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Mother-Eating
An oral history following the real-life story of French queen Marie Antoinette's royal court reimagined as a sex cult in modern-day Austin, Texas, pitched as EXQUISITE CORPSE meets LINCOLN IN THE BARDO.
362 pages, Paperback
First published October 28, 2025
16 people are currently reading
723 people want to read
About the author
Jess Hagemann
11 books58 followersJess Hagemann’s recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beneath the Bluebonnets: Tales of Terror from Texas Women, Three Seasons of Winter, and Last Girls Club, among others. Her debut novel Headcheese (2018) won an IPPY Award in Horror. Paste Magazine named her sophomore novel Mother-Eating, which marries Marie Antoinette and cults, one of the “Most-Anticipated Horror Books of 2025.” Jess received her MFA from the Jack Kerouac School, and has been awarded a teaching fellowship at McNeese State University as well as a writing residency at Dear Butte. She lives in Austin.
More at www.jesshagemann.com.
More at www.jesshagemann.com.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
October 14, 2025
Got the ebook for review.
The story is told from many people but never Mary Toni herself. The book is retelling of Mari Antionette but in modern day sex cult. There where a lot of things that would count as needing trigger warning but was impacted me the most was how Mari Toni was badly mistreated and abused even from people who claimed to love and care for her. Weird and brutal at times but was a very compelling read even if it was sad and frustrating.
The story is told from many people but never Mary Toni herself. The book is retelling of Mari Antionette but in modern day sex cult. There where a lot of things that would count as needing trigger warning but was impacted me the most was how Mari Toni was badly mistreated and abused even from people who claimed to love and care for her. Weird and brutal at times but was a very compelling read even if it was sad and frustrating.
December 8, 2025
“Not every story is about redemption. Not every life gets redeemed.”
Hold onto your hats folks, I got a rant coming!
Jesus, wtf did I just read? Jess Hagemann is the honey badger of the writing world, she doesn’t give a shit. She doesn’t care about your triggers, your fears or your disgust she’s going to make you take it and you’ll eventually keep asking for more! There are scenes in this book that will live in my brain forever and not for any good reason. I am completely broken after reading this book. If you have triggers, they are in here. Things that didn’t trigger you before will now after reading this book. Even after all of that, I fucking loved this book. Jess pulls no punches and there’s no sugarcoating in this book. There’s so much angry honesty in these pages, it’s frightening. Most of my friends would find it too triggering to get through and I had to fight tooth and nail and claw my way through this book over every page that seared awful pictures into my brain, but I was so rewarded by the end. This story is filled with false religion, jealousy, the plight of women, cults and how evil that mentality can become. This book just proves to me nothing good ever comes from joining a cult. Mother-eating is told in the form of a documentary, which is fascinating. A modern retelling of the reign of Marie Antoinette, told from many different POV about the life of Mary Toni(Marie Antoinette). This poor woman goes through so many horrendous things (damn can’t she get a break?) you can’t help but feel for her from the very start. No lie, the first chapter is some of the most disgusting and disturbing things I have ever read, even throwing my kindle a couple of times, but if you stick with it it’s a captivating tale! I will be looking forward to anything Jess writes in the future. Thanks to Chris Panatier for recommending this to me, he got the brunt of my expletives while reading this book, so I’m sorry for that! Thanks to ghoulish books for the advanced copy. This definitely will have a spot in my horror section at the store!
Hold onto your hats folks, I got a rant coming!
Jesus, wtf did I just read? Jess Hagemann is the honey badger of the writing world, she doesn’t give a shit. She doesn’t care about your triggers, your fears or your disgust she’s going to make you take it and you’ll eventually keep asking for more! There are scenes in this book that will live in my brain forever and not for any good reason. I am completely broken after reading this book. If you have triggers, they are in here. Things that didn’t trigger you before will now after reading this book. Even after all of that, I fucking loved this book. Jess pulls no punches and there’s no sugarcoating in this book. There’s so much angry honesty in these pages, it’s frightening. Most of my friends would find it too triggering to get through and I had to fight tooth and nail and claw my way through this book over every page that seared awful pictures into my brain, but I was so rewarded by the end. This story is filled with false religion, jealousy, the plight of women, cults and how evil that mentality can become. This book just proves to me nothing good ever comes from joining a cult. Mother-eating is told in the form of a documentary, which is fascinating. A modern retelling of the reign of Marie Antoinette, told from many different POV about the life of Mary Toni(Marie Antoinette). This poor woman goes through so many horrendous things (damn can’t she get a break?) you can’t help but feel for her from the very start. No lie, the first chapter is some of the most disgusting and disturbing things I have ever read, even throwing my kindle a couple of times, but if you stick with it it’s a captivating tale! I will be looking forward to anything Jess writes in the future. Thanks to Chris Panatier for recommending this to me, he got the brunt of my expletives while reading this book, so I’m sorry for that! Thanks to ghoulish books for the advanced copy. This definitely will have a spot in my horror section at the store!
October 28, 2025
Mother-Eating is one of the most diabolical and unsettling retellings I have ever had the privilege to read. The documentary style the book is written in was utter perfection. I love me a good cult story. I was completely engrossed from start to finish. Thank you Ghoulish Books for the ARC! This book is available now wherever you buy your books.
