Trad Wife 🩸

By Saratoga Schaefer.

Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer is a dark, unsettling horror story that blends social media satire with body horror and creeping supernatural dread.

Camille Deming has built her life around the image of the perfect traditional wife. Her days revolve around baking, homesteading, and presenting a carefully curated lifestyle to her growing online audience. Through her posts, she portrays an idyllic farmhouse life filled with domestic bliss, devotion to her husband, and old fashioned values.

But behind the filtered images and wholesome captions, things are far less perfect.

Camille’s marriage to Graham is strained, and despite the beautiful home and picture perfect routine she shares online, there is one thing missing that her followers seem obsessed with: a baby.

As the pressure from her audience grows, Camille becomes increasingly convinced that motherhood is the final piece she needs to complete her image and secure the lifestyle she has built.

When she discovers a crumbling old well hidden in the wheatfield behind her house, she makes a wish for a child. Soon after, strange and unsettling events begin to occur. Camille convinces herself that what she is experiencing must be divine or angelic in nature, especially when a mysterious creature appears one night and her wish is granted.

But the pregnancy that follows is anything but normal.

As Camille’s online engagement explodes with excitement over her announcement, her real world begins to spiral. Her pregnancy progresses with frightening speed, her cravings grow increasingly disturbing, and the cracks in her marriage deepen. Yet Camille is determined to maintain the illusion of perfection for her audience, even as her life transforms into something grotesque and terrifying.

This was not the book I expected when I first picked it up. I initially thought it would be a psychological thriller centred around the tradwife social media culture. Instead, it quickly reveals itself to be full horror, leaning heavily into disturbing imagery, supernatural elements, and moments of genuine gore.

What makes the book particularly interesting is how it explores the pressure of online identity. Camille’s obsession with appearing perfect for her followers slowly consumes her, blurring the line between performance and reality.

The horror grows not just from the supernatural elements but from watching how far she is willing to go to maintain that image.

The story carries clear echoes of Rosemary's Baby, but with a modern twist rooted in influencer culture and the constant demand for attention and validation online.

With its mix of body horror, feminist rage, disturbing supernatural elements, and moments of dark satire, Trad Wife becomes a strange and unsettling exploration of identity, motherhood, and the dangers of turning life into content.

It is grotesque, shocking, and deeply uncomfortable at times, but that is very much the point!

Thank you to Chloe and the team at Pan MacMillan for running this book-tour! The book is out now and available to purchase.

Support a local and independent bookshop and buy the book here.

Buy the E-Book here.