Every few months, a horror novel shows up, terrifies half the people who read it, and annoys the other half so badly they start writing essays. The latest one is about a mother who realizes her kid has started calling someone else mommy. And that someone looks exactly like her.
That’s the setup, and it’s a good one. Doubles are creepy. Mothers are guilt machines. Combine the two and you get a book that basically weaponizes the worst thought a parent can have, which is that their child might prefer someone else.
It’s part of a wave that’s been building for years. Books about motherhood as body horror, as resentment, as a slow loss of self. Some of them are literary. Some are pure pulp. The best ones understand that the scariest thing in a house is usually the person who’s supposed to love you unconditionally.
The Other Mommy is not subtle about any of this. It goes for the throat early and keeps going. Which is exactly why readers are split. Half of them are calling it the most unsettling thing they’ve picked up this year. The other half think it’s gross for the sake of being gross and confuse shock with depth.
Here’s the thing about horror arguments. They’re rarely about quality and almost always about taste. One reader’s masterpiece is another reader’s DNF. A scene that lands as devastating for you might read as try-hard to the person sitting next to you. Nobody’s wrong. Everybody’s annoyed.
What makes this one interesting is the ending. People who love it insist the last thirty pages reframe everything. People who hate it say the last thirty pages are where the book gives up and starts throwing things at the wall. Both camps are loud. Neither is persuadable.
Is it worth your time? Depends on what you want from horror. If you like books that make you feel physically uncomfortable and slightly ashamed of yourself, this is your lane. If you want atmosphere, dread, and a slow burn, you might bounce off it hard. That’s not a flaw. That’s a mismatch.
The bigger question is whether the book earns its shocks or just uses them. There’s a difference between a story that hurts because it’s true and a story that hurts because the author needed a scene. Readers are arguing about which one this is, and the argument is basically the entire experience of reading it.
Where do I land? Somewhere in the middle, which is the least fun place to be. The Other Mommy does a few things extremely well and a few things badly enough to notice. That’s most horror novels. The ones that get talked about for months are rarely the ones that are flawless.
If you’re the kind of reader who needs to know what everyone’s arguing about, pick it up. If you’re not, skip it and wait for the next one. There’s always a next one. That’s the nice thing about horror. Something new is always crawling out of the walls.