Beware the Woman
From New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Megan Abbott, a chilling and compulsive novel about a family holiday that takes a terrifying turn.
A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023
‘Splendidly tense and atmospheric – a contemporary Rebecca’ MAIL ON SUNDAY
‘A novel of almost unbearable tension‘ IRISH TIMES
‘Stunningly twisty’ ASHLEY AUDRAIN, author of The Push
*******************************************************************
Newly married and with a baby on the way, Jacy has everything she ever wanted. When she and her husband, Jed, go to visit his father in his remote cottage, Jacy feels bathed in love by Dr. Ash, if less so by his housekeeper, the enigmatic Mrs. Brandt.
Then Jacy has a health scare. Swiftly, all eyes are on Jacy’s condition, and whispers about Jed’s long-dead mother seem to be intruding upon the present. As the days pass, Jacy feels trapped in the cottage, her body under the looking glass. But are her fears founded or is this -as is suggested to her-a stubborn refusal to take necessary precautions to protect her unborn child? The dense woods surrounding the cottage are full of dangers, but are the greater ones inside?
‘Abbott ratchets up the menace towards an unexpected ending in a claustrophobic chiller about how men deny women agency’ GUARDIAN
‘Sultry, subversive, shades of Rebecca … I loved it’ HARRIET TYCE, author of It Ends at Midnight
‘Feverish, razor sharp, and pulsing with dread’ RILEY SAGER, author of The House Across the Lake
‘Spectacular. Her best yet. Kind of Rosemary’s Baby meets Rebecca. Nobody, but nobody does creeping dread like she does’ SAM BAKER
The Turnout by Megan Abbott was a New York Times bestseller in August 2021
Newsletter Signup
By clicking ‘Sign Up,’ I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Hachette Book Group’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
Reviews
Beware the Woman proves yet again why Megan Abbott is a literary rock star. Feverish, razor sharp, and pulsing with dread, it's a tale both timeless and terrifyingly of-the-moment
A haunted, woozy, suspenseful Midwest Gothic Noir ... A slow-burning novel of almost unbearable tension ... Megan Abbott is always essential reading
Beware the Woman is Megan Abbott at her best, which is about as good as it gets. A modern-day Gothic, it is chilling and creepy, feverish and surreal, and compulsively readable
Megan Abbott masterfully uses the pretext of a pregnant woman's heightened senses...to build a claustrophobic atmosphere of mistrust and insecurity reminiscent of GET OUT. You're sure to get chills. An unsettling, nightmare-inducing morsel from a master of suspense
A cabin-fever suspense novel laced with menacing Rosemary's Baby-ish undertones
A splendidly tense and atmospheric homage to the Gothic tradition - a contemporary Rebecca
amid the Great Lakes
Abbott is a superstar of the suspense genre. . . . Beware the Woman is Rebecca wedded to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Along with the feverish psychological twists and turns that Abbott's novels are celebrated for, Beware the Woman explores the timely topic of women's autonomy over their own bodies
Megan Abbott can do no wrong. Stunningly twisty, Beware the Woman so deftly holds some of the most pressing feminist issues of our time in an eerie, ominous grip. Bodily autonomy, reproduction, patriarchal power-this thriller feels terrifyingly of the moment, and perhaps that's where the truest horror lies
Extraordinary. Rosemary's Baby midwifed by Mrs Danvers. Megan Abbott is a genius. has that feeling of being a book that will be read 100 years from now and marvelled over. A true classic
Do not read this brilliant (but dark) book with the lights off
Megan Abbott is a masterful builder of mood, her voluptuous prose heavy with sex and weather
Sultry, subversive, shades of Rebecca in a menacing, Gothic exploration of threats to female bodily autonomy, which may be current but have been sadly ever so. I loved it
Imagine Get Out but with feminist themes . . . Dripping with tense confrontations, curiously dead wives, and the gendered expectations that accompany both. It's a suspenseful page-turner
Abbott ratchets up the menace towards an unexpected ending in a claustrophobic chiller about how men deny women agency
With this bewitchingly creepy tale, thriller queen Megan Abbott keeps readers questioning whether this family getaway is the stuff of anxiety dreams or Bluebeard nightmares
Spectacular. Her best yet. Kind of Rosemary's Baby meets Rebecca. Nobody, but nobody does creeping dread like Megan Abbott does
Megan Abbott is quite rightly considered to be psycho thriller royalty ... Abbott's writing is as intense and
energetic ... Every page is laced with quiet menace
Terrific at finding dread around every corner, at making you see the grotesque and frightening in something previously mundane...Beware the Woman is a master class in suspense
A feminist fable as well as a psychological thriller with horror hints ... What initially looks set to be a
reworking of Rebecca becomes instead an incisive parable of today's America, where superficially nice men are reasserting their former control over women's reproductive choices
An absolutely brilliant novel: I now want to read the entire Megan Abbott oeuvre
Scintillating and chilling from start to finish
Is there anyone like Megan Abbott? BEWARE THE WOMAN is the work of a fearless cartographer of the darkest, seediest, most gloriously haunted landscapes of the human heart and psyche
Timely and terrifying
Spine-tingling . . . Manipulating the sense of menace like a virtuoso violinist, Abbott expertly foreshadows the wrenching family secrets that are exposed in a ferocious finale. Sinewy prose and note-perfect pacing make this a masterful and provocative deep dive into desire, love, and gender politics. Readers will be left breathless