Every trad wife needs a baby. Camille will get one – no matter the cost.
Camille lives to embody the perfect traditional wife―cooking, cleaning, homesteading, and documenting it all for her followers. But without a baby, her image―and her following―feels incomplete. As Camille’s husband begins to withdraw and his attention in her waning, Camille’s desperation deepens.
When Camille discovers a crumbling well hidden in the wheat field behind her new house, she is drawn to it, despite its proximity to an intimidating local forest. Unsure of what else to do, she makes a wish.
Soon, she’s haunted by vivid dreams she believes are divine. Then something visits her―something not quite angelic. Her belly swells unnaturally fast. Her cravings turn raw. And yet, her announcement goes viral.
But as Camille’s influence grows, so does the horror inside her. The life she always wanted is finally within reach… if it doesn’t consume her first.
Dark bleatings, my lovelies. I was so intrigued by this book after seeing rave reviews of it that I broke my book-buying ban to get it, and I’m not sorry. I read it in one sitting.
Something that has amused and irritated me about the trad wife movement in equal measure is that those beautifully presented women on social media that are most responsible for pushing it aren’t trad wives. They’re influencers, a lot of them making good money from perpetuating this lifestyle, and if you have a job, you’re not a trad wife. For those mercifully out of this loop, a trad wife (or traditional wife) is…well…picture a housewife in an idyllic 1950’s America. They look after the home, they’re basically 100% responsible for all things child related, and they have dinner on the table promptly when their darling husband returns home from work. They smile, they don’t complain, they–I shudder to say this–obey their man, and they do all of this with perfectly applied make-up and styled hair and some sort of cute, immaculate outfit.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a stay at home parent or a house spouse – it’s hard work, things need to get done, and if this is what you wanted in your relationship dynamic, that’s even better. What I take issue with is this trad wife movement leans back into harmful dynamics, and is being perpetuated by women who aren’t, in fact, even trad wives. They have jobs. They’re social media influencers and they make their own money. They’re salesmen.
This book tells the story of Camille, in first-person, as she struggles to build her social media following because though she has the perfect husband and perfect house, looks the part, and knows her way around the kitchen, she is lacking the one thing that would really push her subscriber count up – a baby. She ticks every box required of a trad wife, and yet her shitty husband is already, quite obviously, cheating on her. She knows this but denies it, because challenging or questioning your husband is unbecoming of a good wife. Regardless, he’s no longer interested in sleeping with her and this is a problem because, once again, she needs a baby. She wanders out to a wishing well and drops a perfect penny in, begging to be blessed, and then – oh look – she is! But this is not a normal pregnancy…
Firstly, I loved how much everything I said above was addressed, even through this narration style. Camille lives in a state of forced lack of awareness. She knows her life isn’t perfect, that she’s projecting an edited, manipulated version of it, but she figures that if she just keeps trying hard enough, it will become what she wants eventually. Social media, in particular a trad wife influencer she idolises, has influenced every aspect of how she lives, from the colour palette of her home to what she bakes. She’s doing everything right but it’s still not good enough, and there’s no help to be sought for that because the illusion of perfection must be maintained always, so she can’t ask anyone for advice.
Something else that I ate up was that there’s an obvious Rosemary’s Baby comparison to be made, and what I really loved about this novel is that the idea of a demonic pregnancy was pushed so much further here than it was in Ira Levin’s work. It was quite deliciously devilish, I have to say. I’d never really thought about what might have happened after Rosemary saw her baby for the first time, or what raising that baby could be like. But this author did, and I love how unrestrained they were with it.
I found it a fascinating commentary on the social media element of the trad wife movement, and of a woman’s desperation to become a mother, even if initially for the wrong reasons. Where I think the story blossomed is in how Camille’s perspective of her entire life begins to shift once she finally has the baby. She’s an interesting but not very likeable character for half the book, though I think that was intentional. I kept wishing the author had given us a bit more depth, something more relatable to hold on to, but Camille was wilfully stupid, shallow, and quite vapid. I realised later, as everything was fleshed out, that this was most likely a quite clever, purposeful choice, actually. In the beginning, I weirdly enjoyed being irritated by her, but also felt sympathetic because she’s also just a bit lost. All she wants, really, is to be appreciated and valued. By the end, I wasn’t exactly cheering because….you know how it’s fun to watch dickheads get picked off in slasher films even though their untimely, hideous death is quite disproportionate to their personality flaws? It was kind of like that, the realisation that I was quite on board but, oh lordy, what have I become?!
Thematically, quite a lot is touched on with varying degrees of exploration, but I think my main takeaway is that if you’re a woman living to serve the patriarchy like this, no matter how amazing you are or how much you’re willing to sacrifice (including birthing children and the lasting effects that can have on your body), you will still never be good enough. Living through your husband’s eyes, or through the eyes of a misogynistic gaggle, will most likely result in your suffering, because here’s the thing; the types of men operating in these circles simply do not respect women. They won’t appreciate your extraordinary efforts, even though they might say they do, because they just expect you to perform like this for them.
This is one of my favourite novels of the year so far and an easy book to recommend to horror fans. If you’d like to check out the book or the author, I’ve popped some links below for you:
Bleeeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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