Unfortunately this really didn't resonate with me. I'm all for weird-girl fiction, but I found this a little too trivial a take on womanhood and I unfortunately did not finish the book at around 38%.

Dani is married to Clark and they've just welcomed their first baby into the world. A world, Dani has realised, full of danger. When Clark speaks about a terminally ill colleague, Dani spirals - what would happen to her and their daughter if Clark ever got sick? What were they even doing, bringing a daughter into a world where she'll have to work twice as hard for half as much recognition as a man?

Dani goes through the motions with her friend group, fellow mothers who seem to have it all together - but appearances can be deceptive, as she knows all too well. Her father was renowned locally as "The Garbage King", and she struggles with the legacy of being his daughter. When she finds a group of women who appear to be using some kind of sex therapy to "fix" men, Dani is intrigued - this could be a backup plan if anything happens to Clark, and a way to change the society her daughter will grow up in.

"We've been living in a world where the most powerful group has systematically had the basic humanity, empathy, the crucial feminine, stamped out of them since birth."

I liked this a lot. I could identify with a lot of what Dani felt as a stay-at-home-parent - especially the loneliness, worry, and desire to find herself as a woman again after giving birth.

With themes of motherhood, identity, feminism, female labour, weaponised incompetence, breaking cycles, capitalism, female friendships, sex work, and a healthy dose of dark humour, this was an addictive read.

I do think the mystery element was overstated, and that the focus should have remained on female labour, but I liked this one a lot.

I was really drawn to this book cover and the title and whilst it was a fun read I found the plot was a little lackluster for me and I struggled to finish the book.

I remember I read Ainslie Hogarth's Motherthing and thought it was a bit here and there. I found the concept good and the black comedy quite clever, but on the whole something was lacking. It was as if the writing was not all that great or the characters were common tropes I had seen a thousand times before. Then it sort of hit me. Where I thought Motherthing should be in terms of genre were books that had better writing. Books like Mrs March by Virginia Feito are much better examples of black comedy in women's fiction. I thought I would give Ainslie Hogarth another go though, knowing there was another book coming out by her. This book is entitled Normal Women and has still left me with mixed feelings sitting on the fence about her. I cannot quite place it - but it feels a little cliché and all the characters are wholly unlikeable without any saving graces.
Our main character is called Dani and she is trying her hand at the role of new mother with the eye-rollingly stupid partner she has who is doing the bare minimum to play father, picking and choosing when he feels like being father. This woman now realises the reality that no two motherhoods are the same and she feels like hers is not working like that of her friends. I mean, there are things like individual differences but I would not expect the characters of Ainslie Hogarth's books to be able to think that far.
Dani meets a woman who is in charge of a yoga centre because of course she does. But after encouraging Dani to reach her full potential and become a real woman, she disappears leaving Dani empty inside. The yoga centre is not really a yoga centre though because then it would not really be all about female empowerment clearly written by someone who has not got a clue what they are talking about, would it? As I said before, the characters are wholly unlikeable - each and every one of them.
I have heard that over the course of reading this book, many readers have simply given up with it, stating it is too slow and too much of a chore because of the unlikeable personalities of the characters and the constant fish-wife tone of the main character. So much privilege mixed with the constant incessant complaining makes for the whiney woman archetype that I thought died with Ernest Hemingway's worst female characters. I never really liked Ainslie Hogarth's debut all that much and have had many mixed feelings about it - knowing something was lacking. Here is what is lacking: three dimensional characters.
The whole thing felt like the author was babbling and the book has clearly not been edited professionally yet. If it has then I feel sorry for the author having to put something so ridiculous out. The last 50% of the book feels like it should have been shaved down, lower and lower until it didn't sound so blatheringly pathetic all the time. I know you might think I am being harsh but you have not sat through this book and in this case, I would recommend you did not. Her debut novel Motherthing was at least conceptually interesting. This just sounds like some woman with no redeeming factors complaining for 300 pages.

