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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9 unsettling novels that imagine the future in ways that feel too close to ignore

The future has never felt more intimate—or more unsettling—than in contemporary fiction that bends time, technology, and human behavior into something eerily recognizable. These novels imagine what comes next when memory, bodies, surveillance, climate collapse, and intimacy itself begin to shift beyond control. The result is a collection of stories that don’t just predict the future—they make it feel uncomfortably close.

The cover of the novel Ruins by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Ruins by Lily Brooks-Dalton

At the center of Ruins is an archaeologist whose fascination with a long-lost civilization places her at odds with accepted history. As she pieces together fragments of a forgotten world, she becomes increasingly convinced that the stories people tell about the past are incomplete—or perhaps entirely wrong. Lily Brooks-Dalton unfolds the mystery slowly, allowing readers to uncover the significance of each discovery alongside the protagonist. The result is a literary novel that rewards curiosity, revealing its larger premise gradually rather than all at once.

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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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It Had to Happen: Time, grief, and the illusion of control

It Had to Happen begins with a devastating, almost clean fracture in a man’s life: Jack Utley loses his daughter just as his business is finally about to take off. In that moment, success and loss become entangled in a way that feels almost transactional—like one has been traded for the other. Jack is left doing what many grieving parents do in fiction and in life: trying to assign meaning to something that refuses to make sense. Then the story shifts into something far less predictable.

On the eve of his daughter Callie’s funeral, Jack encounters a mysterious woman. After that meeting, he wakes to find that time has somehow rewound itself to the morning of the accident. Suddenly, he is given what grief never allows in reality: a second chance. He saves his daughter’s life. But the novel is not interested in treating that as a simple gift.

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7 cult novels that explore devotion, control, and transformation

If you’re looking for cult novels that blur the line between belonging and control, these are the stories that linger long after the final page. Cult fiction thrives on a particular kind of tension: the promise of safety, identity, or purpose slowly curdling into something far more unsettling. Across these books, communities offer transformation—but what they demand in return is often far more than anyone realizes at the start. The result is fiction that feels intimate, claustrophobic, and eerily plausible, where devotion becomes both the hook and the trap.

These seven novels approach cult dynamics from different angles—psychological, speculative, surreal, and apocalyptic—but they all circle the same question: what happens when the need to belong becomes stronger than the instinct to leave?

The cover of Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey

Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey

Sarah Gailey’s Make Me Better is an unsettling, slow-burn descent into the seductive promise of belonging, where healing and control gradually blur. Celia is a woman driven by an intense need for connection, whether through unstable romantic fixations or her fixation on motherhood as a source of permanence and identity. That vulnerability draws her to Kindred Cove, an invitation-only island sanctuary promising healing, purpose, and escape from a deteriorating outside world. But beneath its calm surface lies a tightly controlled system where resources, labor, and even children are shared, and every aspect of life is carefully managed.

As Celia is drawn deeper into the Cove’s orbit, the novel builds a quiet, creeping unease rooted in emotional manipulation and subtle ecological strangeness. Atmospheric and psychologically sharp, Make Me Better lingers in its central question: when belonging feels like salvation, how do you recognize the moment it stops being your choice?

Read my full review.
Buy this book.

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Lady X by Molly Fader: A fierce, timely novel about female rage and generational rebellion

There are moments when a novel feels eerily timed to the world outside its pages. Lady X by Molly Fader is one of those books—a story that begins like a glossy domestic drama before transforming into something much angrier, more ambitious, and far more thought-provoking.

At first, I honestly wondered if I had picked up the wrong book. The present-day storyline introduces Margot Cooper, the seemingly perfect wife of a famous actor who has built a public image around traditional family values. It initially feels like the sort of suburban housewife thriller we’ve seen many times before: wealthy people, social media personas, carefully curated lives, and secrets waiting to explode. Then everything changes.

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Unreliable Narrator by Araminta Hall: A literary thriller about the stories we tell ourselves

What if the story that ruined your life wasn’t the one that actually happened? Araminta Hall’s Unreliable Narrator begins with the promise of a psychological thriller, but what unfolds is something even more interesting: a deeply literary examination of memory, guilt, identity, and the stories people construct to survive. While there are certainly moments of suspense, readers looking for a fast-paced thriller may find themselves surprised by the novel’s quieter, more introspective approach. Personally, I think that’s exactly where the book shines.

Ten years after the violent end to a summer spent working as assistant to celebrated novelist Ambrose “Rosie” Glencourt at the isolated Shadowlands estate, Hope Jenkins has resigned herself to a lonely existence. Convinced she deserves the life she’s living, she numbs herself with alcohol and isolation—until she discovers that Rosie’s bestselling novel is, in essence, her own life story. Not only has he exposed the darkest secret she’s carried for a decade, but he’s profited from it and is preparing to tell the story all over again. From there, Hall explores not simply what happened at Shadowlands, but how everyone involved has rewritten the past to suit themselves.

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Occult satire, unreliable men, and a very bad cat: A deep view inside the novel, One Bad Cat

One Bad Cat is a novel that grew out of a simple premise and ended up somewhere far stranger, funnier, and more psychologically tangled than it first appeared. At its core, it’s an occult satire built around two intersecting storylines: a psychology professor who is turned into a cat by members of his coven, and a man trying to keep his life from falling apart after he lets a persistent stray cat into his apartment.

Dr. Stephen Scott begins the story in a position of intellectual authority. He’s a psychology professor with an interest in the occult, someone who believes he understands systems and people well enough to stay a step ahead. That control collapses when a group of female coven members cast a spell that transforms him into a cat. From there, his storyline tightens into something immediate and claustrophobic: a mind trapped in a body that no longer obeys it, focused on revenge, survival, and the recovery of a charm bag that contains the source of his power.

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11 contemporary literary novels that explore grief, identity, ambition, and the quiet ways people come undone

Some contemporary literary novels announce themselves loudly, built around shocking twists or sweeping drama. Others work more quietly, slipping under your skin through emotional precision, unsettling atmosphere, and an understanding of how ordinary lives can become emotionally unbearable. The novels on this list belong firmly in the second category.

These books explore grief, isolation, class, motherhood, ambition, memory, friendship, and the impossible expectations people inherit from families and society. Some blur the line between realism and psychological horror. Others stay grounded in everyday life while exposing the emotional fractures hidden beneath routines, relationships, and carefully maintained appearances. What connects them is their interest in interior lives—the private fears, compulsions, disappointments, and longings people carry even when outwardly functioning just fine.

If you’re looking for contemporary literary fiction that feels emotionally intelligent, psychologically rich, and deeply human, these novels deserve your attention.

The cover of the novel Mercy Hill by Hannah Thurman features a tree.

Mercy Hill by Hannah Thurman

A tense and emotionally layered novel about family loyalty, inherited expectations, and the quiet damage caused by control disguised as care. Hannah Thurman explores how obligation and manipulation can shape entire lives, especially for women expected to endure without complaint. Mercy Hill is intimate, unsettling, and deeply perceptive about the ways families can trap people long after they believe they’ve escaped.

Read my full review.
Buy this book.

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

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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