This book absolutely SLAPPED. I highly recommend it, even though it's a book about a perimenopausal woman written by a man. It is so deftly written about the patriarchy and a woman confronting the

in this case extremely literal

cult of patriarchy and I am obsessed with

how Mary ends up with an army of dead ghost ladies at her beck and call in New York. I adore a deranged female protagonist, even if it takes the whole book to get there.

My pitch for this book is: Mary is having a shitty time. She's having hot flashes, nightmares, fainting spells, and whenever she looks at a woman, she envisions their flesh melting off. The doctor writes it off as perimenopause, but then Mary also gets fired, finds out her rent is doubling, and her bitchy aunt is asking her to come care for her while she dies from emphysema. With no further prospects, Mary packs up her collection of ceramic 'loved ones' and returns to her childhood home, where her aunt raised her after her parents perished in a fire.

Meek Mary things thinks are going to suck a regular amount when she gets to her aunt's house, but then she goes to take a shower and the ghost of a dead and bloodied woman is in the shower. She freaks out and hits her head, and our story really begins.

Mary goes to the hospital and tells the doctor EVERYTHING but is brushed off as a hormonal woman once again. She breaks down, and a kindly nurse comforts her and offers her a part time job working at the hospital. However, the "hospital" Mary is in? It's actually a converted mansion that once belonged to a notorious serial killer from the area, and Mary's been dreaming about it for months. Spooky ooky!

Mary starts to have flashes of a darker voice inside her, and begins losing time. She starts to reconsider things in her life, her childhood bullies, her relationship with her aunt. She befriends a peppy teenager who is obsessed with true crime, and confides in her that she thinks she might be possessed by the ghost of one of the serial killer's victims. Her new teenage sidekick leans in to this, and helps Mary research. While this is happening...a few people turn up dead or missing! Mary starts to think she might not be the reincarnation of one of the victims, but perhaps of the serial killer himself. She explores this angle and finds she was born the day the serial killer was killed by police 50 years ago.

Once she puts this together, she falls into an undercover religious cult that is obsessed with said killer and makes sacrifices to him annually. Mary is able to 'talk' to the killer inside her, who encourages her to torture and kill the sacrifices. However, the men in town think it's absurd the killer would be reincarnated into a woman, and put her through a series of challenges to try to 'prove' it's really him. This is met with various levels of success, but ultimately the powerful town doctor/mayor/cult leader takes Mary to the desert to kill her.

While Mary is melting away in the desert, she connects with the spirits of the dead women she has been seeing. She encourages them to free themselves by removing the bloody cloth covering their faces, and by acknowledging the ghosts, she gives them power. The bathtub ghost is able to free Mary, and they trek back into town to set things straight.

Mary ends up confronting the killer within her, eviscerating him and exorcising him from her, while building up the power of her dead woman ghost army. They wreak havoc on the town leaders, and it is a bloodbath. Mary's teenage sidekick, it turns out, has been planning to murder Mary this whole time! The two struggle and ultimately have a bloody battle. In the end, Mary gets away, sneaking away before the cops are called, having self actualized and literally cut down the patriarchy. 

The book ends with neighboring townspeople showing up for an easter egg hunt, and finding the mansion/hospital covered in blood and gore. The sweet nurse who tried to befriend Mary is found wandering the secret passageways with a missing boy and ends up shot by an overzealous cop, who went on to become famous for "solving" the case of the easter massacre. Mary goes on to live peacefully in New York again, with her army of lady ghosts doling out justice as they see fit.

I listened to the audiobook and it had a thoughtful note from the author before the book, and at the end, which made me appreciate the story all the more. The author is clear that he was deeply and profoundly inspired by his mother and the book Carrie, and has been working on a book like this for most of his life. I absolutely loved it, and strongly recommend listening to/reading the author's context as well.