They’d made it a quarter mile down the gravel road when the headlights found the first downed tree. A birch, not large, but big enough to bring the pickup to a sudden stop.
Ad/PR/Patrocinado. Book review of The Unbegotten by Sarah P. Blanchard, release day today, Oct 1, 2026. Many thanks to the author for this ebook.
Who determines the value of a woman’s existence? In The Unbegotten, supernatural horror meets existential crisis, laying bare the psychologically devastating ways women are viewed and judged as wives and mothers by both men and other women around them.
Susannah works as a bartender to make ends meet while trying to establish herself as a graphic designer. Even on the best of days it’s not the greatest job, but this particular assignment at an isolated wedding venue in Vermont is about to turn into the worst night of her life when she is trapped by the storm with her colleague, two men they’ve just met and a strange cleaning crew unlike any she’s ever seen before.
The Unbegotten is essentially a monster horror story mixing traditional horror elements of an isolated location, a looming storm, and an outnumbered protagonist fighting for survival, with an open-ended question of what actually qualifies as monstrous behaviour when it comes to women’s lives and the values attributed to motherhood.
If you like your spooky season reads to feature looming dread, frantic scrambles for survival, profound sadness, and tough female characters who are sick of being pushed around, check out The Unbegotten. At 160 pages it’s a quick read, but the questions it poses about female autonomy, guilt, failure and the meaning of life will linger long after the story is done.
Horror
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