When eighteen-year-old Josephine flees her abusive mother and the third-floor bedroom she was locked in, she hopes to start a fresh, simple life with her boyfriend Ben and their unborn child in a quiet northern town. But some wounds don't stay buried for long.
Though hopeful, Jo continues to see shadows no one else can see—hear whispers only she remembers from her childhood: the stories her beloved grandmother once whispered to her in the dark about the Fae.
After a devastating loss, Jo spirals. Reality bends. The shadows whisper. And the line between grief and madness begins to blur. As her mind fractures under the weight of old stories and new trauma, Jo clings to her grandmother’s folklore like a lifeline—until she can no longer remember where the stories end and where she begins.
"This book was born in the in-between — between naptimes, moon phases, and customers at the coffee shop.
It is my first novel, shaped in the quiet hours, in the margins of motherhood, and it carries the vulnerability and the chaos of a beginning...
I experienced two pregnancies and births during the writing of this book and since completing it, I’ve become a birth worker, honored to walk alongside people through pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period. With this knowledge, I would have written parts of this story differently. But I’m leaving it as it is: a snapshot of where I was then, a reflection of what I knew, felt, and feared most of all. It is a reminder that we are always becoming. Always learning. Always deepening into our work.
And to anyone out there who picked up this book hoping for a little scare, this story is meant to be extreme. It’s folklore and fear, identity and unraveling, the weight of motherhood, and the shadows we’re told not to look at too closely. But beneath the fiction lies a very real truth — postpartum depression and psychosis are real — and they are not rare.
If you know someone who’s recently had a baby, check in on her. She probably won’t become murderous, but there’s a good chance she’s not totally okay. The postpartum period is deeply important to a woman’s experience as she integrates becoming a mother. It should not be ignored. She should not be ignored. Check on her. Care for her."
Jennifer West lives in British Columbia, Canada with her husband and three daughters. When she’s not painting glitter onto little girls’ eyelids or reading, she is cohosting the In Her Good Books podcast and hiking the mountains of the Okanagan. In 2018, she opened her own coffee shop so that she would have a place to write and that’s where you can usually find her - writing horror and pouring latte art.
