Lovely, haunting, TERRIFYING for a future maybe nightbitch... ( )

This is an acquired taste, but I ate it up all the same. A woman who never saw herself as a mother was indeed that now and the process was intricate and often painful. She surmised her process as an artful change with elements of raw and animalistic processes. Did I identify with any of it? Yes, as I define myself as a feral housewife. Maybe there is a unique breed of women, myself included, who see themselves vastly different from what we believe to be the mass.
Don't pick this up if you are after gore and suspenseful mystery. Pick it up with an open mind and a willingness to accept a very different approach to self evolving pains and acceptance. ( )

Went into this one not knowing what to expect, since most of the werewolf-themed books I've read have been in the tropey, young-adult category. But this book blew me away. I might not be a mother, but the main character's experiences with motherhood were so realistic and gut-wrenching, reminding me of my own mother who also gave up her dreams and was never the same as a result.

MM/Nightbitch, thankfully, manages to pull herself out of this pit of despair, not without great personal obstacles - from trying to balance work with child-rearing, to struggling as a stay-at-home mom, to finally realizing and asserting her self-worth. The way she rediscovered both her human and animal natures, the way they intersected within the complexity of a woman and mother, and the way she made peace with this complexity, had me cheering and emotional at the end. No, she's not a perfect character by any stretch, but who of us is, really? She's a startling metaphor for what happens when (1) we allow ourselves to silently chafe too long under the often insensitive constraints of society, and (2) the beauty and power that can result when we come to terms with who we are. And that's a message I didn't know I needed to hear. ( )

I felt seen, I felt disturbed. All together different. A mother.

The story is told from the perspective of "the mother", who feels/who IS so erased, we don't even know her name. It's about the violence done unto and by women upon becoming mothers. Very visceral and raw. ( )

3.5 stars rounded up.
This book had such an interesting premise and amazing tension building. But it was just meh by the end. It could have finished at the end of part one and I’d have given it 5 stars. ( )