Review: 'Trad Wife' by Saratoga Schaefer

I read Saratoga Schaefer's Serial Killer Support Group last year and had an absolutely delightful time with it. It was gutsy, bloody, sharp, and funny all at once. That was their debut, so when I saw a new book of Schaefer's pop up I wanted to sink my claws into it straightaway. And what a weird delight Trad Wife ended up being! Thanks to Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My apologies for the slight delay.

Pub. Date: Crooked Lane Books
Publisher: 10/02/2026

Every #tradwife needs a baby. She’ll get one at any cost.

When Camille Deming isn’t cooking, cleaning, or homesteading in her picture-perfect country farmhouse, she’s posting about her tradwife lifestyle for her online followers. She takes inspiration from other tradwives on social media, aspiring to be like them, but Camille’s missing a key component: a baby. And contrary to what she posts online, things with her husband, Graham, have been strained. Pressured by her eager followers, Camille fears that without a baby, her relationship will suffer and her social media will never grow out of its infancy.

When Camille discovers a mysterious, decrepit well in the wheatfield behind her house, she makes a wish for a baby. Afterward, she has unsettling experiences that she convinces herself are angelic in nature, and when she’s visited one night by a strange creature, her wish comes true. 

Camille’s pregnancy announcement gets more engagement than anything she’s ever posted—so what if Graham’s reaction is lukewarm? Camille’s life is finally falling into place. Never mind that her pregnancy is developing freakishly rapidly and she’s suddenly craving raw meat. Being a traditional wife is worth it.

Trad Wife is, in many ways, deeply gross but that is all part of the joy of reading it. Part of it is the "trad wife" rhetoric which is woven throughout the book but especially the first third or so. Schaefer does an excellent job at somewhat lampooning it but also showing its toxicity. It is still no fun reading it, though, and watching Camille tamp down her own humanity, instincts, thoughts, and desires is rought. This is not helped by the fact that her husband Graham is a waste of skin. However, there is also something deeply fascinating about watching an intelligent woman squeeze herself willingly into an ideological straight-jacket. When Camille has her encounter, Trad Wife takes a drastic turn into the paranormal which introduces a whole different level of gross that I revel in. As a woman, I find the idea of pregnancy both wonderous and horrifying and that combo comes through strongly in this book. For those who are iffy or easily triggered by body horror and goriness, you might have to gird your loins or put the book down, but everything that unravels in the second half of Trad Wife had me on the gleeful edge of my seat. 

Camille wants a baby. It's the final thing she needs to make the idealistic, trad wife, barefoot in the kitchen-image that she projects online come full circle She and her husband, Graham, have been trying ever since they moved into their grand country home, but he is drifting away and she is still not pregnant. When Camille discovers a weird well in the garden that calls to her, she makes a wish. What then visits her is both a horror and a dream, something between a devil and an angel, but when she does become pregnant, she accepts all the horror that follows. As her pregnancy advances, however, she begins to chafe against the restrictions of her life, the expectations and empty promises. But maybe the unravelling of all she thought was important to her is exactly the thing she needs to find happiness. As I said above, Camille is deep in the trad wife bubble and is quite unlikeable as a result, at least to readers like myself. This is clearly intended by Schaefer, however, as we get enough glimpses at who the true Camille is to come to understand why she might be doing what she's doing. It makes Camille a tragic character, which then makes her turn towards the disturbing fully understanding. I've often said that I love women who go bizarre and Trad Wife does this excellently, ratcheting up the body horror inherent to pregnancy, the tension between Camille and this weird creature, and the bloodiness of love.

Saratoga Schaefer's Serial Killer Support Group is, in many ways, a straightforward thriller of a woman trying to find her sister's killer, but what they do with that material is deeply enjoyable. In Trad Wife, Schaefer takes a similarly simple-seeming set-up, akin to Rosemary's Baby, and again takes it to places I hadn't expected. I've seen quite a few books, mostly thrillers, floating around recently that pick up on the trad wife trend, but I don't know if any of them are willing to go quite as far as Schaefer does here. (I might pick up one of them to double check, but I severely doubt it.) Trad Wife is gory, deeply weird, gross, fascinating, and thrilling. Reading it is like picking at a scab, you know you shouldn't enjoy it as much as you are but there is a satisfaction about it you don't necessarily want to think about more deeply. Trad Wife is an excellent, if very different, follow-up to Schaefer's previous book and they're now solidly on my instant read-list. I cannot wait to see what Saratoga Schaefer comes up with next!

I give this novel...

5 Universes!

I had a delightful time with Trad Wife and I really like how Schaefer's writing and plotting has developed since their debut. I loved that Schaefer played with genre and expectations and went slightly left-field with it all. If you have a strong stomach, do yourself a favour and pick this book up!