Tag: Control

Writers on Writing

If You Didn’t See It Coming: A psychological novel about family violence and the warning signs we ignore

Mandy Webster

A powerful psychological novel about domestic violence, generational trauma, and the warning signs we ignore. Amanda L. Webster shares the personal experiences behind If You Didn’t See It Coming and why fiction can reveal what statistics cannot.

If You Didn’t See It Coming is a psychological novel that explores domestic abuse, generational trauma, and the quiet warning signs that too often go unnoticed until it’s too late. Told through three interconnected perspectives, the story builds tension around a single, haunting certainty: someone is going to die. This isn’t a traditional mystery. It’s not about who did it. It’s about who will—and why.

Graphic that includes the book cover and a list of the following tropes: Multi-generational story, Domestic violence, Coercive Control, talks about the red flags we ignore. "You know someone is going to die-- you just don't know who-- or why."

The novel follows three generations of women—Marilou, Carrie, and Emma—each navigating her own version of control, fear, and survival. Marilou appears to have built the perfect life, but behind the façade is a marriage that has slowly eroded her sense of self. Carrie, her daughter, is doing everything she can to hold her life together after escaping an abusive relationship, only to have her ex forced back into her life through the legal system. And Emma, Carrie’s thirteen-year-old daughter, is caught in the middle—trying to make sense of attention, danger, and the complicated legacy she’s inheriting.

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Writers on Writing

Demons of the Night: A horror novel about good, evil, and finding your own path

Mandy Webster

Demons of the Night is a horror novel that asks: who gets to decide what is good and what is evil? It follows Docia, a young woman whose parents have gone to great lengths to hide the truth about who she really is. They want her to be a “good Christian woman” and believe secrecy is the only way to protect her. But their plan is about to backfire.

The cover of Demons of the Night was designed by my friend, author and artist Lance Savage, who created a fictionalized version of Holy Hill to reflect the novel’s dark atmosphere. Visit Lance’s website to see more of his work.

Docia longs for independence, for a life beyond her family’s overprotection. She wants normal experiences—friendships, romance, freedom. When Blane appears at a church lecture on demons, Docia is intrigued. But he’s there for the wrong reasons, and she quickly realizes that the life she desires may require confronting truths her parents have worked so hard to conceal. As the story unfolds, Docia must grapple with her identity, her morality, and the question of whether she can define herself outside the rigid framework her family imposes.

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The Body by Bethany C. Morrow: A brutal supernatural horror about marriage, faith, and who really owns your soul

Mandy Webster

Bethany C. Morrow’s The Body is a pulse-pounding supernatural horror novel that turns marriage, faith, and family obligation into a living nightmare—and it doesn’t flinch. Centered on a woman who has spent her entire life being told she will never be good enough, this is a story about what happens when the expectations placed on women become violent, literal, and inescapable.

Get your copy of The Body from my independent online bookstore today!

Mavis Carson broke away from her family’s church years ago, but the damage is permanent. Her mother, Marie Carson, presides over the congregation with an iron grip, demanding impossible perfection and absolute obedience. Mavis has internalized those rules so completely that even as an adult, she’s riddled with anxiety and convinced she’s one mistake away from losing everything. Her one perceived victory is her marriage to Jerrod, a man everyone—including Mavis herself—believes she doesn’t deserve. When the seven-year itch sets in and a freak car accident kicks off a string of increasingly disturbing incidents, Mavis begins to realize that the congregation she escaped may never have truly let her go.

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Listen by Sacha Bronwasser explores who gets seen—and who gets silenced

Mandy Webster

Sacha Bronwasser’s Listen is a quiet, unsettling novel that stares straight into the power imbalance between those who look and those who are looked at—and asks what happens when the powerless finally start to speak. Translated from Dutch, Listen unfolds slowly, like a photograph coming into focus, until the image becomes both vivid and painful.

Get your copy of Listen from my independent online bookstore today!

The novel moves between Paris and the Netherlands, between 1989 and 2015, tracing two women—Eloise and Marie—whose lives briefly overlap through the same family and the same Paris apartment. Both arrive as au pairs, both nearly invisible to the family they serve, and both find themselves noticed at last only when that attention becomes dangerous.

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