August 25, 2025
This was a modern retelling of MarieAntoinette’s rein as Queen set in Austin Texas! But with a twist instead of being married off Resas' daughter Mary Toni - is sold to King Louis. in exchange for a tv contract !! Not mum of the year behaviour. King Louis is head of this f*cked up sex cult where an aray of messed up things happen .It follows Mary Tony's bizarre and sometimes sad and heartbreaking up bringing in a very messed up world . This book had me gripped and has gore , horror , sex orgies . Check your trigger warnings though this read is not for the faint hearted .
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 22, 2025
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
-
Mother-Eating is another addition to the "Mental Movie" library at the video rental shop that is our brains. Even though you can step away from the book, hitting pause if you will, Mother-Eater will remain poised in your immediate thoughts. Reading this book was he emotional equivliant of watching a passenger train catch fire, de-rail, and go hurtling towards a densely populated urban center. Most everyone is either there voluntarily, or out of self interest or fear says nothing. You know the outcome, but you get to see it all transpire, from every angle, and are powerless to stop it.
Presented as a Documentary, the Tale of Mary Toni and those around here are layed out by Jess Hagemann like some great infernal Tapestry, full of lurid scenes and vibrant colors, yet delivering a sensation that hollows your gut and chills your heart. So much of the horror of this story as all too real. It's The Peoples Temple, the Breatharians, Scientology, The Moonies, Heavens Gate, and the many and often poisonous branches of the Abrahamic Faiths, that often go ignored. Like poisonous offshoots on a neglected sprawling spider plant. By the book's conclusion it's all spooled out around you, like a massive reel of film. Still Mother-Eating sits on your brain. Be it those sudden graphic scenes, like horrid gems mined from some of the best Splatterpunk novels, or incidents paying homage to the infancy gospels, this book will still roost in your thought. Was it all just the ugliness, and illness of humanity played out as psycho-pomp pageantry, the snake eating its' tail once again? Do real moments of magic weave throughout the tragedy of Mary Toni?
Mother-Eater is a book that does not shy away, does not sugar-coat and does not flinch. It's not a book that will leave you feeling good, but it will leave you feeling human, connected with yourself and those around you. Indeed you may find yourself more acutely aware of your own weaknesses, or those you perceive in others. Becoming aware of the continuing war of Polemics that is woven so tightly into human society.I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
-
Mother-Eating is another addition to the "Mental Movie" library at the video rental shop that is our brains. Even though you can step away from the book, hitting pause if you will, Mother-Eater will remain poised in your immediate thoughts. Reading this book was he emotional equivalent of watching a passenger train catch fire, de-rail, and go hurtling towards a densely populated urban center. Most everyone is either there voluntarily, or out of self interest or fear says nothing. You know the outcome, but you get to see it all transpire, from every angle, and are powerless to stop it.
Presented as a Documentary, the Tale of Mary Toni and those around here are layed-out by Jess Hagemann like some great infernal Tapestry, full of lurid scenes and vibrant colors, yet delivering a sensation that hollows your gut and chills your heart. So much of the horror of this story as all too real. It's The Peoples Temple, the Breatharians, Scientology, The Moonies, Heavens Gate, and the many and often poisonous branches of the Abrahamic Faiths, that often go ignored. Like poisonous offshoots on a neglected sprawling spider plant. By the book's conclusion it's all spooled out around you, like a massive reel of film. Still Mother-Eating sits on your brain. Be it those sudden graphic scenes, like horrid gems mined from some of the best Splatterpunk novels, or incidents paying homage to the infancy gospels, this book will still roost in your thought. Was it all just the ugliness, and illness of humanity played out as psycho-pomp pageantry, the snake eating its' tail once again? Do real moments of magic weave throughout the tragedy of Mary Toni?
Mother-Eater is a book that does not shy away, does not sugar-coat and does not flinch. It's not a book that will leave you feeling good, but it will leave you feeling human, connected with yourself and those around you. Indeed you may find yourself more acutely aware of your own weaknesses, or those you perceive in others. Becoming aware of the continuing war of Polemics that is woven so tightly into human society.
-
Mother-Eating is another addition to the "Mental Movie" library at the video rental shop that is our brains. Even though you can step away from the book, hitting pause if you will, Mother-Eater will remain poised in your immediate thoughts. Reading this book was he emotional equivliant of watching a passenger train catch fire, de-rail, and go hurtling towards a densely populated urban center. Most everyone is either there voluntarily, or out of self interest or fear says nothing. You know the outcome, but you get to see it all transpire, from every angle, and are powerless to stop it.
Presented as a Documentary, the Tale of Mary Toni and those around here are layed out by Jess Hagemann like some great infernal Tapestry, full of lurid scenes and vibrant colors, yet delivering a sensation that hollows your gut and chills your heart. So much of the horror of this story as all too real. It's The Peoples Temple, the Breatharians, Scientology, The Moonies, Heavens Gate, and the many and often poisonous branches of the Abrahamic Faiths, that often go ignored. Like poisonous offshoots on a neglected sprawling spider plant. By the book's conclusion it's all spooled out around you, like a massive reel of film. Still Mother-Eating sits on your brain. Be it those sudden graphic scenes, like horrid gems mined from some of the best Splatterpunk novels, or incidents paying homage to the infancy gospels, this book will still roost in your thought. Was it all just the ugliness, and illness of humanity played out as psycho-pomp pageantry, the snake eating its' tail once again? Do real moments of magic weave throughout the tragedy of Mary Toni?
