3 Horror Moms You Wouldn’t Want to Mess With

Motherhood is a central theme in V. Castro’s frightening yet hopeful story of grief, anger, and generational trauma. The Haunting of Alejandra is told through the history of a family cursed by a monstrous creature from beyond our world, who feeds on the pain and suffering of the families it stalks through the generations. But Alejandra doesn’t know about the monster or the curse, all she knows is that she feels haunted. Both by the life she lives but no longer wants, and by a spectral figure in white who encourages her darkest, saddest thoughts. As she struggles to learn more about herself and her history in order to try and heal, Alejandra finds a legacy of sorrow and loss. A line of ancestors who suffered tragedy, oppression, and cruelty, leading back and back into the past. But alongside their grief, Alejandra also finds their strength, and the means to fight back against the monster before it can consume her and everyone she loves.

I hope y’all are ready for some body horror, because Katrina Monroe didn’t come to play with her newest book, Graveyard of Lost Children. She begins the novel by putting a body horror twist on birth and then builds on it as Olivia struggles, first with the changes to her body after giving birth to her daughter Flora, and then with the certainty that her body is dying when she becomes convinced that her baby has been replaced with a creature that is slowly draining her life with every feeding. Changeling lore intersects with a heavy discussion of postpartum depression and the societal pressures around being not just a “good” mother, but a “happy” mother. No one can see the horror that Oliva sees, no one seems to see her wasting away. But they see that she’s not as happy as she “should be” now that she’s a mother. They don’t see the black-haired woman who’s dogging her steps, they just see a woman wracked with paranoia and fear. But Olivia can see the woman, and so could Olivia’s mother, Shannon. If Olivia wants to protect herself and her daughter, she will have to seek the black-haired woman out where she lives, and confront a past full of silence and family secrets.

Told from two perspectives across two timelines, Such a Pretty Smile covers a span of 15 years in the lives of Caroline and her 13-year-old daughter, Lila. In 2004, Caroline is a young artist weighed down by her duty to her dying father and the overbearance of her fiancé, an insecure man who is supposed to be in love with her but seems more interested in suppressing her talents in favor of his own career. In 2019, Lila is struggling with societal and parental expectations, the neglect of her distant father, and her own developing sexuality. When Lila’s growing resentment and unrequited feelings start to manifest in strange and frightening ways, she begins to clash with the fragile façade of a life that Caroline has constructed to protect them both. And in doing so, she opens the door to a darkness in Caroline’s past that threatens both their lives.