the main character natalie is a mentally ill woman who didnt develop a sense of self in her youth. likely due to her religious, conservative upbringing and her father no longer being with them (and her own mother requesting natalie to lie about it)

natalie unfortunately marries the first man she dates, has a baby with him, and only then realizes she doesnt like her husband or her baby

and at this point natalie is 20 or 21, and while clearly suffering from ppd, is then coerced by her wealthy and powerful father in law into staying with her husband and giving him more children in exchange for money

soon after natalie joins Instagram, takes a $1.5k influencer class, and then we see the combination of her lacking sense of self + unresolved aggression (along with an outside source falsely advertising who natalie was, which lead to a massive increase in her following and likely very much influenced her into who she became + the hidden detail that her husband had been lying and exaggerating natalies skills and their collective abilities of running a farm) cultivate into her tradwife persona

and from there we see Natalie's decline. its awful seeing how much a human can break and the horrors they can do

but at no point in this 'revenge fantasy' am I like 'yeah! the author got her with this one!'

I really just wished there had been sooner intervention, and that the mentally ill woman could have gotten help

that being said, I did like the twist, but I didnt see it as 'natalie did it to herself' i thought 'her husband calab is doing this to her'. at that point in the story natalie was mentally gone, calab had all the power and he welded it to abuse his wife and kids

this feels like a cautionary tale of what untreated mental illness can do, it can rob you of all sense of self and your entire life, and idk, call me a hater, but mental health help isn't just for the left

idk, im heartbroken for her children, and if we weren't stuck in Natalie's perspective, maybe we might have seen more how her children were affected.

the fact that her daughter mary was able to write a book about it all just 5 years after the fact seems a little,,, idk, this seems like something you would be unpacking the rest of your life and wouldnt be until you were your mother's age that you would finally understand

idk, what a compelling novel, ill be thinking about it for weeks