Author Interview

Author Suzanne Junered discusses motherhood, identity, and the darkness behind Goodnight Monsters

In today’s author interview, Suzanne Junered discusses Goodnight Monsters, her unsettling novel about motherhood, identity, grief, and the disturbing thoughts we don’t always admit. When I reviewed Goodnight Monsters, I was struck by the novel’s unsettling exploration of motherhood, identity, and the thoughts we’re often afraid to admit we have. Through Lia’s fascination with death and decomposition, her complicated relationship with pregnancy, and her increasingly blurred line between fantasy and reality, Junered creates a story that is as psychologically disturbing as it is thought-provoking.

Suzanne Junered is the author of Goodnight Monsters, which releases today!

In this interview, she talks about the deeply personal experiences that shaped the novel, the unexpected origins of the Body Farm setting, and her desire to challenge the idea that there is one “right” way to experience motherhood. She also shares how her own struggles with grief, anger, and loss of identity found their way onto the page—and offers a glimpse at what she’s working on next.

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Queen Mab by Emily McBride: When motherhood becomes a fairy tale nightmare

What if the greatest horror isn’t that you’ve lost your mind—but that you’re the only one seeing the truth? Emily McBride’s Queen Mab follows twenty-three-year-old graduate student Madeleine, whose carefully planned future is upended after a traumatic childbirth ends in an emergency C-section. Instead of bonding with her newborn daughter, Maud, Madeleine becomes convinced that the baby has been stolen by the faeries and replaced with a changeling. As her husband, parents, and medical professionals dismiss her growing fears, Madeleine desperately searches folklore and literature for a way to bring her real child home.

This is now the third novel I’ve read in recent weeks that explores the aftermath of traumatic childbirth, and I’m definitely noticing a trend. The other two were Good Morning Means I Love You by Kendra Allen and With Friends Like You by Amy Chozick. These are three very different novels examining the same important subject from very different perspectives, and I love seeing contemporary fiction finally giving serious attention to what can happen after childbirth instead of treating birth as the tidy ending to a woman’s story.

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City of Widows by Nadia Hashimi: A breathtaking portrait of survival under the Taliban

There are novels that entertain, and then there are novels that demand to be witnessed. City of Widows by Nadia Hashimi is firmly in the latter category—a sweeping, emotionally devastating, and ultimately hopeful story that puts human faces on the headlines many of us have long since stopped reading.

Nadia Hashimi tells an ambitious story that spans decades of Afghan history while remaining deeply rooted in the lives of individual women. The result is an absolutely riveting novel that is as suspenseful as it is heartbreaking. Despite its large cast of characters, dual timelines, and enormous historical scope, the story remains remarkably cohesive. Every thread contributes to a larger portrait of women fighting to preserve not only their lives, but also their dignity, their families, and their sense of self.

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With Friends Like You by Amy Chozick Is a Twisty Thriller About Motherhood, Trauma, and the Friend You Can’t Let Go

Childbirth is a harrowing experience, even in the best of circumstances. There is no escaping the pain, the blood, or the complete upheaval of your body. Then, after what is often a profoundly traumatic experience, you’re handed a brand-new human being and sent home with the expectation that you’ll somehow know exactly what you’re doing. Now imagine almost dying during childbirth.

That’s where Amy Chozick’s With Friends Like You begins, and it’s what immediately sets this psychological thriller apart from the crowd. Beneath its mystery lies a remarkably compassionate exploration of birth trauma, postpartum isolation, female friendship, and the desperate search for the version of yourself that existed before everything changed.

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Good Morning Means I Love You by Kendra Allen: A powerful novel about family, freedom, and choosing your own life

Some novels ask readers to reconsider what they think they know about love and family. Good Morning Means I Love You by Kendra Allen does something even more challenging—it asks us to examine the assumptions we carry about motherhood, responsibility, and the roles society expects women to play. Releasing July 7, 2026, Allen’s debut novel is a deeply layered, emotionally rich exploration of one unconventional family and the many forms that love can take.

On the surface, Good Morning Means I Love You tells the story of Rae, Micah, and Noon, three adults who fall in love and intentionally build a life together. Their relationship is unusual by conventional standards, but Allen wisely refuses to make that the central conflict of the novel. The story spends very little time explaining how the trio came together or justifying their relationship. It simply exists.

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Behind White Picket Fences by Christine Gunderson is a suspense novel caught between aspiration and reality

There’s something deeply compelling about novels that peel back the image of suburban perfection to reveal the ugliness underneath, and Behind White Picket Fences certainly knows how to build that contrast. Releasing June 9, 2026, the novel combines domestic suspense, commentary on modern motherhood, and a mystery rooted in buried neighborhood secrets. At its best, it captures the exhaustion and anxiety of contemporary parenting with sharp observational humor. At other times, though, the story feels so polished and idealized that the emotional truth underneath begins to slip away.

