Source: Goodreads
Thanksgiving is a time for families to get together and give thanks, but now that your holiday is over, you might want to read about a family you wouldn’t be grateful for. For example, “What Kind of Mother” by Clay McLeod Chapman.
Madi tells fortunes at the local farmer market to anyone willing to pay the price. As a young teenager Madi, became pregnant to her now seventeen year old daughter Kendra.
After years of running away from her past, Madi decides to return to her hometown so that Kendra can spend time with her dad and his new family.
Madi feels lost in her life, as Kendra is drifting away from her; of course it makes sense Madi wasn’t exactly the perfect mother as a teenager, but the scars still hurt.
At the farmers market, Madi is surprised to get a visit from her former high school sweetheart, Henry Mcabe.
He refuses to believe that his infant son Skyler is dead, and continues to hang up missing posters for his son to this day. Madi reads Henry’s palm hoping to give her former sweetheart a sense of comfort during his time of grief; only the visions Madi sees are truly haunting.
Madi is roped in by Henry to take care of a boy that bears a striking resemblance to Skyler. Madi believes that Henry must have kidnapped the boy, because there is surely no such thing as magic.
There’s no such thing as changeling children coming to replace dead ones. But what kind of mother would deny a child (even a monstrous one) love?
Henry is a man who cannot move beyond his grief, and Madi is roped into his vision of how a picture perfect family should be.
Madi felt like she failed the first time around as a mother, but maybe Sky could be her chance to get it right.
How could they expect anything but destruction when they decide to have a child for selfish reasons?
Adults tend to believe that children are like clay that you can sculpt into whatever you desire, but the truth is that kids are like sponges; they can absorb teachings you give them, but at the end of the day, they are their own person.
Of course every growing boy needs to eat, as little Sky’s diet consists of worms, dogs, cats, and the occasional taste for human flesh.
The book is paranormal fiction at its finest. It combines southern gothic and body horror to tell its tale.
The book contains psychological horror elements as Madi is groomed by Henry and Skyler to be the boy’s perfect mother. The Madi at the end of the novel is very different from the fierce woman we see at the beginning of the novel.
I love this book, but I wish there was a graphic novel adaptation of it due to the fact that the body horror elements were kind of hard for me to visualize as a reader.
The other issue I have with this book is that we never get an explanation for what Skyler is. Some readers might like the fact that we never know what Skyler is, we just know that he is a little boy who wants love despite the horrific circumstances of his creation.
This story is found family, but instead of wholesomeness, it is very codependent, as Skyler drains the life force out of his caretakers, and they are powerless to stop it.
*This article was edited at 10:31 p.m. on Nov. 29 to correct the article photo.*
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