Originally picked this up in January and picked up again yesterday. I realised why I hadn’t gone back to it.

I’m not sure where the plot was going and I just didn’t like the MC enough to carry on. Felt like a fever dream.

When a book makes you fall asleep it’s time to quit. DNF @ 29%

Average star rating given for fairness.

Thank you so much to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for this ARC.

So this is marketed as a mystery/dark comedy. The dark comedy was there but the mystery felt very very half baked. Renata doesn’t even go missing until around 60% in and then the “mystery” is solved so quickly it doesn’t even really feel like she went missing at all. This is a literary fiction novel through and through and nothing can convince me otherwise. There is absolutely nothing “gothic” or “psychological” about this book.

That being said I did enjoy my time reading it and I liked a lot of the commentary and dialogue. Dani was an interesting main character to follow and most of the book was just her day to day life. If you enjoy books that are more commentary than plot then I think you will like this. I’m still not sure whether I liked the ending or not and whether the ending negated the “message” this book was trying to convey but overall it was a good time. It was released on 4th January so it’s already available.

Unfortunately this read just fell a little flat for me! I really enjoyed the beginning and the language used, but felt like the actual storyline was quite disappointing.

It definitely had potential and this is likely a personal preference, maybe I was expecting a bit more out of it. It also took me a while to finish, but this could be my fault and not the books!

2.5 stars overall.

the cover and themes of this novel definitely appealed to me but i just found the execution average and not as thought-provoking as i'd hoped

I went into this book thinking it would be such a standout, page-turner that I would eat up, but unfortunately, it just fell quite flat for me. I love fiction like this, but I do think that the trope of unhinged women breaking out of domestic rigidity has become an almost over-saturated topic in contemporary fiction lately, and so to stand out, I think Normal Women would have had to do something truly out of the box to stand apart from its contemporaries, and I just didn't find that with it. I can see what Hogarth was trying to do by bringing in the 'cult' element, and having that as a contrast to Dani's mundane interactions with her fellow mum friends, but I felt as though its potential got lost once the book became more of a mystery than a commentary of maternity in society, and I just wasn't as interested in it from there.

I was so excited to read this book! I missed the boat for mother thing and joined the party late.


As a mother myself, I LOVED the way Ainslie did an amazing job. PPD is a hard thing that so many go through and I love that books/shows/movies/and media are making it less taboo to talk about.

You are either gonna love this or hate it.

Normal women was an interesting read by the very talented Ainslie Hogarth, who has given us the excellent Mothering previously. In this story we follow Danni as she tries to grapple with becoming a mother, moving back to her hometown, her friendships with the other mothers in her friendship circle as well as the impact all these things have on her marriage. I had my ups and downs in terms of how I felt about Dani but thoroughly enjoyed not being able to guess where the story will take me. I found all the characters very memorable and there were loads of laugh out loud moments.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atlantic Books for my free review ebook, all opinions are my own.

I really enjoyed this, after reading Motherthing last year I was keen to try something else by the author.

This was a spot on reflection on wellness culture, gender dynamics in relationships, motherhood and feminism.

The characters were brilliant and the plot really pulled me in.

The last section was a little bit rushed but otherwise this really was a near perfect book!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a free eARC of this book

This book just further cements my dislike of motherhood.

The issues in this book brought up with the touch of dark humor is what makes this an easy read to get into for me. It was humorous. Hogarth is an author to be watched.

A burgeoning voice for a generation. Whip smart and wickedly clever. She is absolutely one to watch.

A sharply satirical story about modern life, mental health and suffering with a chaotic and unhinged aura that was something undeniably compelling. It's odd, with a narrator who is both painfully unlikeable and strangely endearing as she goes on her journey to figure out why she's on the outside of the normal women and what that even means.