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The novel follows Kiersten Cleaver, who feels crushed beneath the endless expectations of modern motherhood. Travel sports, academic pressure, dyslexia accommodations, and the constant race to ensure children are “successful” have left her emotionally depleted. Alongside her neighbors Rosamund and Piper, she decides to step away from the system entirely for a year, creating a homeschool collective out of Kiersten’s kitchen. The setup taps directly into a cultural fantasy many parents probably recognize: a return to a slower, more intentional childhood where kids play outside, families gather around real dinner tables, and life isn’t dictated by schedules and screens.

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Author Interview

Author interview: Jennifer van der Kleut on The Better Mother, Nancy Drew, and writing thrillers with real stakes

From childhood Nancy Drew notebooks to a debut thriller that asks hard questions about motherhood, loyalty, and what we owe one another, Jennifer van der Kleut’s path to publication has always been rooted in curiosity and emotional stakes. Her first novel, The Better Mother, released February 10, 2026, and introduces readers to a protagonist at her lowest point—then dares her to fight her way back. In this interview, van der Kleut talks about the books and writers who shaped her, why community matters on and off the page, the rituals that keep her grounded at the keyboard, and how remembering what’s truly at stake drives every story she tells.

Jennifer van der Kleut’s debut novel, The Better Mother, released February 10, 2026.

Q: What/who were your early literary influences, and how do you think their writing has shaped you as a storyteller today?
A: As a child, my number-one favorite mystery series was Nancy Drew. I wanted to be Nancy Drew. So much so, that I got a blank notebook, and as I read each book, I took notes of the clues and suspects in the story as though I were the detective myself, and tried to come to my own conclusion before the culprit was revealed.

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Ours is a Tale of Murder by Nora Murphy: A suburban thriller that refuses to behave

Nora Murphy’s Ours is a Tale of Murder opens in a quiet neighborhood that feels instantly familiar—and immediately uneasy. Klara and Troy live behind the white picket fence she never wanted and he always did, their marriage polished on the surface and deeply wrong underneath. Across the street from where their story unfolds, Mary prepares to sell the blue house that holds too many memories of her son and her past mistakes. Nearby, Henry, recently laid off and back in his childhood bedroom, watches everyone a little too closely. From the start, Murphy invites us into a story about observation, judgment, and the lies we tell ourselves about the people we think we know.

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About halfway through the novel, I realized Murphy was doing something quietly experimental with the structure. The storyline I was most emotionally invested in came to an abrupt halt, and my first reaction was frustration—I wanted to stay with Klara longer. But instead of bailing, I kept reading, and that choice paid off. The narrative begins to weave back around on itself in unexpected ways, reframing earlier scenes and assumptions. This is very much a book that makes you want to reread it, if only to spot the details you missed the first time—the moments that might have tipped you off that the story was never going to move in a straight line.

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No One You Know by Emma Tourtelot: Grief, motherhood, and the quiet violence of being blamed

No One You Know by Emma Tourtelot is one of those novels that quietly proves how wrong first impressions can be. I’ll admit it: I almost passed this one by because the cover looks oddly amateurish, the kind of design that suggests something lightweight or underbaked. I’m genuinely glad I didn’t. What’s inside is a sharp, unsettling literary debut that digs far deeper than its packaging suggests.

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Set in the Hudson Valley, the novel opens on what looks like a carefully curated life. Kate is a successful realtor and momfluencer with a devoted husband, Ethan, and a close relationship with her teenage daughter, Indie. That surface-level perfection shatters when Indie’s best friend, Maddy, is killed by a drunk driver right in front of her. From that moment on, Tourtelot is less interested in the tragedy itself than in the slow, corrosive aftermath—the way grief destabilizes families, marriages, and entire communities.

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Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer: A ferocious horror novel about motherhood, patriarchy, and the cost of being “good”

Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer is a horror novel that knows how to tell a gripping story while quietly dismantling the cultural myths propping it up. Scheduled to release on February 10, 2026, it’s the rare book that makes you start mentally planning your year-end “best of” list before you’re even finished reading. Trad Wife is an unsettling, deeply intelligent literary thriller that uses horror not just to disturb, but to say something urgent about womanhood, motherhood, and the performance of femininity in the age of social media.

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Camille Deming presents herself online as the ideal #tradwife: cooking from scratch, tending her homestead, centering her life around her husband and home. The problem is that she’s missing the one thing her followers—and the ideology she’s bought into—demand most: a baby. When Camille discovers a mysterious well behind her farmhouse and makes a wish, her desire is answered in ways that are grotesque, intimate, and impossible to undo. Her pregnancy brings skyrocketing engagement and validation, even as her body begins to change in frightening ways and her marriage quietly continues to rot.

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