Synopsis
Your favourite influencer is about to be exposed . . .
Every day, millions watch Mia Wright, the “trad wife” queen, on her idyllic 300-acre farm. With her handsome husband, seven perfect children, and a life of from-scratch meals, she’s an icon of modern femininity. But behind every perfect image is a lie.
Desperate to save her tarnished career, journalist Jenny Kaplan arrives at Black Swan Farm to profile Mia. Jenny is ready to write a scathing exposé, determined to uncover the deception behind Mia’s curated life.
But there’s something wrong at the farmhouse.
It slithers through Jenny’s dreams when the children sing strange nursery rhymes at night. She’s losing time. She’s losing her hair. She starts to worry that she’s losing her mind.
Review
This is the year of the Trad Wife. No, not the actual online movement of pre-feminist gender roles, where the woman stays at home and raises the family, cooks, cleans, praises God (but a specific ideal of a Christian god), and dotes on the bread-winning husband*. I mean that this is the year of unsettling books with the title Trad Wife. We had Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer (a book I loved and will be talking about soon), and we will be getting The Trad Wife by Carrie Hughes (a book I haven’t read yet). Today, however, I am talking about Trad Wife by Sarah Langan.
Let’s start it off simple; this book slaps. It’s fire. It’s 6 7, or whatever the kids are saying these days. Anyway, it’s a deeply unsettling book that slowly peels back its layers like a home-grown onion and it never seemed to go in the direction I thought it would go, and I loved it for that!
But what is Trad Wife about? Journalist Jenny Kaplan is reeling from the reaction to a viral essay she published online when she is given the opportunity to interview Mia Wright, a Trad Wife influencer with millions of followers, her own cosmetics business, a working farm to run, and a family of 8 kids with another on the way.
Jenny and Mia are opposites, and their interactions are filled with perceived slights (at least, what we can gather from Jenny’s POV), however, this isn’t just filled with catty attacks on each other. Jenny is there to do a job, and Mia obviously wants her image and brand perceived in a particular way, so of course these two work professionally together (at least at first), and Jenny helps with little things around the homestead and is empathetic towards Mia as a hardworking mother, pragmatic business woman, and online celebrity, so it feels very grounded and real. I think it’s also a delight to experience where the book takes the horror, and to mention some of the things that happen or even the flavour that bubbles to the surface around the midpoint can hinder your enjoyment. I’ll just say this; the book starts with a prologue that set this up as being a domestic thriller, and a large swath of the first half grounds this in a clear reality. What the book then morphs into – and in a way that is so natural and so subtle that I didn’t realise what was happening until it was too late for me and Jenny – is a chilling, gross, and downright unnerving neo-gothic horror.
Trad Wife tackles the ideas of the trad-wife, and the issues and negative messaging surrounding this niche of internet culture, particularly its effect on the women in these roles, regardless of if they want to be an active part in it or not. It explores the isolating nature of trad-wives, how it feeds into the worst of patriarchal control over women’s bodies and the forceful nature that often ensues from this level of control. Watching these elements of the trad-wife lifestyle seep their way into Jenny’s world bit by broken bit isn’t something I noticed as the book went on, but looking back once you get to the end, you’ll see these breadcrumbs strewn throughout.
All in all, Trad Wife is an excellent exploration of its title topic, and how lacking in personal control this “mindset” really is. It’s eerie, chilling, gross, and truly disquieting. Sarah Langan has written a bop (another thing that the kids say, apparently), and Trad Wife is one of 2026’s most exciting, important, and impactful horror novels.
Thanks to Tor Nightfire for the review copy! Trad Wife releases May 14th.
*A quick note: it is important to mention that there is a difference between a Trad Wife and that whole movement vs a housewife/stay-at-home-mom (or the idea of one half of a relationship irrespective of gender not going to a traditional workplace to focus on raising a family and maintaining the homelife). These distinctions are usually rooted in anti-feminist ideals, strict religious ideology, and an online aesthetic that can be very judgemental (all mixed together with a sprinkling of racism).
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