Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC, F/F
PoV: First-person,
Published on: 14th April 2026
ISBN: 1668098180
Goodreads
Sorrowland meets Manhunt in this literary horror debut in which an isolated newlywed—covered in mushroom growths like all the other wives in her community—strikes a precarious balance between following her husband’s strict rules and pursuing an intense connection with a woman who makes her question everything.
Forbidden from leaving her house from girlhood until marriage, Nicole has only her mother's lessons and what she can see from her bedroom window to draw on in forming her view of the world, and of herself. Taught that the mushrooms which cover the women in her village are repulsive and dangerous, she conforms to a rigid set of rules to protect herself and those around her.
When her wedding day arrives, Nicole moves from one prison to another—an empty mansion on the very outskirts of town belonging to the husband she’s been promised to since birth. As she haunts the edges of Silas's unknowable life and decaying home, maintaining control over her own transforming body becomes increasingly impossible. And when another wife with rebellious tendencies pays Nicole an unexpected visit, something within her cracks open. Their furtive explorations yield confusing answers, unearthing the long-buried secrets of the generations of resentful brides that came before. Unmoored, angry, and at last awakened, Nicole must reckon with who she really is, and perhaps, give in to what she truly wants.
Raw, visceral, and relentless, Wife Shaped Bodies is an exploration of gender, power, and community through the lens of mycological body horror and an ode to the unsettling beauty of the natural world.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Highlights
~the mushrooms are gorgeous actually
~every man in this place is a bonkers pervert
~THE POWER OF SPORES
~fungal lesbianism??? oh yes
~that is NOT where babies come from omfg
…It’s fine? It’s perfectly fine?
This book is very much for you if you’re into fungal body-horror. The mushrooms, and everything to do with them, was sublime: chef’s kiss all the way, zero complaints, I loved it. The mushrooms are lovingly described, and everything related to them just gets creepier and creeper as the pages turn, as we learn more about why mushrooms grow from women’s bodies. The main character’s husband is a big mushroom nerd and happily explains to us a lot of the ways in which the womens’ human biology has been altered or replaced by fungus, and I won’t claim to understand the science of it (I definitely don’t understand the science) but it was messed-up in the most gorgeous of ways!
(I genuinely have no idea why any of the men have sex with these mushroom-wives, though. I’m sorry, their genitals have mushroom-teeth and you put your dick in there?! WHY?!)
Story-wise…it’s fine? If you’ve read things like Handmaid’s Tale then I don’t think anything here will really surprise you; it’s men objectifying women with the dial turned up to 11, we have seen this many times before and I’m sure we’ll see it again. It’s disturbing but it doesn’t do anything new in that direction: each woman is born custom-made to be the wife of one particular man, who owns her like property, lies to her, keeps her ignorant, kills her at a whim, etc. The wives know nothing about the world outside their little town, they don’t own anything, they don’t expect to live long. It’s nothing new.
He puts silver rings on my fingers. I cannot see them, but I imagine they look like smaller versions of the handcuffs on my wrists.
The interesting bits all come from the mushrooms: how the women grow, what they’re made from, the very not-human abilities they have. There are a number of cool things hinted at around the edges, but the main character doesn’t have the knowledge to put the pieces together so they’re never stated directly – for example, it’s implied that the husbands may actually be some kind of addicted to the spores emitted by the women, and some of them are definitely getting high off some of the mushrooms grown from their wives’ bodies. I’m sure all the mushroom stuff is going to gross plenty of people out – that’s definitely the source of the body-horror – but I thought it was a really interesting contrast, the horror of all these mushrooms versus the horror of what the men have been and are doing to these women. It’s like – the fungus stuff really isn’t where the horror is.
“You’ll be the envy of every other woman.”
“Oh,” I say. Why does he think the other women would care what I wore? They have their own clothes.
And I think it’s not meant to be: over the course of the book, the mushrooms, the womens’ mushroom-natures and/or non-humanness, is very clearly shown to be the source of their…power may be too strong a word, but potential for power? I did love that, that this thing which ‘should’ be so horrifying – their inhumanness, the grossness of all these mushrooms growing out of their bodies, fundamentally merged with their mammal-parts – was actually a strength. If you just took the men out of the picture, these women would be beautifully adapted for the world they find themselves in, because of their not-humanness. With the wives ordered to ‘shave’ their mushrooms off once they marry, the men are weakening them – it makes the women physically unwell, which I’m pretty sure the men are fully aware of. It hearkens to modern women shaving and plucking to be properly feminine, and there’s the lovely metaphor of having to give up your power and monstrousness to be a ‘proper’ wife.
I am a theater. I am a shape-shifter. I am the girl whose father cut off her hands, I am the three sisters the devil married, I am the body beneath the Juniper tree, I am the devil’s grandmother.
All of that is really cool, and fun, and deliciously ick and weird. But the story itself is just fine. Even the sapphic relationship felt pretty whatever – though there were some fabulous body-horror moments with the two characters touching mushrooms, the emotional connection didn’t seem to have any basis, and the speed at which everything turned obsessive was very rushed. It felt very Because Plot, rather than (ha ha) anything organic. And the ending is shockingly weak, honestly – we don’t even get the vague, handwavey ‘and they disappeared together into the sunset’ sort of conclusion, it’s much lamer than that. No spoilers, but it gives the strong impression that the author didn’t know what to do to close the book and eventually just quit trying – the epilogue especially is a limp, deeply meh construct that I wish hadn’t been included, though even without it I wouldn’t have loved how things wrapped up.
So…it’s fine? Strongly recommended if your main interest is the mushrooms. Otherwise, there’s nothing here you haven’t seen before. Grab it from the library if you’re interested; this isn’t one I’ll be preordering.
Trigger warnings: View Spoiler »
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