Mother Is Watching, Karma Brown
Mother Is Watching, Karma Brown
List: $22.99 | Sale: $16.09
Club: $11.49

Mother Is Watching

Author: Karma Brown

Narrator: Karissa Vacker

Unabridged: 9 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 03/17/2026


Synopsis

Mother is always watching...

From the #1 international bestselling author of Recipe For A Perfect Wife comes a chilling horror debut: When a pregnant art conservator’s obsession with a mysterious painting spirals into a nightmarish descent, the line between reality and the supernatural shatters threatening both her sanity and her life.

In a world shaped by climate crisis and population decline, motherhood has become both prized and quietly monitored. For thirty-nine-year-old art conservator Mathilde "Tilly" Crewson that has meant years spent struggling to conceive, while navigating the growing social pressure surrounding women's bodies and reproduction.

When Tilly is tasked with restoring The Mother, a fire-damaged painting believed to be the final work of a grieving surgeon-turned artist, she becomes consumed by its disturbing history. Soon after, Tilly discovers she's unexpectedly pregnant and it isn't long before the horrors begin: swarms of insects, whispers in the dark, visits from her dead mother, and an increasingly terrifying bond with the painting itself.

As the malevolence intensifies, Tilly fears the forces surrounding The Mother are not only feeding on her, but on the life growing inside her. To save herself and her family, she may have to destroy the painting once and for all.

But The Mother has plans of its own.

Perfect for fans of Nightbitch and The School for Good Mothers, this unsettling novel explores the intersection between motherhood, art and ambition, and the terror of losing control over one's body and mind.

About The Author

Karma Brown is the author of six novels: the #1 international bestseller Recipe for a Perfect Wife, Come Away with Me (a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2015), Globe and Mail and Toronto Star bestsellers The Choices We Make, In This Moment, The Life Lucy Knew and most recently, What Wild Women Do. She is also the author of bestseller The 4% Fix: How One Hour Can Change Your Life. An award-winning journalist, Karma has been published in SELF, Redbook, and Today's Parent, among others. She lives just outside Toronto with her husband, daughter, and a Labradoodle named Fred.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kara on November 04, 2025

4.25/5 Finally, a genuinely creepy “cursed media” book! The backstory of the paintings that the main character, Tilly, becomes obsessed with was emotional and haunting. Tilly herself is very likable and well-meaning, so the situation she’s put in seems high stakes. It makes the reader feel very sympa......more

Goodreads review by Hannah on April 22, 2026

One of my least favorite kinds of endings, and yet it really worked for me here.......more

Goodreads review by Lindsay L on May 17, 2026

4 stars! Review to come…......more

Goodreads review by Emily on September 03, 2025

Thank you to Dutton for providing this ARC for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own. Mother is Watching by Karma Brown is part horror, part science fiction. Tilly is a fine arts conservator in a near-future Savannah, Georgia. In this further, fertility rates have been decimate......more

Goodreads review by Becky on February 02, 2026

Review in the February 2026 issue of Booklist and on the blog: [URL not allowed] (link live on 2/5/26 at 7am central) Three Words That Describe This Book: near future dystopia, art horror, psychological horror More words: Horror debut by an established author, fertility horror,......more


Quotes

Praise for Mother Is Watching

“Karma Brown explodes onto the horror scene with a terrifying tale . . . Proceed with caution!”
—Julie Clark, New York Times bestselling author

Mother is Watching is eerie, compulsive, almost fanatical, about the fine line between motherhood and grief, and obsession and reality—a gripping, chilling entrance into the horror genre for the brilliant Karma Brown.”
—Ashley Tate, #1 national bestseller of Twenty-Seven Minutes

Mother is Watching is a page-turning nightmare of a novel featuring a maybe-possession as well as a too-possible future technocratic patriarchy. Not since Ira Levin's Rosemary Woodhouse have I been as stressed out and scared for a mother-to-be as I was for Tilly.”
Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie and A Head Full of Ghosts

“With Mother is Watching, Karma Brown once again proves she’s an absolute powerhouse of an author, no matter the genre she chooses. Her first horror novel is smart, timely, intensely creepy, and delivers a downright horrifying ending. Read this one with all the lights on!”
—Hannah Mary McKinnon, internationally bestselling author of A Killer Motive

“Haunting, visceral, and eerily compelling, Karma Brown has expertly blended genres with Mother is Watching. Horror, dystopian, and feminist literature all fit together perfectly—it’s like Margaret Atwood meets psychological thriller, in the best way possible. You’ll never look at motherhood the same way again once you read this, Brown prods at it from angles you didn’t know were there, making it impossible to look away.”
—Kristen Perrin, New York Times bestselling author of How to Solve Your Own Murder

“The horror in Mother is Watching is not just Frankenstein by way of art conservation—which it is, terrifyingly—but the chilling near-future Karma Brown paints: one in which motherhood is commodified and controlled, and grief is the monster that must not be reanimated. I flew through this novel from the first page to its shattering end.”
—Katie Gutierrez, bestselling author of More Than You'll Ever Know

“Beginning with a quote from The Picture of Dorian Grey, Brown’s horror debut more than delivers on that ominous foreshadowing with a tale that begins uneasily and steadily builds to all consuming terror. . . . Compelling, immersive, and psychologically unnerving.”
ALA Booklist

“A riveting and insightful ghost story about parental grief and bodily autonomy, this is sure to linger with readers long after the final page.”
Publisher's Weekly

“Brown’s cursed-media horror features an eerie painting that will have readers questioning what’s real or imagined.”
—Library Journal