Mother-Eater is a book that does not shy away, does not sugar-coat and does not flinch. It's not a book that will leave you feeling good, but it will leave you feeling human, connected with yourself and those around you. Indeed you may find yourself more acutely aware of your own weaknesses, or those you perceive in others. Becoming aware of the continuing war of Polemics that is woven so tightly into human society.I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
-
Mother-Eating is another addition to the "Mental Movie" library at the video rental shop that is our brains. Even though you can step away from the book, hitting pause if you will, Mother-Eater will remain poised in your immediate thoughts. Reading this book was he emotional equivalent of watching a passenger train catch fire, de-rail, and go hurtling towards a densely populated urban center. Most everyone is either there voluntarily, or out of self interest or fear says nothing. You know the outcome, but you get to see it all transpire, from every angle, and are powerless to stop it.
Presented as a Documentary, the Tale of Mary Toni and those around here are layed-out by Jess Hagemann like some great infernal Tapestry, full of lurid scenes and vibrant colors, yet delivering a sensation that hollows your gut and chills your heart. So much of the horror of this story as all too real. It's The Peoples Temple, the Breatharians, Scientology, The Moonies, Heavens Gate, and the many and often poisonous branches of the Abrahamic Faiths, that often go ignored. Like poisonous offshoots on a neglected sprawling spider plant. By the book's conclusion it's all spooled out around you, like a massive reel of film. Still Mother-Eating sits on your brain. Be it those sudden graphic scenes, like horrid gems mined from some of the best Splatterpunk novels, or incidents paying homage to the infancy gospels, this book will still roost in your thought. Was it all just the ugliness, and illness of humanity played out as psycho-pomp pageantry, the snake eating its' tail once again? Do real moments of magic weave throughout the tragedy of Mary Toni?
Mother-Eater is a book that does not shy away, does not sugar-coat and does not flinch. It's not a book that will leave you feeling good, but it will leave you feeling human, connected with yourself and those around you. Indeed you may find yourself more acutely aware of your own weaknesses, or those you perceive in others. Becoming aware of the continuing war of Polemics that is woven so tightly into human society.
September 22, 2025
From my blurb, and I mean every word quite literally:
With MOTHER-EATING, Jess Hagemann has made herself a blade, and you, reader, are meat. Drop everything, and deliver yourself into these pages.
With MOTHER-EATING, Jess Hagemann has made herself a blade, and you, reader, are meat. Drop everything, and deliver yourself into these pages.
November 23, 2025
4.5 ⭐️ this book checked a lot of boxes for me. Epistolary style w short sections made the story interesting and move fast. Gruesome deaths, cults, Marie Antoinette parallels, medieval torture devices that had me googling weird shit…it’s got something for everyone but not for the weak stomachs out there
August 27, 2025
Jess Hagemann does an amazing job in creating a modern retelling of Marie Antoinette and used that in a realistic way that worked as a concept to the real story. I was hooked from start to finish and enjoyed the overall storyline and characters that I was looking for and thought the cult and the horror of the cult was so well done. I was invested in the way Jess Hagemann wrote this and am excited for what comes next with Jess Hagemann.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
December 3, 2025
This book was unbelievably good, let's start there. I have to preface this entire review though by saying please, please, please check for a comprehensive list of trigger warnings. I have listed the things that stood out to me but it won't be a comprehensive list by any means. Most people looking to pick this book up based on the cover or the blurb will almost assuredly know what they're in for, but we can all be surprised by things sometimes and for this book more than most I encourage people to take care of themselves.
TW
*graphic sex
*blood/gore
*death of a minor (on page)
*torture (descriptive, multiple scenes)
*drug abuse/addiction
*sexual abuse of a minor
*kidnapping/force captivity
*miscarriage
*pedophilia
*spiritual abuse/trauma
Mother-Eating is described as a modern-day retelling of Marie Antoinette, but as someone only loosely familiar with her life/story I don't feel like I needed any of that context to love this story. The story loosely follows Mary Toni from her time as a child growing up with an addict mother, through to her time inside the religious sex cult known as Simon's Sorrow. The book is styled as a documentary and reads as snippets of interviews from different people either in Mary Toni's life directly, or members of the cult more generally.
The story starts with an absolute bang with members of Simon's Sorrow drugging, kidnapping, then torturing and killing a man in the midst of an orgy. If you weren't sure what you were getting into before, you know right away from the first few pages what's in store for the rest of this book. The main body of the narrative is definitely less gruesome than the start would maybe make you think, but it serves as a perfect warning shot across the bow. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
Since the story is told through interview snippets you get very different vibes from each section, especially from the cult members. That's one of Mother-Eating's biggest strengths to me. Some of the cult members are totally on board, top down they're invested. Very few of the recurring 'narrators' are named, just titles like "tailor" or "chef" to describe their role in the community. Despite not having names each of these characters has more personality than main characters in tons of books I've read. "Chef" loves his role as a provider and takes great pride in being able to cook for this budding community, where "housekeeper" despises the messes people make and seems to detest her work. Hearing these different pieces and perspectives makes Simon's Sorrow seem so much more real and horrifying.
Outside of the outright horrific and gruesome scenes, most of Mother-Eating's horror is insidious. It handles the rise and fall of horror effortlessly. While there is plenty of truly unpalatable gore, violence, and sex there's an equal amount of quiet reflection. The banality of some of the descriptions was more unsettling in the long run than cracked skulls and slit throats. King Louie cozying up with local politicians while harboring his child bride feels all too close to home.