The daughter of the 'Trash King of Metcalf', a man who revitalised a struggling town with his business acumen and philanthropy, Dani has spent her life waiting to discover her purpose. When she becomes a mother, she thinks she may have found her calling at last, and she relishes the fact that her property developer husband's lucrative job allows her to stay home and devote herself to their baby daughter. That is until the realisation hits her that, if her husband Clark were to die, she would be left with no job and not even any marketable skills with which to provide for her baby. This epiphany sparks a chain of events which leads Dani to The Temple, a mysterious establishment in town, and its proprietor Renata, who opens Dani's eyes to a whole other world and shows her how she could really make a difference. Then Renata disappears, and Dani sets out to find the truth about what happened to her before the opportunity to be something more than Clark's wife and Lotte's mother is lost forever.

I must first state that I have not read Motherthing, Ainslie Hogarth's debut adult novel, and thus came into Normal Women without any particular expectations. That said, I feel the only way to review this book is to separate the writing - which is often stellar - from the plot - which I found disappointingly weak in contrast.

As a social satire, Normal Women really works, with Hogarth delivering a breezy but biting commentary on the social (and parasocial) pressures of modern motherhood, gender roles, gentrification, and the struggle to reclaim your identity after having a baby. Dani is tormented throughout by an internal Greek chorus of momfluencers and forum moms, as well as by comparisons she makes with her real-life mom friends - the titular 'normal women'. Hogarth knowingly skewers the Instagram 'momfluencers' and their performance of real motherhood, even their supposed candour about how hard being a mother is setting daunting expectations for Dani.

Dani feels her own purpose and potential fusing with her baby's, her sense of self-worth bound to the age at which Lotte took her first steps or the number of languages she has mastered before she is out of nappies. This dissolution of her self into motherhood, along with the sudden recognition of Clark's mortality, is the catalyst for Dani to approach The Temple for the first time.

Dani's interactions with her husband highlight the hidden, often dismissed, labour of childcare, and the resentment which can fester between the parent spending their days at home with the baby and the one working outside the home, both feeling under appreciated and taken for granted. When she bitterly notes that Clark does not thank her for preparing dinner, her internal rant will surely resonate with any reader who has been a stay at home parent for any length of time.

'All he had to do was say thank you. He didn't have to comment on the flavor or the cook or anything- both perfect, by the way. But just say thank you, just acknowledge that Dani had once again done it all, as she did every day, without complaint, far, far more impressive than answering emails, attending meetings, signing off on other people's hard work. For this Clark got money, independence, and respect; he got to feel genuinely productive and connected to other human beings in the world. Meanwhile Dani was all alone, as always, a shameful necessity, tucked away, like the bulky wad of cords that kept their television working. Juggling, among many other things, carrots and lemon and onion and poultry seasoning, all while protecting Lotte from toddling into disaster.'

Hogarth's language is sharply observant - the tone switching between dry humour and age-old truisms written in a way that makes them feel fresh and painfully accurate.

On mastitis: 'This resulted in hours of flu-like aching, shivering, nausea, a swift and harsh retaliation courtesy of the hormones leftbehind by master Lotte, the master she loved, my god, how she loved her, loved her more when she relieved the suffering, her warm body on Dani's sore breast, draining
the infection for her with the merciful maw of her powerful little jaw, thank you, master, oh god, thank you, thank you, good girl.'

On working at a Blockbuster store in its final days of operation: 'Dani felt like some sort of cursed guardian, tasked with protecting this blue-and-yellow corpse from the mites and
maggots drooling at the door.'

She captures the earnest, self-seriousness of Clark - Dani's husband - in hilarious vignettes, allowing his behaviour to speak for itself: 'Clark held the belief that grown men shouldn't be seen eating ice cream, that it was lurid, unseemly.'

In a scene in which Dani's friend Anya is wearing 'an enormous kaftan she'd ordered with a promo code from a reality TV star', the writing is peppered with brilliant descriptions of said, item to the point where it is almost its own character: 'An amount of fabric that wasn't worn so much as haunted by a human body,' and 'A warm wind passed. The swing set creaked gently. The kaftan fluttered at the hem like a stingray.'

