Beware the Woman

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From New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Megan Abbott, an eerie and prescient novel about a family outing that takes a terrifying turn.

Honey, I just want you to have everything you ever wanted. That’s what Jacy’s mom always told her.

And Jacy felt like she finally did. Newly married and with a baby on the way, Jacy and her new husband, Jed, embark on their first road trip together to visit his father, Dr. Ash, in Michigan’s far-flung Upper Peninsula. The moment they arrive in the cozy cottage in the lush woods, Jacy feels bathed in love by the warm and hospitable Dr. Ash, if less so by his house manager, the enigmatic Mrs. Brandt.

But their Edenic first days take a turn when Jacy has a health scare. Swiftly, vacation activities are scrapped, and all eyes are on Jacy’s condition. At the same time, whispers about Jed’s long-dead mother and complicated family history seem eerily to be impeding upon the present. As the days pass, Jacy begins to feel trapped in the cottage, her every move surveilled, her body under the looking glass. But are her fears founded or is it paranoia, or cabin fever, or—as is suggested to her—a stubborn refusal to take necessary precautions? The dense woods surrounding the cottage are full of dangers, but are the greater ones inside?

Beware the Woman is one of the best books of 2023 according to NPR, the PBS NewsHour, Tampa Bay Times, the Guardian, the Irish Times, the Sun Sentinel, LitHub, CrimeReads and more…

What People Are Saying

“Manipulating the sense of menace like a virtuoso violinist, Abbott expertly foreshadows the wrenching family secrets that are exposed in a ferocious finale. Sinewy prose and note-perfect pacing make this a masterful and provocative deep dive into desire, love, and gender politics. Readers will be left breathless.”
— Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“Is there anyone like Megan Abbott? Beware the Woman is the work of a fearless cartographer of the darkest, seediest, most gloriously haunted landscapes of the human heart and psyche.”
— Kelly Link

“Beware the Woman proves yet again why Megan Abbott is a literary rock star. Feverish, razor sharp, and pulsing with dread, it’s a tale both timeless and terrifyingly of-the-moment.”
— Riley Sager, New York Times bestselling author of The House Across the Lake

“Abbott masterfully uses the pretext of a pregnant woman’s heightened senses…to build a claustrophobic atmosphere of mistrust and insecurity reminiscent of Get Out.  You’re sure to get chills. An unsettling, nightmare-inducing morsel from a master of suspense.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“Timely and terrifying.”
— People

“Imagine Get Out but with feminist themes . . . Dripping with tense confrontations, curiously dead wives, and the gendered expectations that accompany both. It’s a suspenseful page-turner.”
— Vulture

“A knife’s edge of tension… a novel you can’t put down.”
— Chicago Tribune

“Megan Abbott, master of crime fiction told through the female lens, has written another novel brimming with suspense. . . . Abbott spins an enigmatic web of foreboding and unease as she delves into family secrets and gender politics.”
— TIME

“With this bewitchingly creepy tale, thriller queen Megan Abbott keeps readers questioning whether this family getaway is the stuff of anxiety dreams or Bluebeard nightmares.”
— Oprah Daily

“GET OUT for the post-Roe era.”
— Los Angeles Times

“For fans of remote mysteries, eerie situations, and the trope am-I-imagining-the-danger-or-is-the-danger-for-real?!”
— Book Riot

“Megan Abbott goes Rosemary’s Baby!”
— CrimeReads

“Is it just cabin fever, or is something sinister afoot?”
— USA Today

“Abbott, a prolific author of noir and suspense, is famed for her uncanny facility with the interior lives of young women....In a genre that can be numbingly formulaic and indifferently composed, she remains a masterful builder of mood, her voluptuous prose heavy with sex and weather.”
— The New York Times Book Review

“Terrific at finding dread around every corner, at making you see the grotesque and frightening in something previously mundane…Beware the Woman is a master class in suspense, with Abbott’s sentences and paragraphs seeming to get more breathless as the novel progresses, mirroring the rhythm of an increasingly frantic Jacy’s pounding heart.”
— The Seattle Times

“Beware the Woman is a superb psychological thriller in all respects, evoking comparisons to nightmarish tales by the likes of Lisa Gardner and Harlan Coben. But there are also echoes of Daphne du Maurier and even Stephen King here, with Lacy serving as a narrator whose reliability is in question.”
— BookTrib

“A cabin-fever suspense novel laced with menacing Rosemary’s Baby-ish undertones.”
— Philadelphia Inquirer

“Abbott skillfully employs a beautiful but claustrophobic setting… Readers won’t soon forget Jacy’s fierce yet frightened internal monologue as she struggles to make sense of her situation — and survive it.”
— Book Reporter

“Abbott is one of the most skilled architects of suspense alive . . . . For sheer escalating tension, Beware the Woman rates right up there with Stephen King’s Misery; it just shouts to be read in one sitting.”
— BookPage

“Another knockout performance…Abbott is an accomplished storyteller…and this is one of her most compelling and well-constructed novels. A real treat for the author's many fans and for everyone who treasures that sense of Gothic-tinged trouble both within and without. Think Rebecca in the UP. Abbott was once a cult favorite, but those times are long gone. She's a crime-fiction A-lister now.”
— Booklist (starred review)

“In this Rosemary’s Baby–esque tale, Abbott creates a summer psychological thriller that tempts the onset of goosebumps, with the devil hiding behind a handsome face or two.”
— Library Journal

“Beware the Woman is Megan Abbott at her best, which is about as good as it gets. A modern-day Gothic, it is chilling and creepy, feverish and surreal, and compulsively readable.”
— Laura Lippman, author of Prom Mom

“Megan Abbott can do no wrong. Stunningly twisty, Beware the Woman so deftly holds some of the most pressing feminist issues of our time in an eerie, ominous grip. Bodily autonomy, reproduction, patriarchal power—this thriller feels terrifyingly of the moment, and perhaps that’s where the truest horror lies.”
— Ashley Audrain, author of The Push

“A major event… essential reading…. This is a slow burning novel of almost unbearable tension, with a compelling, poetic narrative voice, an unsettling, delirious atmosphere, an abundance of darkly funny one-liners and a plot that dramatizes, incisively, issues around patriarchy and female bodily autonomy, [and] a violent, shocking climax.”
— The Irish Times

“Abbott is one smart dame when it comes to sussing out the sexism inherent in those mysteries that so many of us love… Along with the feverish psychological twists and turns that Abbott’s novels are celebrated for, Beware the Woman explores the timely topic of women's autonomy over their own bodies, especially during pregnancy.”
— Maureen Corrigan, NPR