Another major mark in Mother-Eating's favor for me is how utterly unpretentious the writing is. Yes, the subject matter is repulsive and difficult to stomach, but the writing itself is incredibly approachable. I tore through this book in a way that I find difficult for a lot of horror. There's no flowery language outside some of religious imagery in the form of dialogue, and even then it doesn't linger.
I think any fan of horror who isn't scared off by the trigger warnings is going to find a book-of-the-year contender in Mother-Eating. It's absolutely riveting from start to finish.
TW
*graphic sex
*blood/gore
*death of a minor (on page)
*torture (descriptive, multiple scenes)
*drug abuse/addiction
*sexual abuse of a minor
*kidnapping/force captivity
*miscarriage
*pedophilia
*spiritual abuse/trauma
Mother-Eating is described as a modern-day retelling of Marie Antoinette, but as someone only loosely familiar with her life/story I don't feel like I needed any of that context to love this story. The story loosely follows Mary Toni from her time as a child growing up with an addict mother, through to her time inside the religious sex cult known as Simon's Sorrow. The book is styled as a documentary and reads as snippets of interviews from different people either in Mary Toni's life directly, or members of the cult more generally.
The story starts with an absolute bang with members of Simon's Sorrow drugging, kidnapping, then torturing and killing a man in the midst of an orgy. If you weren't sure what you were getting into before, you know right away from the first few pages what's in store for the rest of this book. The main body of the narrative is definitely less gruesome than the start would maybe make you think, but it serves as a perfect warning shot across the bow. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
Since the story is told through interview snippets you get very different vibes from each section, especially from the cult members. That's one of Mother-Eating's biggest strengths to me. Some of the cult members are totally on board, top down they're invested. Very few of the recurring 'narrators' are named, just titles like "tailor" or "chef" to describe their role in the community. Despite not having names each of these characters has more personality than main characters in tons of books I've read. "Chef" loves his role as a provider and takes great pride in being able to cook for this budding community, where "housekeeper" despises the messes people make and seems to detest her work. Hearing these different pieces and perspectives makes Simon's Sorrow seem so much more real and horrifying.
Outside of the outright horrific and gruesome scenes, most of Mother-Eating's horror is insidious. It handles the rise and fall of horror effortlessly. While there is plenty of truly unpalatable gore, violence, and sex there's an equal amount of quiet reflection. The banality of some of the descriptions was more unsettling in the long run than cracked skulls and slit throats. King Louie cozying up with local politicians while harboring his child bride feels all too close to home.
Another major mark in Mother-Eating's favor for me is how utterly unpretentious the writing is. Yes, the subject matter is repulsive and difficult to stomach, but the writing itself is incredibly approachable. I tore through this book in a way that I find difficult for a lot of horror. There's no flowery language outside some of religious imagery in the form of dialogue, and even then it doesn't linger.
I think any fan of horror who isn't scared off by the trigger warnings is going to find a book-of-the-year contender in Mother-Eating. It's absolutely riveting from start to finish.
November 27, 2025
Excellent cult horror, smartly written and capably narrated by so many different voices, all integrated into a mockumentary format, non-linearly stuctured series of interviews, witnesses' accounts, retellings, a fever dream of oral history, memory, sexual abuse and gory torture. The way depravity, religion and body horror are implicated and blended together to reimagine Marie Antoinette's life as a traumatic, disturbing, completely original and R-rated story of a child sold to a sex-cult and slowly turned into the protagonist of a nightmarish and grotesque tale told by survivors but never by her as such - this is what horror is for!
The large cast, the explicit scenes of sex and torture, the different voices - it all feels authentic and worryingly veridical. Hagemann's storytelling skills are spectacular, and the novel is a stellar example of what might happen when skill and smarts work flawlessly together to produce a story bound to stick in memory - and even invade one's dreams long after!
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
The large cast, the explicit scenes of sex and torture, the different voices - it all feels authentic and worryingly veridical. Hagemann's storytelling skills are spectacular, and the novel is a stellar example of what might happen when skill and smarts work flawlessly together to produce a story bound to stick in memory - and even invade one's dreams long after!
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
October 2, 2025
4⭐
Trigger Warnings
cult abuse, sexual assault, child marriage, grooming, drug addiction, murder, torture, cannibalism, religious trauma, body horror, loss of children, grief, imprisonment, depraved and extremely explicit sexual behaviors
The Vibe
A feverish, non-linear retelling of Marie Antoinette reimagined in 1980s–2000s Texas, where she's sold into a depraved sex cult. Told in fragmented interviews and eyewitness accounts pieced together, it reads like oral history turned nightmare. It's grotesque, unsettling, and compulsively readable.
What I Enjoyed
I’m endlessly fascinated by cult stories, easily one of my favorite sub-genres. The structure of interviews and accounts being fragments stitched together made the whole thing feel disturbingly authentic, like listening to survivors recount horrors they’ve carried for years.
What really worked for me was how the book balanced personal detail with the larger cult machinery. From Marie Toni’s Catholic school beginnings to the monstrous rituals inside Simon’s Sorrows, the voices create a layered portrait of control, trauma, and survival. It’s messy, human, and chilling.