A motif which is used cleverly throughout is the affogato, which is introduced at the beginning of the story as a symbolism of the inexorable gentrification of Dani's home town of Metcalf. It is referenced numerous times throughout the narrative, to the extent that when it makes an appearance at the very end of the story, the reader knows exactly what it is supposed to represent.

Conversely, the mystery plot touted in the blurb is thin and unlikely. It is unevenly paced - only really picking up momentum about 70% of the way through - and the book drags in the middle under the weight of the exposition needed to set it up. This whole storyline just did not resonate with me at all, and the ending in particular is downright preposterous. Those readers drawn in by promises of a mystery will be underwhelmed, while those who enjoyed the other elements of the book will feel that it is an unnecessary subplot which detracts from what had the potential to be a wonderful study of a character, a community and a culture.

Rating based on writing: 4*
Rating based on plot: 2*

Thank you to NetGalley and Atlantic Books for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this book.

As a fair few other people have said, it's quite difficult to describe this book in all its glory without giving the entire plot away. That being said - without spoilers, I read this cover to cover in one sitting. Ainslie Hogarth has me hooked!

Hogarth’s writing style is exceptional. Sometimes, you read a book and you feel comfortable in the authors writing – and Hogarth is definitely one of those authors. Her writing flows beautifully.
I appreciated how Hogarth addressed many women’s issues; postpartum depression, body positivity (and also not-so-positivity) and how we see our independence. I really liked the theme of female empowerment in Hogarth’s novel, turning the sex work featured in the novel into something admirable instead of shrouded in shame. In Normal Women’s world, it is something necessary, something to be proud of, which is empowering in and of itself.

I rated this 4.5 stars as I just felt there was something missing from the story. To me, it felt like it should’ve gone deeper into its storylines and unfortunately it did not. However, this being said it is a wonderful book with (in my opinion) much potential to be award winning.

BRB, going to go and buy all of Ainslie Hogarth's books.

Thank you to NetGalley UK and Atlantic Books for providing me with a free e-copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This had every ingredient for a cracking read. I was wildly entertained by Hogarth's book Motherthing and really enjoyed her style of writing and I loved the sound of this book, great premise, fab cover , I was excited to read it.
Unfortunately that excitement waned pretty quickly once I started reading. It just never grabbed my attention fully. I didn't care for the characters nor the plot and I had to wade through a lot of this book. It just wasn't for me.
While there were elements I enjoyed in the social commentary and there were some flashes of greatness, I just didn't connect with the main character at all and found it quite a depressing read. The curse of the tricky second novel perhaps? I look forward to her next book.

2 stars.

After absolutely adoring Hogarth’s debut, Motherthing, last year, I had high hopes for her second novel.

It felt like an entirely different novel to Motherthing.. I’m not quite sure what I was expecting, and obviously wasn’t expecting a complete copy of Motherthing, but I was kind of expecting that same level of fast-paced witty humour with dark themes.

We certainly do get the taste of Hogarth’s wit and sarcasm throughout the text, and there are some very cleverly written social commentaries scattered throughout. I found these really interesting and loved them at first, but then I was left wanting more from the plot and less of the social commentary overarching everything else.

I did really like the plot, although I found it confusing. I wasn’t really sure what was going on in some places and felt like it was becoming overly convoluted. I’d have rather had a much simpler plotline with Hogarth’s trademark humour and a sprinkling of social commentary. But the balance felt all off to me, and I found the book to be extremely slow paced compared to her previous novel.

That being said, I did still tab plenty of quotes because there was a lot of very clever observational writing and I did mostly enjoy the book.

It’s unfair of me to compare the book so closely to Motherthing, but sadly my weird horror loving brain wanted more of that bizarre horror-esque nonsense and less of the clever, witty, more high-brow stuff.

It’s definitely still a good book and I do recommend giving it a try for yourselves! Just go in knowing it’s a completely different vibe to Motherthing!

A well plotted, dark humorous and a satire of a the myth of reaching-the-full-potential. Plenty of twists, sharp and witty remards, well plotted characters.
Loved it
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine