From the three-time Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Good Neighbors comes a chilling tale of a journalist’s descent into horror as she uncovers the dark secrets behind a trad wife influencer, blending suspense with a critique of modern femininity and the manipulative forces of social media.

Every day, millions watch Mia Wright, the “trad wife” queen, on her idyllic 300-acre farm. With her handsome husband, seven perfect children, and a life of from-scratch meals and pastoral bliss, she’s an icon of modern femininity. But behind every perfect image is a secret. And in this case, the secret is a horror.

Desperate to save her tarnished career, journalist Jenny Kaplan arrives at Black Swan Farm to profile Mia. Jenny is ready to write a scathing exposé, determined to expose the deception behind Mia’s curated life. But soon, Jenny has more to contend with than staged videos and picture-perfect poses. There’s something wrong at the farmhouse. Something slithers through Jenny’s dreams, and at night, the children sing strange nursery rhymes.

She’s losing time. She’s losing her hair. She starts to worry that she’s losing her mind.

There is a horror at the heart of Black Swan, and it’s waiting just for Jenny. Trad Wife will make you question what’s real and what’s just a perfectly curated deception…

Will you see the lie?

I received an advance copy of this book courtesy of the publisher. All thoughts are my own.

There’s no shortage of trad wife-inspired books flooding shelves right now, and after finishing this one, I think I need to step away from the subgenre for a bit. This is actually the third trad wife-focused book I’ve read this year, and the good news is each one has taken a genuinely different angle on the subject. Unfortunately, this one just didn’t quite come together for me.

Mia Wright has built an entire online following around her picture-perfect trad wife lifestyle, complete with a sprawling farm, a devoted husband, seven kids, and endless content showing off homemade meals and perfect familial bliss. Struggling journalist Jenny arrives at the farm hoping to salvage her career with a hard-hitting exposé, fully intending to pull back the curtain on who Mia really is. But it doesn’t take long before Jenny realizes something is deeply wrong at the farmhouse. Strange things start creeping into her dreams at night, the children sing unsettling nursery rhymes after dark, and Jenny starts losing time she can’t account for. When she starts losing patches of hair, her grip on reality begins to slip as well. Something dark is clearly at the center of Black Swan Farm, and it seems to want her.

This one started out strong. The opening chapters were detailed and did a great job of setting up both the world of the farm and Jenny’s personal struggles. Then the pacing slowed and got to the point where it became hard to stay engaged. I kept waiting for something properly unsettling to happen, but that didn’t happen until the very end. And when it finally did, the whole book fell apart for me. The tension ratchets up for a bit, and then the story rushes straight into wrapping everything up. Those final chapters read less like a continuation of the detailed, immersive setup from earlier and more like a rushed summary of events, almost like the author ran out of room to actually dramatize the horror element they’d spent so long building toward. That or she got tired of writing and pushed us toward an abrupt ending.

I appreciated what the book was trying to say. There’s commentary here about how men exert control over women, and how trad wife influencers specifically pull other women into that same dynamic, convincing them to slowly erase parts of themselves in order to fit the mold. It’s an interesting angle to explore through horror, but the horror was barely there. For me, the execution just didn’t work.

Good idea, poor execution. If you are looking for a truly entertaining (and horror-filled) trad wife book, check out Saratoga Schaefer’s book of the same title. I had a blast with that one.