The historical echo of Marie Antoinette threaded through this world gave it a strange, grotesque weight. The mix of history, power, and depravity made this feel both timeless and horrifyingly current. After reading the author's note (LOVE btw), I completely understand why you'd want to re-tell this story in your own voice and with all the juicy gore.
What Didn’t Work for Me
There are a lot of characters, and while that added to the texture of community, sometimes I wanted the focus pulled more tightly on a few central figures. The relentless explicitness will also not be for everyone. Its depravity is part of the point, but it can be overwhelming.
Read This If You Like
cults and their inner workings
non-linear, interview-style storytelling
grotesque historical re-imaginings
Final Thoughts
Few books disturb and mesmerize in equal measure; Mother-Eating does both flawlessly. It takes a historical figure and drags her through a modern nightmare of cult control, ritual, and depravity. It’s the kind of story that unsettles you not just because of what happens, but because of how plausible it feels in its structure and voice.
ARC Disclosure
I received an advance review copy of this book through BookSirens. Thank you to Jess Hagemann and Ghoulish Books for the opportunity to read it early. These thoughts are my honest opinion.
Trigger Warnings
cult abuse, sexual assault, child marriage, grooming, drug addiction, murder, torture, cannibalism, religious trauma, body horror, loss of children, grief, imprisonment, depraved and extremely explicit sexual behaviors
The Vibe
A feverish, non-linear retelling of Marie Antoinette reimagined in 1980s–2000s Texas, where she's sold into a depraved sex cult. Told in fragmented interviews and eyewitness accounts pieced together, it reads like oral history turned nightmare. It's grotesque, unsettling, and compulsively readable.
What I Enjoyed
I’m endlessly fascinated by cult stories, easily one of my favorite sub-genres. The structure of interviews and accounts being fragments stitched together made the whole thing feel disturbingly authentic, like listening to survivors recount horrors they’ve carried for years.
What really worked for me was how the book balanced personal detail with the larger cult machinery. From Marie Toni’s Catholic school beginnings to the monstrous rituals inside Simon’s Sorrows, the voices create a layered portrait of control, trauma, and survival. It’s messy, human, and chilling.
The historical echo of Marie Antoinette threaded through this world gave it a strange, grotesque weight. The mix of history, power, and depravity made this feel both timeless and horrifyingly current. After reading the author's note (LOVE btw), I completely understand why you'd want to re-tell this story in your own voice and with all the juicy gore.
What Didn’t Work for Me
There are a lot of characters, and while that added to the texture of community, sometimes I wanted the focus pulled more tightly on a few central figures. The relentless explicitness will also not be for everyone. Its depravity is part of the point, but it can be overwhelming.
Read This If You Like
cults and their inner workings
non-linear, interview-style storytelling
grotesque historical re-imaginings
Final Thoughts
Few books disturb and mesmerize in equal measure; Mother-Eating does both flawlessly. It takes a historical figure and drags her through a modern nightmare of cult control, ritual, and depravity. It’s the kind of story that unsettles you not just because of what happens, but because of how plausible it feels in its structure and voice.
ARC Disclosure
I received an advance review copy of this book through BookSirens. Thank you to Jess Hagemann and Ghoulish Books for the opportunity to read it early. These thoughts are my honest opinion.
October 29, 2025
Brutal and unflinching, not to mention inventive. This one has real teeth.
September 3, 2025
READ THIS!!! Jess Hagemann has crafted a compelling, harrowing, nasty story that is very, very, very hard to put down! While only being familiar about the broad strokes of Marie Antoinette’s life story, that didn’t stop me from enjoying this grotesque, unique interpretation. I loved how this story is told by some of the many secondary and tertiary characters with their unreliability (and the ending really ties the format together in a really smart way). This is the latest release through Ghoulish Books, so you better believe it is addictive and has some impressively thought out gore. Definitely more extreme than your standard horror novel, but it’s better for it. You really feel the twists and turns viscerally. Preorder this NOW and you will thoroughly enjoy yourself.
October 28, 2025
BWAF SINISTER SELECTION
BWAF Score: 8/10
TL;DR: A Texas cult turns theology into a wellness scam and a girl into a miracle brand. Documentary-style horror that’s smart, filthy, and guaranteed to make you wash your hands and suspiciously admire birds.
Jess Hagemann is an Austin writer with a repeat offender record in the land of the strange. She picked up an IPPY in Horror for her debut Headcheese, teaches and workshops like someone who respects sentences, and has the chaotic good energy of a novelist who would rather experiment than imitate. That pedigree matters, because this book takes a big swing with form and mostly smashes it.
The novel presents itself as a “documentary” in print. Think transcripts, interviews, sworn statements, reconstructed security-cam sequences, and assorted paper trail ephemera. The subject: Simon’s Sorrow, a pseudo-religious sex cult operating in contemporary Texas, and Mary Toni, the girl they groom and crown as a living icon. No, there are no ancient tomes or goat-headed wizards. There is a well. There is a walled garden that is too pretty to trust. There are people who talk like high-church zealots and act like project managers of pain. The book tracks how charisma calcifies into rules, and how rules turn into bodies.
Found-document novels often wobble once the novelty fades. This one treats the collage as engine, not garnish. Every artifact pushes plot, character, and theme at the same time. A security-cam reconstruction punches like a set piece. A nurse’s testimony quietly maps complicity. A groundskeeper’s wandering memory does more worldbuilding than a dozen expository chapters. The result is momentum plus moral angle. You get the thrill of evidence while the book whispers that your appetite for it is part of the crime.
