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Book: “Trad Wife” by Saratoga Schaefer
Publishing Info: Crooked Lane Books, February 2026
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: Every #tradwife needs a baby. She’ll get one at any cost.
When Camille Deming isn’t cooking, cleaning, or homesteading in her picture-perfect country farmhouse, she’s posting about her tradwife lifestyle for her online followers. She takes inspiration from other tradwives on social media, aspiring to be like them, but Camille’s missing a key component: a baby. And contrary to what she posts online, things with her husband Graham have been strained. Pressured by her eager followers, Camille fears that without a baby, her relationship will suffer and her social media will never grow out of its infancy.
When Camille discovers a mysterious, decrepit well in the wheatfield behind her house, she makes a wish for a baby. Afterwards, she has unsettling experiences that she convinces herself are angelic in nature, and when she’s visited one night by a strange creature, her wish comes true.
Camille’s pregnancy announcement gets more engagement than anything she’s ever posted—so what if Graham’s reaction is lukewarm? Camille’s life is finally falling into place. Never mind that her pregnancy is developing freakishly rapidly and she’s suddenly craving raw meat. Being a traditional wife is worth it.
Rosemary’s Baby for the digital age, this disturbing horror novel is one you’ll want to devour in just one bite.
Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!
If you’ve been following the blog for awhile you have no doubt seen that I have this weird hyper-fixation on the creepy rise of trad wife influencers online and how it is traditionalist and alt-right propaganda dressed up in wholesome family values. And you have probably seen that I’ve been seeking out various books about it because it’s all just so interesting and upsetting. When I saw “Trad Wife” by Saratoga Schaefer, with it’s neon cover of a pregnant woman being held by some demonic hands, my initial thought was ‘OBVIOUS’. With pregnancy and babies and fertility being such a driver of trad wife ethos it just seemed like a predictable direction to take the theme. But since I am still super into it, especially as satire, I figured I’d pick up a story about a woman so desperate for engagement on her trad wife social media page she’d literally sell her soul for a baby and fame, even if that baby is a devil spawn. It would at least be entertaining, I reasoned. And it was. BUT IT WAS ALSO SO MUCH MORE. I didn’t expect to love this book as much as I did. But I LOVED it.
First to talk about the horror elements, as that is the crux of the novel. Pregnancy horror is still pretty prevalent right now (I’ve talked about why many times), and here it is combined with the more recent ‘trad wife’ thriller sub-genre that has also risen in popularity in recent years due to the trad wife to alt-right/white supremacist pipeline online and high profile trad wife influencers making headlines (why just last week Ballerina Farm made the news because of bacteria ridden raw milk sold from their compound being taken off shelves! YUM!). These two themes mix well due to so much of trad wife content having children and pregnancy as a central tenant of the ideology/content. Saratoga Schaefer knows how to pull out the satire of these two sub genres and makes a fun and wicked horror tale. There are some unsettling imagery moments where Camille is seeing or hearing things, there are obviously some gnarly body horror beats (pregnancy itself is body horror, after all), and there is a growing tension as she grows something inside of her body that is not fully human. Schaefer also tweaks and twists very real pregnancy symptoms and ailments and ups the ante a bit to make them more horrifying, whether it’s hair falling out, bone pain, or severe fatigue. There are also the uncomfortable gaslighting of Camille’s husband Graham, who loves the idea of a submissive wife but wants her to stay a certain way, which adds to her desperation to have a child but also makes her feel more insecure, which drives her actions more desperately, which makes the tension all the higher. For awhile, anyway…
Camille could have been a maddening and stereotypical Ballerina Farms-esque personality that barely moves outside of the tropes that are expected or associated with trad wife influencers. And at first it seems like perhaps that is where we are heading as she obsesses about being a perfect help meet for her milquetoast husband Graham and boosting her social media engagement for validation about her perfection as a trad wife. But Schaefer instead decides to go on a different route with her protagonist, and while Camille is certainly flawed and at times grating, there are so many layers that are carefully and slowly pulled back that I found her to be completely understandable in the path she has chosen and the things that brought her to this point. We have a woman who had so many aspirations that were waylaid, and instead of persevering she has pivoted to a path that she has been told is a better fit ONLY because it would be better for those around her for her to be this way. And when she does start her pregnancy and motherhood journey and does have a baby, priorities shift, and she discovers what she CAN be on her own terms. Even if that involves a ‘demon’ spawn and insatiable urge for human flesh. And I say GOOD FOR HER. I was completely rooting for her and her feral-ness by the time the book was over.
But the thing that surprised me the most about this book were the completely unexpected romantic undercurrents flowing through it (SPOILERS AHEAD). So in the description of this book there is a reference to “Rosemary’s Baby”, which I suppose is an obvious story to reference when talking about a ‘demonic’ pregnancy horror tale. But it’s not a proper comparison at all, because, unlike in “Rosemary’s Baby”, Camille’s pregnancy by the demon/’creature’ (as she calls it)/whatever from the well in the woods is not only fully consensual (which I LOVED), it slowly evolves into something so incredibly sweet that I was floored by the story choice. But I loved it. I loved the idea of an aspirational trad wife so obsessed with the ‘culture’ of purity, perfection, and Godliness not only turning to a ‘demon’ to fulfill a pregnancy for online engagement, but also finding a connection to it that goes so much deeper and intimate than her picture perfect ‘Godly’ husband. Oh, and not only that, it was actually STEAMY. I’m not one who really reads monster romances, not because I dislike them, just because I haven’t really picked them up. But I’m a believer now. IT WAS SO GOOD.
“Trad Wife” hit every single high note I was hoping for and exceeded them. It wasn’t what I was expecting and it thought outside of the box of what we have been seeing with this newer reading trend, and I adored every bit of it.
Rating 10: A home run in every way. Great satire, great horror, and, interstingly enough, great monster romance.
Reader’s Advisory:
“Trad Wife” is included on the Goodreads lists “Tradwife Thrillers”, and “2026 Women in Horror”.
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