really struggled to connect with it for a few reasons, which I’ll specify later. If you’d rather go into this book completely blind, then skip this review and come back after you’ve read the book.

The book is set on an isolated island in Ireland and focuses on a young woman named Aoileann, who lives with her grandmother (father’s mother) and bedridden mother. Aoileann resents her mother and allows her grandmother to shoulder most of the burden of caring for her. When her grandmother accepts a job at a new museum opening on the island, Aoileann is forced to be the sole caretaker while her grandmother is away, which makes her resentment grow. Aoileann’s mother doesn’t speak, nor can she walk, feed herself, bathe herself, or use the toilet, so it is up to Aoileann to do all of this for her.

As the days pass, Aoileann lets her resentment toward her mother fester until she begins neglecting her so she can leave during the day and enjoy some time alone. At first, it is small, minor things like letting her mother sit in a soiled diaper, but then she begins to do meaner, more hurtful things. The resentment and spiteful things she does grow even more extreme when Aoileann meets Rachel, a single mother hired to do some artwork for the museum. Aoileann grows obsessed with Rachel and begins inserting herself into Rachel’s life, hoping she will take Aoileann with her when she leaves at the end of her tenure.

I went into this one expecting some sort of creepy monster story, but that isn’t at all what I got. This is more of a psychological horror story about a deranged young woman who is desperate enough to go to extremes to get away from her boring life. I found Aoileann’s actions and behavior towards her mother and Rachel to be deeply unsettling. I realize she is unwell and was forced into shouldering a lot of unwanted burdens, but come on! Aoileann and her grandmother have been forced to care for Aoileann’s mother for years, while Aoileann’s father comes home once every so often and shoulders zero burden. I get why she is frustrated, and I understood why her grandmother was as uncaring as she was, but Aoileann’s actions left a really bad taste in my mouth. I hoped for some sort of redemptive arc on her part, but sadly, it never came.

I also felt let down because, in the beginning, the book reads as though the mother may not be entirely human. It’s mentioned that sometimes she is found outside and in weird, contorted positions that make it sound like she’s some sort of creature, but that wasn’t the case. I didn’t completely understand this. I also felt that the reveal of what had happened to the mother that led to her being bedridden was a little overdramatic on the mom’s part, and underwhelming for me as a reader. It could also be that the reasoning was expected, and this same reason has appeared in at least two other books I’ve recently read, so it felt uninspired.

Overall, this book is very well-written, but sadly, it missed the mark for me. I didn’t like the main character at all, and I felt the ending was a little lackluster. It was okay, but I won’t be raving about it to anyone. If you’re a fan of psychological horror and complex character studies where the main character is pretty awful, this book might be for you.

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