At its core, Mother-Eating is about faith as a crowbar and language as a laundering machine. Pain is sanctified and taught. Pleasure is ritualized and weaponized. The cult’s theology raids Catholic iconography and gnostic flourishes with unnerving coherence. We are not in paperback-pagan land. We are in the part of the library where someone quotes the woman clothed with the sun while searching the junk drawer for nails. There is symbolism all over the place, but it does not sit politely. The garden is beauty as trap. The fountain and statues are prestige theater for people who need to feel blessed while they do unforgivable things. The well is not a metaphor. It is a mouth. The whole place is Gothic in daylight, which is much worse than Gothic at midnight.
Motherhood is the second, louder theme. Not just Mary Toni as vessel and icon, but the broader way communities crown women for sacrifice and then punish them for surviving it. A bath scene that masquerades as care reads like a thesis paragraph about control. The book gets how tenderness can be another kind of restraint when it is mandated, supervised, and named holy.
Finally, the novel has a quiet but constant beef with true-crime consumption. The frame tells you early that there are arrests, convictions, a body count. You keep reading anyway, because narrative is delicious and you are hungry. The book knows. It does not let you forget.
Hagemann writes clean and sharp. When the book wants to be clinical, it is surgical. When it wants to sing, it does, briefly, before cutting the power. The joy is in the chorus. Each speaker has a distinct cadence that betrays class, education, job, and damage. The Family Practitioner sounds like a chart note edited by a gentle person. The Record-Keeper tries to organize regret into folders. Mercy bargains with the interviewer like a fox caught in a snare who still thinks she can chew through the wire. You do not get the dreaded workshop monotone where every voice is the same grad student with a thesaurus. You get people.
The compound might be the best character in the book. Hedges, roses, a fountain, little bronze saints staring with unhelpful approval. Sunlight that feels like it cannot quite get out. It is gorgeous and suffocating. The garden is the thesis in landscaping form. Beauty hides rot. Order hides violence. And the well sits there like a memory you cannot ignore. The novel lets it wait. Your stomach learns that waiting is its own kind of horror.
Mother-Eating moves in a measured procession. Testimony builds pressure. Then a reconstructed scene snaps the tempo and steals your breath. Then back to accumulation. It is more high mass than haunted hayride, which suits the material. Does it drag? A little, here and there. A few theological riffs circle the same altar. One mid-book stretch stacks reflection on reflection when a cutaway would serve. But the collage saves it from stall. The narrative keeps passing the baton, and even the slower bits carry dread like a low fever.
Mary Toni is not a paper saint. She is a person weathered by other people’s needs. The arc is tragic without reducing her to a symbol in shoes. Louie, the cult’s king of charisma, is the right kind of antagonist: he believes every syllable he says. He treats scripture like a toolkit and people like raw material, which is scarier than any horned demon. The supporting cast sticks. The Chef, The Tigress, the groundskeeper, Mercy, the clinician. Each lands a line or a memory that makes you wince and believe.
Is it scary? Yes. Not jump-scare scary. System-scary. Warm-room scary. The kind where someone politely explains why pain is good for you while lining up the hardware. Several sequences are conventionally alarming and will make you set the book down to go breathe at a tree. The real fear lives in policy and liturgy and euphemism. When a character calls nails restoration and smiles, that tiny slide in your brain is horror doing its job.
Originality is high. The documentary frame stays purposeful from first page to last. Atmosphere is thick and tactile. The prose is flexible and mostly unshowy, with earned spikes of lyricism. The symbolism carries risk instead of winking. Characterization happens through voice and choice, not clumsy biography. The book respects your intelligence and still wants to make you squirm.
A few monologues could lose a paragraph and nothing precious would be lost. The theological echo chamber is realistic for zealots but occasionally tests patience. The documentary pose introduces a thin scrim of distance in a couple of pivotal scenes where you might want the camera to drop and the room to close in. None of this sinks the ship. It just keeps the book out of the once-in-a-decade stratosphere.
This is a top-quartile standout that marries true-crime texture to literary bite, turns theology into a weapon, and leaves you suspicious of roses, fountains, and anyone who uses the word sacrament too casually. Bring a highlighter. Bring soap. Bring birds to look at when you are done.
Recommended for: Readers who like their cults artisanal, locally sourced, and morally catastrophic.
Not recommended for: Folks who say “I prefer my cults inspirational.”
BWAF Score: 8/10
TL;DR: A Texas cult turns theology into a wellness scam and a girl into a miracle brand. Documentary-style horror that’s smart, filthy, and guaranteed to make you wash your hands and suspiciously admire birds.
Jess Hagemann is an Austin writer with a repeat offender record in the land of the strange. She picked up an IPPY in Horror for her debut Headcheese, teaches and workshops like someone who respects sentences, and has the chaotic good energy of a novelist who would rather experiment than imitate. That pedigree matters, because this book takes a big swing with form and mostly smashes it.
The novel presents itself as a “documentary” in print. Think transcripts, interviews, sworn statements, reconstructed security-cam sequences, and assorted paper trail ephemera. The subject: Simon’s Sorrow, a pseudo-religious sex cult operating in contemporary Texas, and Mary Toni, the girl they groom and crown as a living icon. No, there are no ancient tomes or goat-headed wizards. There is a well. There is a walled garden that is too pretty to trust. There are people who talk like high-church zealots and act like project managers of pain. The book tracks how charisma calcifies into rules, and how rules turn into bodies.
