In this electric horror novel from the author of The Insatiable Volt Sisters, an exhausted mother thinks her newborn might be a monster. She’s right.
Thea’s third pregnancy was her easiest. She wasn’t consumed with anxiety about the baby. She wasn’t convinced it was going to be born green, or have a third eye, or have tentacles sprouting from its torso. Thea was fine. Her baby would be fine.
But when the nurses handed Lucia to her, Thea just knew. Her baby girl was a monster. Not only was Lucia born with a full set of teeth and a devilish glint in her eye, but she’s always hungry. Indiscriminately so. One day Lucia pointed at her baby brother, looked Thea dead in the eye and said, “I eat.”
Thea doesn’t know whether to be terrified or proud of her rapacious baby girl. And as Lucia starts growing faster and talking more, dark memories bubble to the surface--flashes from Thea’s childhood that won’t release their hooks from her heart. Lucia wants to eat the world. Thea might just let her. Crackling with originality and dark humor, Rachel Eve Moulton’s Tantrum is a provocative exploration of familial debt, duty, and the darker side of motherhood.
Thea never wanted children until she met and married Dillon, but once she did she was determined to be a better mother than the one she had. She worried herself sick over her first two pregnancies, but her beautiful, healthy boys are the light of her life. The third time, however, was not the charm. She didn't worry at all. Everything was fine until they put her baby girl in her arms. That was when she knew she had birthed a monster.
Exhausted and struggling to cope with a baby who is developing a mean streak and a miraculous growth spurt, Thea begins to uncover blocked out memories from her traumatic childhood and the disturbing details of her forgotten past with her own mother.
Motherhood is probably the only experience that millions of women can share while still having nothing in common. Each experience is as unique as every child. Tantrum is a supernatural story about trauma and abuse and the darker side of motherhood—those uncomfortable thoughts we may punish ourselves for when one child is harder to cope with than the others.
5 out of 5 stars
My thanks to G.P. Putnam's Sons for the advance e-ARC
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