Every Tuesday, a member of the horror community shares what they are reading with us! This week, it’s author S.P. Miskowski. She writes:

Megan Abbott’s fiction has been on my essential reading list for over a decade. A recognized master at psychological suspense, with each novel Abbott further explores the desires and ambitions of women, and how they are allowed expression in today’s world. Her latest book, Beware the Woman, couldn’t have landed at a more appropriate moment.

Jacy, the protagonist, is still coming to terms with an unplanned pregnancy when she takes a road trip with her new husband to meet his father, a physician living in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In a remote setting, in a household dominated by her father-in-law’s outsize personality and his insistence on “traditional” values, Jacy begins to realize her worst fears. Her sense of vulnerability grows in proportion to the unrealistic expectations thrust upon her as a mother-to-be.

The narrative is woven so delicately from both realism and paranoia, by the final third of the book I was itching with anticipation and concern for Jacy’s future. If you want an objective statement on the importance of autonomy and equal rights for women, you’ll have to find that elsewhere. This suspense horror novel offers a feverish, accurate depiction of what it’s like to be a woman under the judgmental control of an entitled male.

— S. P. Miskowski, author of I Wish I Was Like You

S.P. Miskowski is an American horror writer and playwright. You can visit her website here, and/or browse her books on Amazon here.