Found-document novels often wobble once the novelty fades. This one treats the collage as engine, not garnish. Every artifact pushes plot, character, and theme at the same time. A security-cam reconstruction punches like a set piece. A nurse’s testimony quietly maps complicity. A groundskeeper’s wandering memory does more worldbuilding than a dozen expository chapters. The result is momentum plus moral angle. You get the thrill of evidence while the book whispers that your appetite for it is part of the crime.
At its core, Mother-Eating is about faith as a crowbar and language as a laundering machine. Pain is sanctified and taught. Pleasure is ritualized and weaponized. The cult’s theology raids Catholic iconography and gnostic flourishes with unnerving coherence. We are not in paperback-pagan land. We are in the part of the library where someone quotes the woman clothed with the sun while searching the junk drawer for nails. There is symbolism all over the place, but it does not sit politely. The garden is beauty as trap. The fountain and statues are prestige theater for people who need to feel blessed while they do unforgivable things. The well is not a metaphor. It is a mouth. The whole place is Gothic in daylight, which is much worse than Gothic at midnight.
Motherhood is the second, louder theme. Not just Mary Toni as vessel and icon, but the broader way communities crown women for sacrifice and then punish them for surviving it. A bath scene that masquerades as care reads like a thesis paragraph about control. The book gets how tenderness can be another kind of restraint when it is mandated, supervised, and named holy.
Finally, the novel has a quiet but constant beef with true-crime consumption. The frame tells you early that there are arrests, convictions, a body count. You keep reading anyway, because narrative is delicious and you are hungry. The book knows. It does not let you forget.
Hagemann writes clean and sharp. When the book wants to be clinical, it is surgical. When it wants to sing, it does, briefly, before cutting the power. The joy is in the chorus. Each speaker has a distinct cadence that betrays class, education, job, and damage. The Family Practitioner sounds like a chart note edited by a gentle person. The Record-Keeper tries to organize regret into folders. Mercy bargains with the interviewer like a fox caught in a snare who still thinks she can chew through the wire. You do not get the dreaded workshop monotone where every voice is the same grad student with a thesaurus. You get people.
The compound might be the best character in the book. Hedges, roses, a fountain, little bronze saints staring with unhelpful approval. Sunlight that feels like it cannot quite get out. It is gorgeous and suffocating. The garden is the thesis in landscaping form. Beauty hides rot. Order hides violence. And the well sits there like a memory you cannot ignore. The novel lets it wait. Your stomach learns that waiting is its own kind of horror.
Mother-Eating moves in a measured procession. Testimony builds pressure. Then a reconstructed scene snaps the tempo and steals your breath. Then back to accumulation. It is more high mass than haunted hayride, which suits the material. Does it drag? A little, here and there. A few theological riffs circle the same altar. One mid-book stretch stacks reflection on reflection when a cutaway would serve. But the collage saves it from stall. The narrative keeps passing the baton, and even the slower bits carry dread like a low fever.
Mary Toni is not a paper saint. She is a person weathered by other people’s needs. The arc is tragic without reducing her to a symbol in shoes. Louie, the cult’s king of charisma, is the right kind of antagonist: he believes every syllable he says. He treats scripture like a toolkit and people like raw material, which is scarier than any horned demon. The supporting cast sticks. The Chef, The Tigress, the groundskeeper, Mercy, the clinician. Each lands a line or a memory that makes you wince and believe.
Is it scary? Yes. Not jump-scare scary. System-scary. Warm-room scary. The kind where someone politely explains why pain is good for you while lining up the hardware. Several sequences are conventionally alarming and will make you set the book down to go breathe at a tree. The real fear lives in policy and liturgy and euphemism. When a character calls nails restoration and smiles, that tiny slide in your brain is horror doing its job.
Originality is high. The documentary frame stays purposeful from first page to last. Atmosphere is thick and tactile. The prose is flexible and mostly unshowy, with earned spikes of lyricism. The symbolism carries risk instead of winking. Characterization happens through voice and choice, not clumsy biography. The book respects your intelligence and still wants to make you squirm.
A few monologues could lose a paragraph and nothing precious would be lost. The theological echo chamber is realistic for zealots but occasionally tests patience. The documentary pose introduces a thin scrim of distance in a couple of pivotal scenes where you might want the camera to drop and the room to close in. None of this sinks the ship. It just keeps the book out of the once-in-a-decade stratosphere.
This is a top-quartile standout that marries true-crime texture to literary bite, turns theology into a weapon, and leaves you suspicious of roses, fountains, and anyone who uses the word sacrament too casually. Bring a highlighter. Bring soap. Bring birds to look at when you are done.
Recommended for: Readers who like their cults artisanal, locally sourced, and morally catastrophic.
Not recommended for: Folks who say “I prefer my cults inspirational.”
December 17, 2025
That was brutal. Mother-Eating by Jess Hagemann is a modern retelling of Marie Antoinette's ascension into French (or weird Texan cult) royalty. We follow Mary Toni from birth. Her father dies when she is quite young and her mother never truly has her best interests in mind. By 14 she has captured the eye of Louie who leads an incredibly fucked up cult in Austin with lots of sex, torture and scheming. Her mother basically gives Mary Toni to the cult. The first chapter is rough and has some intense depictions of torture and orgies. I was worried I'd gotten in over my head after the first bit, but Hagemann doesn't rely on graphic depictions of sex and torture throughout the majority of the book. The opening sets the scene and while the remaining pages are still incredibly tough Mother-Eating never feels like it's a book designed just to shock the reader.
I really vibed with this. It's written in a "documentary style" so constantly shifting perspectives between various cult members and others who knew Mary Toni. Often we aren’t even given their names, just their role within in Mary Toni’s life. We're never given Mary Toni's own perspective which manages to make it more devastating. She never gets a chance to choose the direction in which her life is headed. There is also significant resentment from many of the cult members and Mary Toni's life is full of loss. Her existence is marred by these obsessions people develop on her. At the base of many of these fixations is hatred or indignation often completely unwarranted. I didn't know very much about Marie Antoinette going in, but immediately wanted to find out more. Hagemann does an excellent job at following the life of Marie Antoinette while still making it super accessible for a historical ignoramus like me. If you like historical retelling then this is a great one. Honestly, even if just culty horror is your vibe this will scratch that itch. Hagemann will definitely be an author I would read again. Highly recommend.
I really vibed with this. It's written in a "documentary style" so constantly shifting perspectives between various cult members and others who knew Mary Toni. Often we aren’t even given their names, just their role within in Mary Toni’s life. We're never given Mary Toni's own perspective which manages to make it more devastating. She never gets a chance to choose the direction in which her life is headed. There is also significant resentment from many of the cult members and Mary Toni's life is full of loss. Her existence is marred by these obsessions people develop on her. At the base of many of these fixations is hatred or indignation often completely unwarranted. I didn't know very much about Marie Antoinette going in, but immediately wanted to find out more. Hagemann does an excellent job at following the life of Marie Antoinette while still making it super accessible for a historical ignoramus like me. If you like historical retelling then this is a great one. Honestly, even if just culty horror is your vibe this will scratch that itch. Hagemann will definitely be an author I would read again. Highly recommend.
December 18, 2025
I will never look at an egg the same way again! After the first few pages, I could not put this book down, and when I had to put it down, I couldn't wait to pick it back up again so I could find out what in the world was happening! Hagemann does a splendid job laying down language like butter on the page. Her words describe in super-specific detail the ins and outs of a sex cult, and I couldn't help but wonder what else goes through the author's mind. Where does she pull these ideas from? It was interesting to find that she did thorough research on real-life torture methods. And that's the other thing...the bit that makes this book so horrific, is that this could actually happen, or has even happened for that matter. It gives you a really good picture of WHY people stay in cults instead of just thinking they are completely out of their minds. Cult leaders build trust and a sense of community, focusing on broken and "unwanted" people. So it makes sense why some people do stay. I loved Hagemann's tie-in to the story of Marie Antoinette and felt the ending was served to us, just like the namesake.
November 19, 2025
This book… Whoa. Body horror is not usually my jam, but I stayed up WAAAAY past my bedtime to finish this book because I couldn’t go to sleep without knowing how it ended. And then I lay awake thinking about it. There are so many tropes involved that could have felt cliche, but Hagemann handles them deftly, weaving a jarring, heartbreaking portrait of a woman who endures tragedy and travesty at every turn. The prose is searing, almost brutal. Hagemann is a master at pushing the limits. She walks that line so well.
Be warned that there are no happy endings to be found here. Instead, you will find fodder for nightmares. More than once, I considered putting this book in the freezer (IYKYK … and are also probably 40+).
Be warned that there are no happy endings to be found here. Instead, you will find fodder for nightmares. More than once, I considered putting this book in the freezer (IYKYK … and are also probably 40+).
December 12, 2025
The bloody story of a troubled girl chosen by the prophet of a sex-magic cult set in 1980-90’s San Antonio.
Told as a transcript from a documentary, this tragic retelling of the story of Marie Antoinette hooked me. I’m usually not one for gore, but this was so interestingly written I couldn’t put it down. Looking forward to reading more from this author.
Told as a transcript from a documentary, this tragic retelling of the story of Marie Antoinette hooked me. I’m usually not one for gore, but this was so interestingly written I couldn’t put it down. Looking forward to reading more from this author.
November 24, 2025
This book was very enjoyable and set in a documentary setting. It keeps you on the edge of your seat and you can’t wait to see what happens next. It is definitely not for everyone but if you like body horror and cult sh*t then this is for you!
October 24, 2025
Rounded up, original star rating is 375. I thought it was interesting, I really liked the layout of the book. It felt very documentary type style, which was very unique!
November 21, 2025
A fun tale that’s slightly horror and slightly splatter punk. A little bit of a slow burn that uses an amazing framing device. Another fine example that the human condition is the ultimate horror.
September 19, 2025
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
An interpretation of the life of Marie Antoinette told through the lens of a cult in Austin, Texas, this trippy book will have you on edge. Told as transcripts of a documentary about the cult and specifically the life of Mary Toni, it's uncompromising and unflinching. Don't look away. Highly recommended.
An interpretation of the life of Marie Antoinette told through the lens of a cult in Austin, Texas, this trippy book will have you on edge. Told as transcripts of a documentary about the cult and specifically the life of Mary Toni, it's uncompromising and unflinching. Don't look away. Highly recommended.
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